John Frankenheimer, before he descended into being a professional, but by the numbers action director, was responsible for some of Hollywood’s more creative films of the 1960’s. His dystopian science-fiction, “Seconds”, is a great example of his creative daring.
Using Beautiful black and white photography from acclaimed cinematographer, James Wong Howe, Frankenheimer created a nightmare scenario that seemingly existed during the present time America. Similar to Godard’s, “Alphaville”, there are no futuristic sets used to depict the more fantastical elements of the story. Similar to that French film, both movies depict the horrific control of people, by large powerful entities. Here it is an organization cryptically called, “The Company”, which holds this horrific power.
John Randolph plays Arthur Hamilton, who is a late middle aged married bank executive, and is walking zombie-like through life, in an unhappy state. He has a devoted wife and a daughter, who is married to a doctor, that Hamilton sees only a couple of times each year. He performs his job robot-like at the bank and rarely speaks to his wife, who picks him up from the train station every day. He used to be a devoted tennis player in his youth and dreams of being a painter, for which he has no real talent for.
One evening he gets a mysterious phone call from an old friend who had died three years earlier. Arthur attended his friend’s funeral so the phone call becomes very disturbing. The next day, on the subway, a stranger places a note in his hands with an address written on it. The following evening, he gets a 2nd phone call and decides to go to the address the next day. It is there that he is secretly taken from a dry cleaning shop to a meat packing plant and to finally a secret office complex of the ominous, “Company”. It is here that, “The Company”, uses a combination of aggressive sales pitch, compassionate empathy and blackmail to convince him to pay for, and enter their program of creating for him, a brand new identity and appearance, through the use of some sort of advanced plastic surgery. The company fakes his death from an accident, so that they can collect payment and pay for the expenses of his new life from his annuities and life insurance, which is actually one of the film’s flaws as it is never clear how they were able to get their hands on that money without anyone noticing.
The result of the transformation is that Randolph becomes Rock Hudson. His age 60 becomes age 40 and his pudgy body becomes a hunky athlete while his name is changed from Arthur Hamilton to Tony Wilson. He is given a new life as an artist, complete with supplied paintings to sell every few months or so, and a new California beach home in a well to do neighborhood, which is not all that it seems. His reborn life involves meeting a gorgeous neighborhood woman and a group of neighbors who act suspicious and sinister.
This is a plot straight out of Rod Serling’s, “Twilight Zone”, with its horror induced ending that is as shocking and terrifying as anything I have ever seen. The story’s premise deals with the horror of the realization of life after one has their mid-life crisis. The realization portrayed is that a boring passionless existence is your life, and all that is left is to allow it to run its course. How many people, even today, would not jump at the chance to start life over again? Of course if you were the type of person to agree to this, you would have to not care to much for those you left behind. This theme is kept pretty consistent in the movie as the only person Hamilton/Wilson really misses after being reborn is his daughter.
What I found to be very astute is, while Wilson looks twenty years younger and is played by Hudson, he still reflects the aura of the older man. Rock Hudson gives a surprisingly strong performance here as Wilson. His facial expressions and body language are very similar to those of Randolph’s and this performance worked in allowing me to believe that they were both the same man.
Frankenheimer does his best work here as he uses a lot of close up bottom to top viewpoints and first person perspectives that sucked me into the mind of Hamilton/Wilson as he was pushed into the nightmare. Throughout the film I felt the suspicion of being constantly watched through the eyes of the movie protagonist, which kept me on edge throughout the movie.
There are a couple of plot elements that makes the story fairly unbelievable. The movie shows and talks about the cosmetic surgery that is performed in order to complete the transformation, but it is never make clear how Hamilton’s body changes from flabby older man to muscular hunk. It is a pretty farfetched premise that is never explained. In addition, how the company is able to confiscate all of Hamilton’s money in order to finance their fee and his new lifestyle is beyond me.
The movie ends like a sledgehammer, with a horrific message that left me gasping for air. Directed with extreme style, “Seconds”, is a riveting philosophical movie that kept me on edge throughout and even succeeded in surprising me with its dark macabre ending. This is a movie that has a story that is as relevant today as it was during 1960’s when it first came out.
1001 Movies before you die 