Criterion has outdone themselves once again...
I love the original series of The Twilight Zone, and I also have a fondness for the stark bleakness of dystopian movies from the late 1960s or early 1970s, like Planet of the Apes or The Omega Man. As such, my spider sense was triggered by the announcement of a Criterion release for the 1966 John Frankenheimer film, Seconds. The difference between Seconds and the aforementioned dystopian movies of the era, however, is that this film uses a seemingly futuristic premise to show us a close and personal crisis within one person's mind by way of claustrophobic camerawork, instead of depicting the vast devastation of an entire world gone wrong. It is easier for one to cope with the wasteland of a destroyed world than it is for one to cope with the mental emptiness of one's self. Frankenheimer's nightmarish tale turns the tables on middle-age society's ongoing preoccupation with fulfillment and self-realization through prolonged youth, and serves as an uncannily eerie premonition of our present world, where plastic surgery is commonplace and where prime time television commercials advertise antidepressant medications by showing happy birds on sunny windowsills to reassure us that they will make everything wonderful.
Seconds introduces us to a middle-aged banker named Arthur Hamilton, who drifts through his burned out shell of a life by going through the expected motions without enthusiasm. Cinematographer James Wong Howe , whose brilliant work can also be seen in the Criterion Collection title, Sweet Smell of Success, places the camera uncomfortably close to Hamilton during lingering scenes that purposely overstay their welcome to give us a firsthand feel for Hamilton's bored listlessness. When Hamilton is introduced to a company that promises him a second chance at life by surgically reinventing him as an entirely new person with a different career and even a different past, he undergoes a series of disturbingly-depicted operations to emerge as an attractive younger man with the new alias of "Tony Wilson." Tony Wilson is guided into his fascinating makeshift existence to flourish and escape from his past, but the viewer wonders if escape is possible when the mind is still unchanged inside the perfect new body.
When I watched Seconds for the first time this week, the film affected me on a personal level. Several years ago, I was morbidly obese at a weight of roughly 400 pounds, but lost 185 pounds over the course of a year by changing my diet and by working out with a trainer. My own real-life alteration has fortunately yielded happier results than those depicted in Frankenheimer's film, but I still struggle with the plight of my same mind and persona living inside a different body, and I still feel uncomfortable in my own skin to an extent. I related to the malaise of Arther Hamilton, played wonderfully by John Randolph, but I also related to the frantic unease of Hamilton's new persona, Tony Wilson, who is played with stunning effectiveness by the iconic 1960s leading man, Rock Hudson. Rock Hudson is quite believable in the role as he accurately mimics John Randolph's mannerisms from earlier in the film, and we never lose sight of the fact that he is still John Randolph's character on the inside.
Seconds is not a pleasant film to watch, and, despite James Wong Howe's jarring handheld camera styles, the black-and-white images and slow pace give us a false assurance that the final result will be less disturbing than it actually is. Seconds makes us ill at ease with the reminder that many of us are not living a life that we imagined living when we were younger, and, even worse, it makes us wonder what our dreams really are and whether or not our dreams are substantially valid even to ourselves. Just as in present-day, most people in the 1960s wanted to see movies that made them feel good, and Seconds received a somewhat less-than-stellar reception in theaters at the time. Those of us with an affinity for bleak, but truthful, cinema can find a lot to enjoy with this film, though, and Criterion is to be applauded for bringing it out of obscurity. Like me, most observant moviegoers will predict the conclusion early in the film, but Seconds is no less harrowing or intense in its journey full of discomforting sequences from which we somehow cannot look away. I have tried my best to present a review that does not rely on spoilers, but Seconds has "This will not end well." written all over it from the opening credits onward, and there is no mistake about where a viewer will be traveling on this cinematic pathway.
The video presentation of this Criterion Blu-ray is a home run, and this black-and-white movie looks perfect to my eyes. The audio quality is also without fault, but this may be just as much of a curse as a blessing, as anyone who hears certain sound effects in the final moments will undoubtedly agree. A series of short, but informative supplements are icing on this bleak cake, but John Frankenheimer's interesting commentary track is the main special feature attraction.
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