Seconds (1966 film)

Seconds is a 1966 American science fiction drama film directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Rock Hudson. The screenplay by Lewis John Carlino was based on Seconds, a novel by David Ely. The film was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival and released by Paramount Pictures. The cinematography by James Wong Howe was nominated for an Academy Award.

In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot
Seconds is a mystery dealing with the obsession with eternal youth and a mysterious organization which gives people a second chance in life.

Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is a middle-aged man whose life has lost purpose. He has achieved success, but finds it unfulfilling. His love for his wife has dwindled and he seldom sees his only child. Through a friend, Charlie, whom he thought was dead, Hamilton is approached by a secret organization, known simply as the "Company" which offers him a new life.

Upon arriving for a meeting, Hamilton arrives at a meat packing plant. He is given workman overalls and hat, then exits the facility out a different door where he is next seated inside the back of a truck which proceeds to another building. He disappears into a large complex filled with dark, empty hallways where he awaits his transformation. The Company gives Hamilton the body of a young man (Rock Hudson) through plastic surgery and a new identity, namely "Antiochus 'Tony' Wilson". He later discovers this identity has been taken from someone who recently passed on.

He is resettled into a community filled with people like him who are "reborns". Eventually, Hamilton decides the new life isn't what he wants. He contacts the Company, letting them know he wants a different identity and they agree, taking him back to wait for his new identity. There, he meets Charlie, who has also wished to go under yet another "rebirth". Charlie is chosen and walked away from the waiting room. Later during the night, the owner of the Company discusses his original purpose for founding the organization, and assures Hamilton that the issues he has brought up will be looked into. Hamilton learns as he is wheeled into the operating room, before being sedated, that he is to be killed. His body is used as the catalyst (corpse) for a new patient to be reborn. The film ends with the camera panning up to a surgical light as a drill is pushed through his head; two figures walk along a beach.

Cast

 * Rock Hudson – Antiochus "Tony" Wilson
 * Salome Jens – Nora Marcus
 * John Randolph – Arthur Hamilton
 * Will Geer – Old Man
 * Jeff Corey – Mr. Ruby
 * Richard Anderson – Dr. Innes
 * Murray Hamilton – Charlie Evans
 * Karl Swenson – Dr. Morris
 * Khigh Dhiegh – Davalo
 * Frances Reid – Emily Hamilton
 * Wesley Addy – John
 * John Lawrence – Texan
 * Elisabeth Fraser – Plump Blonde
 * Dodie Heath – Sue Bushman (as Dody Heath)
 * Robert Brubaker – Mayberry
 * Barbara Werle – Secretary
 * Tina Scala - Young Girl stomping on the grapes in the party scene

Production
The director of photography for Seconds was James Wong Howe, who pioneered novel techniques in black-and-white cinematography, and whose career spanned nearly five decades. He was nominated for an Oscar at the 39th Academy Awards for his work on the film. Seconds was Frankenheimer and Howe's last film in black-and-white.

Rock Hudson was five inches taller than his movie counterpart, John Randolph; the difference in their heights was worked around with carefully chosen camera angles. Hudson and Randolph also spent a good deal of time together before production began, allowing Hudson to model Randolph's mannerisms, to resemble him more closely.

In Frankenheimer's commentary on the DVD, he notes:
 * The depiction of Hamilton's plastic surgery includes several shots of an actual rhinoplasty operation. Director John Frankenheimer made several of these shots himself after the cameraman fainted.
 * The DVD includes footage deleted from the American theatrical version depicting nude revelers at a wine festival. Frankenheimer had also intended to restore a scene in which the transformed Hamilton visits his daughter, but the footage could not be found.
 * The scenes in Tony Wilson's Malibu beach house were shot in Frankenheimer's own home.
 * In order to shoot in Grand Central Station without attracting too much attention, Frankenheimer hired a male model and a Playboy bunny to make-out on the stairs while being filmed by a fake crew. This distraction allowed the real crew to shoot with a camera in a suitcase.

The opening titles were designed by Saul Bass, using Helvetica set in white over optically warped black-and-white motion picture photography.

Historical context
John Frankenheimer directed Seconds just after the period during which he worked on his most notable films, Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and Seven Days in May (1964). These last two films together with Seconds are sometimes known as Frankenheimer's paranoia trilogy.

The "reborns" of the plot are paralleled in a different context—three of the principal actors (Jeff Corey, Will Geer, and John Randolph) were proscribed from Hollywood films during the "Blacklist" years of the 1950s.

Seconds became known for its connection to the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. The story, which originated in the October 1967 magazine article "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!", goes that when he arrived late to a theater showing of Seconds, he appeared to be greeted with the onscreen dialogue, "Come in, Mr. Wilson." He was convinced for some time that rival producer Phil Spector (one of the film's investors) was taunting him through the movie, and that it was written about his recent traumatic experiences and intellectual pursuits, going so far as to note that "even the beach was in it, a whole thing about the beach." He later cancelled the Beach Boys' forthcoming album Smile, and the film reportedly frightened him so much that he did not visit another movie theater until 1982's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Reception
Seconds premiered on October 5, 1966. It did poorly on its initial release, but has since become a cult classic.

A reviewer in Time magazine commented: "Director John Frankenheimer and Veteran Photographer James Wong Howe manage to give the most improbable doings a look of credible horror. Once Rock appears, though, the spell is shattered, and through no fault of his own. Instead of honestly exploring the ordeal of assuming a second identity, the script subsides for nearly an hour into conventional Hollywood fantasy. [...] Seconds has moments, and that's too bad, in a way. But for its soft and flabby midsection, it might have been one of the trimmest shockers of the year."

Seconds has since gained an overall positive reaction, currently holding a 90% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 29 reviews. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus reads: "Featuring dazzling, disorienting cinematography from the great James Wong Howe and a strong lead performance by Rock Hudson, Seconds is a compellingly paranoid take on the legend of Faust."

In the film The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, the psychoanalytical Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek discusses the film as an example of what happens when desires are fulfilled.

Writing in Time Out New York, Andrew Johnston (critic) observed: "Seconds is easily one of the most subversive films ever to have come out of Hollywood: Even as it exposes the folly of selfishly abandoning one's commitments, it also makes a passionate case for following one's heart and rejecting conformity....This chilling portrayal of a well-meaning guy stuck in a Kafkaesque nightmare is unlike anything else he [ Rock Hudson] did."

Awards

 * Nominee Academy Award for Best Cinematography (black & white)—Academy Awards (James Wong Howe)
 * Nominee Palme d'Or—Cannes Film Festival (John Frankenheimer)

Home video
Seconds was released on home video for the first time in May 1997. Seconds was released on DVD on January 8, 2002, and later went out of print. The Criterion Collection released a newly restored version of the film on DVD and Blu-ray on August 13, 2013.