Seconds

Plot synopsis:
Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is a middle-aged man whose life has lost purpose. He is disengaged at his job as a banker, while the love with his wife has dwindled. Through a friend who he thought had died years earlier, Hamilton is approached by a secret organization, known simply as the "Company," which offers wealthy people a second chance at life. The Company, in the person of Mr. Ruby (Jeff Corey), interviews Hamilton, then shows him a film of him attacking a girl after he'd unknowingly consumed drugged food & drink offered him by the Company. They threaten to blackmail Hamilton forcing him to sign on, foreshadowing the unfortunate consequences of accepting the Company's assistance.Hamilton's death is staged to make it look as if he perished in a hotel fire with a corpse left disguised as him. Through extensive plastic surgery and psychoanalysis, Hamilton is transformed into Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson). He is provided with a new home, a new identity (as Wilson), new friends and a devoted manservant. The details of his new existence suggest that there was once a real Tony Wilson, but what became of him is a mystery.Wilson copes with his new world. Relocated to a fancy home in Malibu, California, where he is an already established artist, he commences a relationship with a young woman named Nora Marcus (Salome Jens) and for a time he is happy but soon becomes troubled by the emotional confusion of his new identity, as well as by the exuberance of renewing his youth.At a dinner party he hosts for neighbors, Wilson drinks himself into a stupor and begins to babble about his former life as Hamilton. It turns out that his neighbors are "reborns" like himself, sent to keep an eye on his adjustment. Nora is actually an agent of the Company and her attentions to Wilson are designed merely to ensure his cooperation.In violation of Company policy, Wilson, posing as an old friend of her husband's, visits his former wife (Frances Reid) in his new persona. He learns that his marriage had failed because he was distracted by the pursuit of career and material possessions, the very things in life that others made him believe were important.Wilson returns to the Company and announces a desire to start again with yet another identity. The Company offers to accommodate him, but asks if he would first provide the names of some past acquaintances who might like to be "reborn." He refuses since he now knows of the drawbacks to being "reborn" and also doesn't want to delay the Company's procedure for a new identity for himself.While awaiting his reassignment, Wilson encounters Charlie Evans (Murray Hamilton), the friend who had originally recruited him into the Company. Evans was also "reborn" and likewise could not make a go of his new life. Together, they speculate on the reason for their failure to adjust, attributing it to the fact that they allowed others, including the Company, to make life choices for them.This realization comes too late. Wilson/Hamilton is suddenly strapped to a gurney and as he is wheeled down the hallway, a priest reads him his last rites. He is eventually wheeled into a small room where he learns that failed reborns are not actually provided with new identities but instead become the cadavers used to fake new clients' deaths.

Tags: cult, psychedelic, murder

Review:
You could make a strong case for the late John Frankenheimer being the most unappreciated American film director of all time simply by mentioning his two astonishing 1960s movies 'The Manchurian Candidate' and 'Seconds'.
It starts easy enough when a middle-age man, John Randolph (Arthur Hamilton) decides to accept an offer to 'exchange' his given life, and trade it for a more youthful one.
During the fantastic transformation from old John Randolph to youthful, handsome and attractive Antiochus 'Tony' Wilson, (Rock Hudson) he and the audience is gently beaconed and eased into the new, but alien life by a calm and compassionate guide, called the "Old Man.
Some movies which failed when they were released became sleepers ,and in the case of "seconds" quite rightly so.It predates "Abre los ojos" (and thus "Vanilla Sky" so to speak) by 30 years !"Carnival of souls" did the same for "Jacob's ladder" and "the sixth sense".Those two works did more:they invented what we call the "indie cinema" and David Lynch's first -and best- two works owe them a great deal.By far Rock Hudson's best performance -with the eventual exception of ,in a diametrically opposite style, "all that Heaven allows"and his other Sirk melodramas-,"seconds" is what we can call a movie ahead of its time.The weakness some users are complaining of -the lack of psychological depth - is intentional;and if some sequences may seem long,this length inspires their vital nightmarish side -the drunken revel ,the bacchanalian dance are so unexpected that they pack a real wallop.The camera uses disturbing angles and Frankenheimer does not need a ton of special effects to exude pure primal fear.This movie ,"the Mandchurian candidate" and "Birdman of Alcatraz are enough to make Frankenheimer go down in History of seventh art..
Given an opportunity to completely start his life over he jumps at the chance even though it means he must "die" and be reborn in a new body.Filmed in black and white SECONDS has that unsettling jumpy-jangly editing and sound track I associate with 50s film noir.
In Seconds life's become pretty boring for John Randolph, no interest in the little woman any more, a dead end job, all the money in the world, but no interest in spending it anywhere.So when he gets a call from an old friend who he's heard has died, the possibilities are intriguing.
Two of the best performances are Wesley Addy as a rather creepy factotum assigned to Hudson and Salome Jens as a woman who evinces interest in the new man that is Hudson.Seconds is not a feel good movie, but it's a great horror story told without any of the usual monsters, blood, and gore associated with the genre.
In Scarsdale, the bored banker Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is contacted by his former friend Charlie Evans that supposedly died several years ago giving information about a secret organization that offers for US$ 30,000.00 a second chance in life to wealthy people.
But the rules are not so easy to be changed."Seconds" is a weird film by John Frankenheimer with potential of cult- movie.
Music is scored by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography by James Wong Howe.Arthur Hamilton (Randolph) is a middle-aged business man who is tired of his mundane existence, but that is all about to change when he is coerced by a mysterious organisation into faking his own death and letting them create an entirely new look and lifestyle for him.
It's the sort of film that has you wondering if somebody slipped some dubious pill into your drink when you wasn't looking, such is the claustrophobic atmosphere, weird imagery and the use of the SnorriCam. Wong Howe's Oscar nominated black and white photography keeps things bordering on the realm of the surreal, while Goldsmith scores it suitably unusual like, with low rumbles and avant-garde tinkerings flitting in and out of proceedings.Upon release it was met with very mixed reviews and received a critical mauling at Cannes, a shame since it has since become something of a cult classic.
Maybe it's a case of Frankenheimer being in love with every second he filmed, but the pace is a big part of what made the oppressive atmosphere of the movie.
SecondsThe downside to getting a new face is that all your old selfies are now meaningless.However, the recipient in this sci-fi thriller could care less about his old face.Fatigued with his middle-aged existence, Arthur (John Randolph) abandons his loveless marriage for an opportunity being offered by a clandestine organization able to give you the life you've only dreamed of.Surgically altered, rechristened Tony (Rock Hudson) and presented with a new apartment, Arthur enjoys his new life as a successful artist with many well-to-do friends.
But when a drunken Tony relapses into Arthur, he learns quickly that The Company doesn't tolerate such regression.A paranoid thriller that is both visually stunning - thanks to director John Frankenheimer - and highly suspenseful - thanks to its Twilight Zone-esque narrative and social commentary on modern medicine, Seconds is a landmark cinematic achievement.Incidentally, Arthur's sexual preference also changes when he becomes Rock Hudson.Green Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca.
View "Seconds" as a new take on "The Jungle", but this time the author gets the primary message across -- the maltreatment of human beings is of paramount concern, not the unsanitary processing of wine.The plot of this film raises many questions (and many red flags) about American life for the viewer.
The film drags in just a few spots (mostly in the middle), but it is interesting and sobering to watch this guy go through an artificial rebirth and live a second life.The story is pretty well-structured.
There are a ton of wild and unusual camera angles, many of which seem less like what you'd find in the 60s and more like what you'd see in modern films (especially when the camera tracks a person's head or body, keeping it still while the background moves; that is very much the same kind of thing you get with webcams, which many modern movies use, and I think it's an awesome achievement for Seconds).
He had to have drawn on his own personal fears of living a life for other people, only to mournfully regret this decision later in life.Seconds is a genre film that was far before its time.
It sounds sacrilegious to suggest splicing such a classic piece of English literature with a schlock American television series but that's essentially what's happened with 'Seconds' and the results are certainly remarkable and next to astounding.The Wildean moral of 'be careful what you wish for' echoes around the winding caverns of this story and it points a chilling finger in the direction of the viewer's own superficiality.In our world, it is easy to derive a fake 'meaning of things' from the sparkly-cool objects that we buy in the mall: these are our of-the-peg raison d'etre and in the film, the main character is given just that but without the pretension.
It also shows that Rock Hudson could play a fully-developed, three-dimensional, tragic character.The modern-day Faust is married, middle-aged businessman Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), who most definitely doesn't want to be who and where he is in life.
The Devil is incarnated as a soft-spoken, elderly gentleman (Will Geer), who turns out to be the CEO of The Company, an underground organization that offers Hamilton a chance to be "reborn."  But this offer has absolutely nothing to do with what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of being "born again." (I'm betting, however, that the allusion is deliberate.) For a huge sum of money, The Company will (1) stage Hamilton's death, actually planting a cadaver that everyone will mistake for his decomposed body (2) take Hamilton apart on the operating table and put him together again to look just like Rock Hudson (3) send Hamilton off to a new life and a new identity.
Arthur Hamilton/Tony, the sad protagonist (expertly played by both John Randolph and Rock Hudson(!)) finds all too late that there is no place like home, and once you're gone, you're gone.
I was too obvious that the man's new role was so against who he really was, that it couldn't have been what he really wanted.I think it'd have been a better movie if his second chance in life was something really natural and good for him, but he still got confused in the conflicts between his old and new life, as he did in this one.I had to fast forward through some really obnoxiously loud and annoying scenes of his new life in the middle, otherwise it was pretty enjoyable.
The final chapter of director John Frankenheimer's paranoia trilogy (after THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE 1962 and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY 1964), SECONDS posits the possibility of a second chance to start one's life with a clean slate, through proper plastic surgeries and a fake death, and our protagonist is a 51-year-old bank manager Arthur Hamilton (Randolph, cogently laying bare his ambivalence concerning the wacky proposition), who is consequentially, reborn as Tony Wilson (Hudson), assumes his hobbyhorse as an amateur painter, lives in his seaside studio and falls in with new female acquaintance.
We would never know.Above-mentioned gripes aside, SECONDS is commendable even it is solely for the avant-garde monochromatic cinematography from Hollywood doyen James Wong Howe (justly accorded with an Oscar nomination even the film was tanked upon its release), his camera angles are often oddly askew and heightened close-ups are put into extensive use in conveying through a distorted point-of-view that something is terribly amiss, underpinned by Jerry Goldsmith's mind-bending incidental music, together they constitute a sterling oracular-and-aural combo to stagger the audience witless.
Would you do it if money is not an issue?John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966) feels like an extended Twilight Zone episode and you know there will be no good outcome.
An unhappy middle aged banker (John Randolph) agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity (Rock Hudson) -- that comes with its own price.I see some people have seen this as a look at midlife crisis, or even closeted homosexuality (which seems like a stretch).
Rock Hudson plays his role solemnly; it is always obvious that the tired old man is still behind his rejuvenated eyes despite the efforts to escape Arthur Hamilton's numbing life.
In this 1966 psychological thriller, director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) explores the dark side of human longing.A surgical procedure transforms a fifty-something working class man drained of any passion for life, into a youthful new existence, identity and all.
Director John Frankenheimer, in collusion with a genius cinematographer, got Seconds, the ultimate "be careful what you wish for" chiller, absolutely right.The weak spot maybe could have been the casting of Rock Hudson in the lead, but apparently Hudson insisted that he not play the "earlier" version of his character in the beginning stages of the film--and what this means is that Rock Hudson understood this material and his place in it.
John Frankenheimer's 1966 film "Seconds" is a deeply disturbing psychological thriller with a strangely strong sense of paranoia and repression.The story involves a strict, live-life-the-same-every-day businessman who goes to a company that fakes his death, gives him a makeover and creates a new persona for him.
The same feeling I get when I watch the end of films like "Se7ven" and some psychological thrillers is in "Seconds," only it's there the whole way through.
Very few of us watch it as a film by John Frankenheimer or as a film based on the novel by David Ely. We're instantly shocked to see Rock Hudson playing a very unusual role for himself.
Back to the film; Seconds is a very unusual sci-fi thriller for its time, it is a story of unsatisfied people who desperately want to get a second chance to live.An old man living a wealthy American life with his wife suddenly gets a phone call from his long lost friend, who he thought was dead.
The project has to do with giving people like Charlie, who feel that they have nothing to look forward to in life, a new start in life with a new and younger body.Rock Hudson is the new and reborn Antlochus "Tony" Wilson after shedding his old and worn-out body of 50 year-old banker Arthur Hamilton in "Seconds".
Tony doesn't realize that everyone at the party are "reborns" like himself who are, together with Nora and his butler John(Wesley Addy),there to ease him into his new life as Tony Wilson and have him forget that he ever was Authur Hamilton.The film later has Tony, now determined to get a new body change, going back home to Westerchester NY to see his wife Emily, Frances Reid, for one last time telling her that he knew her late husband Arthur as an excuse to see her.
Rock Hudsons brief scene with Emily is so moving and at the same time unnerving that it by itself is worth watching the movie "Seconds".
Sad and at the same time happy to see Emily, who has no idea that he's her late husband Arthur, Hudson made you feel just what was destroying Tony Wilson from within and how he knew that he can never have the life that he just threw away with Emily and his two grown children.The bleak and almost unwatchable ending may be too much for most movie-goers to sit through but it's the only ending you can expect in a movie like "Seconds".
However,the performances inthis thriller by John Frankenheimer are very good,especiallycoming from Rock Hudson in a power-house performance and itsalso one of the finest piece of acting in his film career.
From the David Ely novel, Seconds takes a marvel premise--back your life up 30 years and start again, with all your experiences intact-and struggles and stumbles through weak plot progression, shallow characterizations  and benign story.A black and white movie in 1966?
The music of Jerry Goldsmith is integral and never better.Probably not the director's first choice, Rock Hudson is strong  in the leadWill Geer, John Randolph, Jeff Corey and Wesley Addy are all excellent in their supporting roles.A mesmerizing premise, a daring attempt at filmmaking for 1966, or 1996-watch this movie on an evening you don't mind thinking a little, don't mind be challenged by a film.And what became of John Frankenheimer?
This new print from Paramount may be making the roundsof film festivals -- watch for it.Some of the info that was given before the showing included, thatwhile Rock Hudson was not Frankenheimer's first choice, heaggressively pursued the role until he got it.
Hudson turns in the best dramatic performance of his career in my humble opinion.The story revolves around a middle-aged man (John Randolph) who is unsatisfied with his lot in life and is transformed into Rock Hudson (we all wish) and set up in a new life with a new identity by a mysterious organization known only as "The Company".Hudson as mentioned above is excellent in the role of the reborn painter.
And, if he'd like, he too can join this club--then fake his death and assume a newer, younger and more handsome identity.When he awakes, the man is now played by Rock Hudson and he seems to love his new life--at first.
Seconds is a marginally interesting "make-over" film that, regardless of its high production values and excellent cinematography, suffers significantly from way-way too much talk-talk-talk (yawn) and just not enough worthwhile action to happily satisfy this ardent Sci-Fi/Thriller fan.Seconds stars the 1960s super-hunk/movie-idol, Rock Hudson who (at the height of his career) plays the youthful, handsome Tony Wilson, a highly-successful, but totally talentless artist now hobnobbing around with all the hep-cats and jet-setters of beautiful Malibu, California.Prior to some extensive cosmetic surgery, Tony was once the aging banker, Arthur Hamilton, who was seriously going to middle-age waste.Desperate to escape his dreary, dead-end existence, Arthur succumbs to a mysterious organization's enticing, but ambiguous, offer of a spanking new identity and fresh start.Soon enough Tony's heady exhilaration spirals him (due to the fact that he can't seem to keep his big mouth shut) into a terrifying reality check when he discovers that his newly purchased life carries with it a devastatingly dangerous price..
I explained that I don't have enough time to be active in any type of small Internet group, particularly at this time in my life, but the idea that there are some people out there who admire his work as much as I do is always an uplifting thought.Frankenheimer's "Seconds" (1966) is one of his best, a deeply disturbing blend of psychological thriller with a hint of paranoia and repression thrown in for good measure.
At times, the movie is itself an ironic (though unintended) commentary on Hudson's own life and the secrets he held back from his public until almost the end of his life.Though it's hard to think of a more relentlessly downbeat motion picture, it's well-directed by John Frankenheimer, perfectly acted by John Randolph and Hudson, and filmed in razor-sharp black and white by James Wong Howe.
I've always been a champion of John Frankenheimer, and I think just about every movie he's made is underrated (even "The Manchurian Candidate," now considered a classic, was underrated at the time), but "Seconds" is one of his weaker efforts.
Deep-focus and angles galore, and at times what we see on screen changes in our minds without changing physically before it transitions.Sometimes considered a third in a "Paranoia Trilogy" of movies directed by John Frankenheimer made close together in the very paranoid mid-1960s (the other two being the Cold War thrillers The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May), Seconds however prioritizes delving into the psychological dimensions of alienation over the sociopolitical conditions of the other two, as well as that it is distinguished from the other two as a science fiction story.
Excellent movie about a middle-aged man being given a second chance in life.