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#357 - Seconds
John Frankenheimer, 1966
A middle-aged banker follows through on a friend's suggestion to visit a secret company that specialises in faking a person's death before providing them with a new appearance and life.
Seeing this so soon after The Face of Another naturally makes me think of this as an unintentional companion piece to Teshigahara's film, which also came out in 1966 and was a black-and-white experimental film about a man receiving a new face and identity. While the protagonist of Teshigahara's film deliberately pursues a new face and identity out of a sense of embittered self-interest generated by severe physical disfigurement, the protagonist of Seconds (John Randolph) is a buttoned-down businessman who is pressured into the procedure by an old friend who promises him a new lease on life if he takes the offer. After a prolonged first act where he is introduced to the mysterious company, he undergoes the surgical procedure and becomes a handsome artist (Rock Hudson) who is then relocated to a whole new life.
Seconds functions well as an all-encompassing allegory for a number of different subjects that are both pertinent to the time period and also hold up reasonably well in 2015. The most obvious target of the film is the American Dream itself, with its protagonist being a rather wealthy family man who may have his suspicions about the clandestine nature of the company but still goes through with it because it sounds preferable to his bland existence (and that's before they blackmail him into staying on anyway). The fact that his new lifestyle consists of a swinging condo complete with a job as an artist offers more than a few jabs at bohemian counterculture and gentrification, especially when there are some amusing-in-hindsight moments such as Hudson being extremely reluctant to participate in a Bacchanalian festival teeming with naked women. Of course, the company rears its head soon enough to provide the film with a much-needed third act (and, if we're being honest, then the second act does flag a bit as Hudson has to get used to his new life). The creativity behind the camera definitely shows through some cinematography that is eye-catching and disorienting in all the right ways, grounding this rather fantastic tale in some serious realism. Despite being very much of its time, Seconds hasaged rather well and, though the middle of the film is a bit on the flabby side, is a decent slice of arty science-fiction and is definitely worth watching for that ending.
Addendum: I thought about rating it higher, but I'm not sure it deserves a higher rating than The Face of Another. They both complement each other so well and to pick one over the other would be too difficult.
John Frankenheimer, 1966
A middle-aged banker follows through on a friend's suggestion to visit a secret company that specialises in faking a person's death before providing them with a new appearance and life.
Seeing this so soon after The Face of Another naturally makes me think of this as an unintentional companion piece to Teshigahara's film, which also came out in 1966 and was a black-and-white experimental film about a man receiving a new face and identity. While the protagonist of Teshigahara's film deliberately pursues a new face and identity out of a sense of embittered self-interest generated by severe physical disfigurement, the protagonist of Seconds (John Randolph) is a buttoned-down businessman who is pressured into the procedure by an old friend who promises him a new lease on life if he takes the offer. After a prolonged first act where he is introduced to the mysterious company, he undergoes the surgical procedure and becomes a handsome artist (Rock Hudson) who is then relocated to a whole new life.
Seconds functions well as an all-encompassing allegory for a number of different subjects that are both pertinent to the time period and also hold up reasonably well in 2015. The most obvious target of the film is the American Dream itself, with its protagonist being a rather wealthy family man who may have his suspicions about the clandestine nature of the company but still goes through with it because it sounds preferable to his bland existence (and that's before they blackmail him into staying on anyway). The fact that his new lifestyle consists of a swinging condo complete with a job as an artist offers more than a few jabs at bohemian counterculture and gentrification, especially when there are some amusing-in-hindsight moments such as Hudson being extremely reluctant to participate in a Bacchanalian festival teeming with naked women. Of course, the company rears its head soon enough to provide the film with a much-needed third act (and, if we're being honest, then the second act does flag a bit as Hudson has to get used to his new life). The creativity behind the camera definitely shows through some cinematography that is eye-catching and disorienting in all the right ways, grounding this rather fantastic tale in some serious realism. Despite being very much of its time, Seconds hasaged rather well and, though the middle of the film is a bit on the flabby side, is a decent slice of arty science-fiction and is definitely worth watching for that ending.
Addendum: I thought about rating it higher, but I'm not sure it deserves a higher rating than The Face of Another. They both complement each other so well and to pick one over the other would be too difficult.