RETROSPECT: SECONDS (1966)
January 27th 2009 10:32
Seconds is an unsettling yet compelling experience.
Throughout the 1960s, director John Frankenheimer had a keen interest in paranoia, mostly with the national kind as illustrated in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964), but also with the more personal sort displayed in 1966’s Seconds. Not that Seconds doesn’t have a broader subtext that takes aim at the societal concerns of 1960s America, but its simple character driven plot lends it an ageless appeal that the other two entries in the ‘paranoid trilogy’ don’t quite possess.
Seconds tells the tale of Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), a 50-something Manhattan banker who lives a disaffected existence with his loving wife (Frances Reid) in the distant comfort of the New York suburbs. Creeping slowly towards retirement, Arthur feels hemmed in by the life he’s created for himself, which is full of the upper middle-class items of ‘success’ and longs for the promise and excitement of his younger years.
So when he receives the offer to literally be re-born by a shady organisation known simply ‘The Company’ he has little hesitation in investigating their promises of a new life. Arthur's death will be faked, his body and face reconstructed, and life will begin again with a new identity in a new location.
And so it does for Arthur, who is now known as Tony Wilson and played by Rock Hudson. Tony is quickly injected into his new life as a wealthy and successful artist living a comfortably luxurious life in Malibu, complete with a butler who advises him on his new existence while quietly reporting back to The Company on his progress.
But what is heralded as a new start to his dream life quickly takes a different turn and soon Arthur/Tony is instead living out a nightmare, just as unsatisfying as his former life but seasoned with the destruction of his true identity. Thus begins a downward spiral that is as frightening for the viewer as it is for the protagonist.
Seconds is a beautifully realised film. Never before or again would Frankenheimer’s experience with television drama mesh so well with his desire to innovate on the silver screen. Technically, it’s timeless stuff, with James Wong Howe’s cinematography extremely impressive in its matching of naturalistic camerawork to unearthly lighting and subjective lenses. Likewise, Jerry Goldsmith contributes a sparse score that plays on the nerves like a howling wind crackling a tin shed.
Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson) gets familiar with himself.
Frankenheimer himself then comes to the party with his directing, particularly of the creepy-to-the-point-of-being- nauseous scenes in the office of The Company. His experience with teleplays comes into its own and the strangely stagy performances of the scientists and strategists who populate The Company work perfectly both within the otherworldly tone of the piece and next to the more naturalistic offerings of Randolph and Hudson. Likewise, a scene late in the film where Tony returns to his former New York home to talk to his former wife and attempt to find some meaning in what he has done to himself hits right in the gut as he realises there is no way to undo his decisions and return to his old life.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Seconds to the casual viewer is the performance of Rock Hudson as Tony Wilson. Hudson, who since his death has been viewed very much as a Hollywood oddity, gives a performance that, much like the film itself, is comfortably ahead of its time. His subtlety in the role gives Tony a naturalism that makes his cracking sanity both awful and compelling. Hudson’s performance during Tony’s visit to his former New York house is sublime, while a scene where he is strapped flailing and screaming to a gurney is pure unsettling horror.
Everything adds up in Seconds, from its directing to its technical aspects; its performances to its eerie sound design. It’s also a film that resonates powerfully in our modern times, when a homogenised western society places so much value on the artifice at the expense of the real. Strip away its 1960s setting and there’s very little to deny this as a stark, unsettling and highly skilful piece of modern storytelling.
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