Seconds

The question of death selection may be the most important decision of your life.

I first saw 1966's SECONDS as an early thirty something.  What did I know about anything? At the time, I responded to this dark science fiction more with fascination than emotion.  I had been through some heaviness in my life up to that time, but the issues raised in the film remained merely acknowledged, as they were when I watched anything dealing with the dreaded "mid life crisis" or "male menopause."  I do not mean to reduce SECONDS to another one of those pat dramas where a forty or fifty something abruptly leaves his family, buys a sports car, and shacks up with some nubile twenty something in an effort to "find himself."

Upon reflection, I could relate on some level.  Around the time of my first encounter with this movie, I was coming off a period of struggling with finding success and purpose in my life.  I had felt as if I was drifting.  No real career, no lasting relationships.  Lots of free time.  A guy like Arthur Hamilton would dream of such a life (minus the lack of funds, of course).  He's a successful banker, comfortably numb in a tony Scarsdale suburb.  He and his wife have separate beds. Whatever spark existed in their courtship seems to have dimmed.  Their daughter is grown, living on the West Coast, and rarely seen.

Arthur (John Randolph) starts getting phone calls from his old friend Charlie (Murray Hamilton)....who he thought had died some time ago.  Then, a stranger hands him an address on the train.  He acts on it.  A meat packing plant.  Odd, but we'll learn later how oddly appropriate.  Then Arthur is lead into the back of a truck bound for an organization that offers "rebirth."  A new life, in a younger body.  But the world has to believe he has died. He wants to think it over, but the elderly CEO of the "Company" tasks Arthur on the emptiness of his life.  There's no going back.

When he awakens, he looks like Rock Hudson (who is just right in a highly atypical role), and is now named "Tony Wilson."  He has to relearn his motor skills, but still has the memories of Arthur Hamilton.  Tony is offered the life of luxury as a renowned painter, living on the beach in Malibu.  He has a butler who will help him with the "adjustment".  An attractive woman named Nora (Salome Jens) enters his life, inviting him to a grape stomping party/baccahanal/orgy.  Life is good? Buyer's remorse?

SECONDS strongly resonated for me in its entirety, but I must specifically cite the scene in the third act, when a thoroughly disillusioned Tony seeks to revisit his home back east, and his/Arthur's widow, who offers a summary of her life with Arthur that will make any married viewer take notice.  Devastating.  This scene, insightfully written by Lewis John Carlino, should be required viewing for anyone considering matrimony. Utterly cautionary.

Director John Frankenheimer masterfully directs this trenchant drama, a sort of hybrid of the sensibilities of Rod Serling and Martin Heiddegger (or is it Descartes?).  The ideas of freewill and identity are explored in a sociological play that is unbound and turned inside out. Also, the emptiness of the American Dream.  The director implements '60s tropes that at times may become uncomfortable - such as the editing and camerawork of that baccahanal - and it works perfectly.  James Wong Howe's stunning B & W cinematography gives it just the right ominous look, established during what may be one of my favorite opening credit sequences ever.  Saul Bass' use of Helvetica has never been more foreboding.