All the world was a stage in Shakespeare’s time, but now it is more likely to be displayed on big and small screens. With Broadway, until recently, and Hollywood on strike, the only real theatrical action has been provided by the political actors.

This prompts musing about the movies and stars most appropriate to the current crop of presidential aspirants. Mitt Romney, for example, is clearly The Manchurian Candidate. He even looks a bit like the haunted Laurence Harvey in John Frankenheimer’s 1962 classic, surely the darkest of all political satires.