Seconds (1966)
Seconds (1966), directed by John Frankenheimer.
First review:
I saw fragments of this long ago, probably chopped up for network TV. I remembered nothing about it apart from the shocking final moment.
The film is vastly better than I recall. And very wise in its way. If you could have whatever you wanted: a fresh start, renewed youth, wealth, total freedom: would you be happy? Why do you think so? Did you earn it? Did you walk the miles needed to get there? Does the situation make you a different person?
Edgy, experimental camera work, with strange lenses and angles, extreme close ups and early shaky-cam. Jerry Goldsmith score.
Rock Hudson is fine at projecting the sadness of the reborn man.
The bacchantic wine-making festival looks like fun but I don't suppose they drank any of the resulting product. I wouldn't.
Second review:
A dull, gray, middle-aged banker has been given an interesting proposition. You can see him mulling it over on the train and at his desk. You can see the terror in his eyes when he realizes he no longer has any desire for his wife, and the dread that he might be expected to make love to her.
Jerry Goldsmith's score provides hints of escape from his claustrophobic existence, intimations of a world elsewhere, a fresh start and a new life, for which we all subconsciously yearn.
A mysterious, secret organization -- actually a business venture -- will fake his death, rework and rejuvenate his body, and set him up as a young man in his dream life.
What could go wrong? Well, look at the clues: how can such a dull, bureaucratic entity get him out into a meaningful life? That they need to blackmail him into going through with it: doesn't that seem suspicious?
And what do they promise him: a life of absolute selfishness, with nothing to accomplish or prove to anyone. Does that sound like paradise?
On the other hand: is the organization entirely soulless? The Old Man founder is living his passion and the surgeon sees himself as an artist, admiring his own creations.
It has darkly funny moments, as in the waiting room to Hell where the failed "reborns" sit around doing nothing, maybe plotting how to pull in someone else. Like a scene written by Kafka, who could be a funny guy. If you don't mind the punchline.
Cinematographer James Wong Howe provides a startling vision for the whole project with ultra-closeups and weird, titled angles crowding the actors with early hand-held shakey-cam.
Notes:
When he is first trying to locate the company: did you see the flypaper strip in the tailor's shop? And then he's taken in a meat-wagon to the slaughterhouse. First he's trapped and then he's meat.
Khigh Dhiegh returns as the giggling psychologist from The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
Is there a demand for that special batch of wine?
According to the Criterion booklet this is part of the director's "paranoia trilogy" with The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964).
Criterion Blu-ray with a commentary by the director, where he says:
That wine festival was a real thing, where connoisseurs got drunk and enthusiastically naked and smooshed the grapes in a big vat.
Howe refused to get in the vat so the director did it himself with a hand-held camera, wearing only swimming trunks. The drunk women weren't allowing that and he was depantsed within seconds.
Like his character, Rock Hudson was very uncomfortable with the scene, but like his character he got into it in the end.
Hudson was really drunk for his drunken scene.
It was Hudson's idea to use two actors. They were going to use one actor with aging makeup.
One of Frankenheimer's regrets was Hudson's wardrobe: he looked like a department store mens-wear ad. Should have hired a wardrobe designer. (I thought that look might be intentional, representing the artificiality of his new life).
That final scene with Hudson on the gurney: they had to hire two football players to hold him down and find leather straps because he kept breaking the web versions. You can see he means it.
He says the film went from flop to cult classic while skipping the middle stage of being actually successful (Well, that happens a lot).
He constantly praises all involved, with particular reverence for cinematographer Howe. He's also careful to mention all the actors who were previously blacklisted.
