SECONDS - a Friday (throw-back) Review by Mike N.

    Most of us, I expect, have long form things we revisit from time to time across the years, be it a book, a movie, or even a tv series. It doesn't necessarily mean it's our favorite. Often it's just that we're returning to something familiar, or that we've realized it's something that is likely to be taken differently at different points in our lives, or maybe a reminder of how we used to be. A measure of shifting perspective that speaks of broadened experience and growth - or at least that's to be hoped.  I'm going to talk about one of mine.
 
  From 1966, John Frankenheimer's Seconds.
  Rated R, for some nudity. 106 minutes - though it seems to be out there in cuts as short as 100 minutes, or as long as 107. Black and white. Starring Rock Hudson and John Randolph, with Frances Reid, Will Geer, Jeff Corey, Richard Anderson, Salome Jens, and Khigh Dhiegh, among others.
     It's part of the Criterion collection, and is currently one of the movies available for Amazon Prime members.
    This is a film that deals with identity, aspirations, happiness, the measure of one's life on a scale of success -- and how most simply adopt what society tells them are the hallmarks of success. The criteria of happiness. Things valued because others told them they were valuable, but which so often turn out to be empty things. Ashes.
     Seconds is a dark fantasy, born of mid-life crisis. It's a thoughtful film, but not an upbeat one.     Among other things it raises the question of whether or not an examined life - beyond the fixation on accomplishment check-boxes on a list - is likely to ever be a truly happy one, complete with a quiet sense of fulfillment. We can perhaps take some comfort in the one character in the film, who also appears to be the oldest one we meet, seeming to be the only one calmly happy about his life. His focus being on the mission that began the whole, dark enterprise we learn about in this story.
    This is a film which Frankenheimer noted was perhaps his only one that went from financial failure to quiet cult status without ever having been successful. That's almost funny, and a little poignant, given the questions the film itself raises.
    It's an unusual role for Rock Hudson, but one he and his agent vigorously pursued. Frankenheimer definitely didn't have him in mind, thinking him too dramatically lightweight for the role. Instead, he wanted someone like Lawrence Olivier or Kirk Douglas. He was won over by Hudson's performance, though, and I agree. Hudson committed to the role, and made some interesting and good suggestions and choices - several of which I can't relate without giving away critical plot points. One safe one to mention, which I didn't know about until fairly recently, was that in a scene where he becomes drunk at a party he decided to get genuinely drunk. 
    Unfortunately, taking Hudson and putting him in an ultimately dark, science fiction film like this -- not to mention one where he isn't part of the film for roughly the first 40 minutes -- didn't leave much of an audience. Hudson's fans generally didn't want to see him in this sort of role, and people who would have been drawn to the premise of the film weren't generally the sort to light up at the prospect of seeing a Rock Hudson movie in the mid-1960s - and the posters and advertising campaign definitely sold it with him as the star.
   The response from European critics at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival was reportedly so hostile that Frankeheimer refused to attend the press conference. Hudson went in his place, but was unable to answer critical questions from a hostile group. My estimation is that it was simply a film too far ahead of its time.
   Certainly, in lengthening hindsight, the then very closeted Hudson 's performance takes on a different tone - an added layer, perhaps - in this role than what nearly anyone watching the film in 1966 would have detected.
   I'm torn between wanting to bring the film to fresh eyes, letting it present itself without the prejudice of specific expectations, and wanting to discuss the arc and specific elements of it here. Obviously, I've found it to be a sufficiently worthwhile film to revisit it from time to time across the decades, and I wouldn't want to push my road map of it between the film and new viewer. Whatever it will or won't mean to you is a subjective affair.
    Do you have any films or shows you've returned to more than once over the years, especially ones where your life experience has altered what you take away from it?
   Thanks, as always, for taking the time to read these pieces. And, please, take a look at the contributions from the other Six of our Consortium of Seven here on this blog. A different one of us each day of the week. Broad and varied experiences. In fact, as a matter of coincidence, Angie's post from just yesterday is a look at the connections to people and times that music has played in her life.

-Mike N.  

Go to next C7 post