Seconds (film)
Encyclopedia
Seconds is a 1966
1966 in film
The year 1966 in film involved some significant events.-Events:Animation legend Walter Disney, well known for his creation of Mickey Mouse, died in 15 December 1966 of acute circulatory collapse following a diagnosis of, and surgery for, lung cancer...

 American
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 film starring Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson
Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...

. Characterized sometimes as a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 thriller, but with elements of horror
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

, neo-noir
Neo-noir
Neo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...

, psychedelia, and drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

, it was directed by John Frankenheimer
John Frankenheimer
John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films...

 with a screenplay by Lewis John Carlino
Lewis John Carlino
Lewis John Carlino is best known as the director of The Great Santini starring Robert Duvall, Blythe Danner and Michael O'Keefe. He has worked as a director and screenwriter on a number of movies during a career which has spanned five decades and includes such works as The Fox, The Brotherhood,I...

. The script was based on a novel by David Ely. The film was released by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 and was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival
1966 Cannes Film Festival
The 19th Cannes Film Festival was held on May 5-20, 1966. To honour the festival's 20th anniversary, a special prize was given.-Jury:*Sophia Loren *Marcel Achard *Vinicius de Moraes *Tetsuro Furukaki...

.

Plot

Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph
John Randolph (actor)
John Randolph was an American film, television and stage actor.-Early life:Randolph was born Emanuel Hirsch Cohen in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants Dorothy , an insurance agent, and Louis Cohen, a hat manufacturer...

) is a middle-aged man whose life has lost purpose. He has achieved success in his career, but finds it unfulfilling. His love for his wife of many years has dwindled. His only child is married and he seldom sees her. Through a friend, a man he thought was dead, Hamilton is approached by a secret organization, known simply as the "Company." The Company's business is helping wealthy people who are unhappy with their lives to disappear and create new lives.

When Hamilton agrees to talk to the Company, he is spirited away to a secret location. While waiting for his interview he is offered a cup of tea and then falls asleep. When he wakes, Hamilton is interviewed by Mr. Ruby (Jeff Corey
Jeff Corey
Jeff Corey was an American stage and screen actor and director who became a well-respected acting teacher after being blacklisted in the 1950s.-Biography:...

), who shows him a film in which he appears to have raped a girl. The film, made while he was unconscious, is intended to persuade Hamilton that it is now too late for him to return to his old life. Hamilton feels compelled to accept the Company's services -- but fears that this coercive scheme foreshadows the unfortunate consequences of doing business with the Company.

Hamilton's death is staged to make it look as if he perished in a hotel fire; a corpse is left at the scene that can be identified as his. Through extensive plastic surgery and mental and physical conditioning, Hamilton is transformed into Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson
Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...

), a man who looks and acts much younger. He is provided with a new home, a new identity, new friends and a devoted manservant. The details of his new existence, including diplomas and other evidence of professional accomplishment that appear genuine, suggest that there was once a real Tony Wilson, but what became of him is a mystery.

Hamilton tries to adapt to his new life. As Tony Wilson, he lives in a beach house in Malibu, California and enjoys the reputation of a successful artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. He begins a relationship with a young woman named Nora Marcus (Salome Jens
Salome Jens
Salome Jens is an American stage, film and television actress. She is perhaps best-known for portraying the Female Changeling on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.-Life and career:...

) and for a time he is happy. He then finds that the pleasures he denied himself in his "first" life are not exactly what he expected (or wanted).

At a dinner party he hosts for neighbors, Wilson drinks himself into a stupor and begins to babble about his former life as Hamilton. It turns out that his neighbors are "reborns" like himself, sent to keep an eye on his adjustment. Nora is actually an agent of the Company and her attentions to Wilson are designed merely to ensure his cooperation with the Company's program.

In violation of Company policy, Wilson, posing as an old friend of her husband's, visits his former wife (Frances Reid
Frances Reid
Frances Reid was an American dramatic actress. Although she starred in many productions, she is best known for her portrayal of Alice Horton on the NBC daytime soap opera Days of our Lives from its debut in November 1965 until her death on February 3, 2010.-Biography:Born in Wichita Falls, Texas,...

) in his new persona. He learns that his marriage had failed because he was distracted by the pursuit of career and material possessions, the very things in life that others made him believe were important.

Wilson returns to the Company and announces a desire to start again with yet another identity. The Company offers to accommodate him, but asks if he would first provide the names of some past acquaintances who might like to be "reborn." He refuses since he now knows of the drawbacks to being "reborn" and also doesn't want to delay the Company's process for giving him a new identity.

While awaiting his reassignment, Wilson encounters Charlie Evans (Murray Hamilton
Murray Hamilton
Murray Hamilton was an American stage, screen, and television actor who appeared in such memorable films as The Hustler, The Graduate and Jaws.-Early life:...

), the friend who had originally recruited him into the Company. Evans was also "reborn" and likewise could not make a go of his new life. Together, they speculate on the reason for their failure to adjust, attributing it to the fact that they allowed others, including the Company, to make life choices for them.

This understanding comes too late. Wilson/Hamilton is suddenly informed that he is to be taken to surgery to be given his new identity, but as he is wheeled down the hallway a priest reads him the last rites and he realizes he is going to his death. He is wheeled into an operating room where he learns that failed reborns are not actually provided with new identities but instead become the cadavers used to fake new clients' deaths.

Cast

  • Rock Hudson
    Rock Hudson
    Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...

     - Antiochus "Tony" Wilson
  • Salome Jens
    Salome Jens
    Salome Jens is an American stage, film and television actress. She is perhaps best-known for portraying the Female Changeling on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.-Life and career:...

     - Nora Marcus
  • John Randolph
    John Randolph (actor)
    John Randolph was an American film, television and stage actor.-Early life:Randolph was born Emanuel Hirsch Cohen in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants Dorothy , an insurance agent, and Louis Cohen, a hat manufacturer...

     - Arthur Hamilton
  • Will Geer
    Will Geer
    Will Geer was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons....

     - Old Man
  • Jeff Corey
    Jeff Corey
    Jeff Corey was an American stage and screen actor and director who became a well-respected acting teacher after being blacklisted in the 1950s.-Biography:...

     - Mr. Ruby
  • Richard Anderson
    Richard Anderson
    Richard Norman Anderson is an American actor in film and television, known to TV audiences as Steve Austin's and Jaime Sommers' boss, Oscar Goldman, in both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman TV series and their three subsequent TV movies: The Return of the Six-Million-Dollar Man...

     - Dr. Innes
  • Murray Hamilton
    Murray Hamilton
    Murray Hamilton was an American stage, screen, and television actor who appeared in such memorable films as The Hustler, The Graduate and Jaws.-Early life:...

     - Charlie Evans
  • Karl Swenson
    Karl Swenson
    Karl Swenson was an American theatre, radio, film, and television actor.-Biography:Born in Brooklyn, New York of Swedish parentage, Swenson made several appearances with Pierre-Luc Michaud on Broadway in the 1930s and 40s, including the title role in Arthur Miller's first production, The Man Who...

     - Dr. Morris
  • Khigh Dhiegh - Davalo
  • Frances Reid
    Frances Reid
    Frances Reid was an American dramatic actress. Although she starred in many productions, she is best known for her portrayal of Alice Horton on the NBC daytime soap opera Days of our Lives from its debut in November 1965 until her death on February 3, 2010.-Biography:Born in Wichita Falls, Texas,...

     - Emily Hamilton
  • Wesley Addy
    Wesley Addy
    Wesley Addy was an American actor.He played many roles on the Broadway stage, including several Shakespearean ones, usually opposite actor Maurice Evans...

     - John
  • John Lawrence - Texan
  • Elisabeth Fraser
    Elisabeth Fraser
    Elisabeth Fraser , was a television, film and stage actress, best known for playing brassy blondes.Born as Elisabeth Fraser Jonker in Brooklyn, New York, Fraser began her acting career six weeks after graduating high school; she was cast as the ingenue in the Broadway production of There Shall Be...

     - Plump Blonde
  • Dodie Heath - Sue Bushman (as Dody Heath)
  • Robert Brubaker
    Robert Brubaker
    Robert Brubaker was an American character actor best known for his roles in television and movie westerns, including as Gunsmoke and 40 Guns to Apache Pass. Brubaker was the only actor to have two recurring roles on the television series, Gunsmoke, portraying both a bartender named Floyd and a...

     - Mayberry

Themes

John Frankenheimer
John Frankenheimer
John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films...

 directed Seconds just after the period he worked on his most noted films, Birdman of Alcatraz
Birdman of Alcatraz (film)
Birdman of Alcatraz is a 1962 film starring Burt Lancaster and directed by John Frankenheimer. It is a fictionalized version of the life of Robert Stroud, a federal prison inmate known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz" because of his life with birds. In spite of the title, much of the action is set at...

(1962), The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American Cold War political thriller film starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury, and featuring Henry Silva, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish and John McGiver...

(1962), and Seven Days in May
Seven Days in May
Seven Days in May is an American political thriller novel written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II and published in 1962. It was made into a motion picture and released in February 1964, with a screenplay by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk...

(1964). These last two films together with Seconds are sometimes known as Frankenheimer's paranoia
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...

 trilogy.
The "reborns" of the plot are ironically paralleled in a different context -- three of the principal actors (Jeff Corey
Jeff Corey
Jeff Corey was an American stage and screen actor and director who became a well-respected acting teacher after being blacklisted in the 1950s.-Biography:...

, Will Geer
Will Geer
Will Geer was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons....

, and John Randolph
John Randolph (actor)
John Randolph was an American film, television and stage actor.-Early life:Randolph was born Emanuel Hirsch Cohen in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants Dorothy , an insurance agent, and Louis Cohen, a hat manufacturer...

) were proscribed from Hollywood films during the "Blacklist" years of the '50s.

Production Information

Seconds was first released October 5, 1966. It did poorly on its initial release, but later developed a strong cult following
Cult film
A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...

.

The director of photography for Seconds was the legendary James Wong Howe
James Wong Howe
James Wong Howe, A.S.C. was a Chinese American cinematographer who worked on over 130 films...

, who is well known for pioneering novel techniques in black-and-white cinematography, and whose prolific career spanned nearly five decades. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the film.

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
    Rhinoplasty
    Rhinoplasty , also nose job, is a plastic surgery procedure for correcting and reconstructing the form, restoring the functions, and aesthetically enhancing the nose, by resolving nasal trauma , congenital defect, respiratory impediment, and a failed primary 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.

Reception

Time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

said "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."

Brian Wilson and Seconds

Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...

 co-founder Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson is an American musician, best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the group The Beach Boys. Within the band, Wilson played bass and keyboards, also providing part-time lead vocals and, more often, backing vocals, harmonizing in falsetto with the group...

 saw the movie during its initial release, between sessions for Smile
Smile (The Beach Boys album)
Smile is a previously unreleased album by The Beach Boys recorded throughout 1966 and 1967. The project was intended by its creator Brian Wilson as the follow-up to Pet Sounds, but was never completed in its original form...

. Under the influence of drugs, the early stages of schizotypal behavior, and pressure to complete Smile, Wilson found Seconds an especially intense experience, that affected him personally (beginning with his arriving late; the first dialogue he heard onscreen was "Come in, Mr. Wilson", taking him by surprise). His state of mind shifted over the next months, between fantasies of escaping his own life in a similar way, and thoughts that perhaps rival producer Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....

 had somehow convinced Columbia Pictures (sic) to make the movie "to mess with my mind". Wilson later abandoned the Smile sessions, and did not see another movie in a theater until E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...

in 1982. His experience was later recounted in The Beach Boys by Byron Preiss
Byron Preiss
Byron Preiss was an American writer, editor, and publisher. He founded and served as president of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, and later of iBooks.-Early life and career:...

, Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! by Domenic Priore, and Wilson's own Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story (written with Todd Gold).

Opening Titles

Designed by Saul Bass
Saul Bass
Saul Bass was a Jewish-American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences....

 using Helvetica
Helvetica
Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.-Visual distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:lower case:square dot over the letter i....

set in white over optically warped black-and-white motion picture photography.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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