#776: Seconds

 

Seconds

John Frankenheimer
Initial release: October 5, 1966 (USA)

When looking back at cinema of the 1960s, from the paranoid Cold War days of the first half of the decade to the edgy envelope-pushing of the second half, perhaps no filmmaker has done more to define the decade in film than John Frankenheimer. From political thrillers to social dramas, he seemed to have his finger on the pulse of a volatile, changing America. His most famous films, then, are the ones that make up his so-called "Paranoia Trilogy:" The Manchurian Candidate, in which an isolated, emotionally unstable war veteran is brainwashed into becoming a sleeper agent; Seven Days in May, in which an unpopular president and a Pentagon aide uncover a coup plot; and finally, Seconds.

Unlike the other two, Seconds isn't a political thriller, though there is maybe a political message to be found. Nevertheless, it may be the most abjectly paranoid of the three, a grim treatise on identity and capitalism. The plot is really simple: a depressed, middle-aged banker, bored with his life, is coercively inducted into a secret program, funded by an extremely wealthy ghoul, that more or less kidnaps wealthy people practically off the street, and through surgical and psychological conditioning gives them a "second chance" at life with a new identity. All traces of their old identity are to be dropped, torched if possible. Cadavers are used to fake their deaths. But not everyone adjusts to the new opportunity, including our protagonist.

The protagonist was played by two people, who really don't look anything alike (though that was the point.) John Randolph (who you might remember as the grandpa from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) plays the middle aged Arthur Hamilton; Rock Hudson plays the rejuvenated Arthur, given the name Antiochus "Tony" Wilson. And if you're wondering if the presence of Hudson makes for a queer reading of the film, you wonder correctly — we'll get to that. Both actors bring a profoundly unhappy, paranoid tone to the role; Arthur is clearly feeling stuck in his life, but is also unwilling to make the change and has to be blackmailed into it (which only further emphasizes the sinister nature of The Company, which occupies a labyrinthine office building somewhere in New York City that seems to house everything from bedrooms — used for blackmail material — to a surgical ward.) Tony tries to adjust, but the lack of closure on his old life and continuing dissatisfaction with his new one wear on him.

It was an open secret in Hollywood that Hudson was gay; he was very circumspect about his private life, in large part because that lantern jaw and Superman hair of his were the moneymakers in his career as a frequent figure in romantic and swashbuckling roles and being openly gay in the 1960s was a great way to torpedo your image. (Which makes his death in 1985 of AIDS all the more bitter, because Ronald Reagan considered him a personal friend and still left him to die. Reagan only publicly acknowledged the AIDS crisis after Hudson's death.) Seconds is about identity, about feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. Even as "Tony," Arthur never fully adjusts; when he's taken to a hippie orgy, he suffers a kind of culture shock as underneath the youthful skin of "Tony" there is still an old conservative banker, dour and stuck in a rut. His breakdown feels particularly real; Hudson's portrayal of "Tony" feels like a scream from within, the real Hudson begging to be let out.

And what of The Company? Smooth and sinister, with a clandestine intake process that feels like something out of a mobster movie. There's a symbolism in the front businesses they choose to operate out of; Arthur is first sent to a laundry, which suggests a motif of cleansing. But the intake process has changed fronts; they currently operate out of a meat packing plant. That's what the "Reborns" or "Seconds" are to the Company, aren't they? Just meat. Both fronts suggest the clients are just objects, things to be manipulated and reshaped as the Company sees fit. The people who work for the Company are friendly, but the malice beneath them is palpable: the founder is a kindly old man who keeps on smiling through every lie he tells, the director has lunch brought out for Arthur yet eats it in front of him, and even the nice secretary hands Arthur a drugged cup of tea. And how about the fact that none of the "reborns" seem to be women? The whole thing feels like the kind of plot we'd find out about in the Epstein files, with maybe less baby eating. It's nightmarish in and of itself.

Seconds isn't a horror movie, but it is nevertheless horrifying; the final minutes make for one of the most gutwrenchingly awful experiences you'll ever have in movie-watching. It's like a Twilight Zone episode for the most jaded of the counter-culture generation; if it had been released just five years later, it probably would have taken off like gangbusters instead of being a box office flop and wallowing in obscurity until the Criterion Collection dusted it off. It's a tough watch, tougher than even The Manchurian Candidate, but that just makes it Frankenheimer's best movie.

-june❤