It likely didn’t help (in Cannes at least) that the film centers on a somewhat uniquely American view of middle age, and that top billed Hudson doesn’t appear on screen until 40 minutes into the picture’s 106 minute runtime. The role was also a departure for the 50s heartthrob, now entering his forties, but was perhaps as a personal a part as he ever played. Hudson wasn’t Frankenheimer’s first choice to portray the man reborn in another body, but the actor he wanted, Laurence Olivier, seems all wrong for this movie.Seconds begins with a mystery. A man approaches a passenger as he boards a train at Grand Central Station. “Mr. Hamilton?” “Yes?” He hands the passenger a small slip of paper, beginning to walk away almost before the exchange is complete. The folded scrap contains only an address, “34 Lafayette St.,” but it’s clear that Hamilton (John Randolph) is distressed. When his wife picks him up at his commuter station he’s short with her. He asks her not to bother him about the strange phone calls he’s been receiving in the middle of the night. He’d rather she talk about their adult daughter who’s moved away. It’s clear that this couple cares for one another, but they don’t seem much to need each other anymore.
Another phone call comes when Hamilton can’t sleep. He doesn’t recognize the whispers from the receiver, but the caller seems to know things that a stranger couldn’t. Questions fly, but the voice says that all will be answered at the scribbled address at noon tomorrow.
Reluctantly, Hamilton leaves his office the following day to find 34 Lafayette. When he arrives he’s prompted to another address, then he’s shipped from there to a mysterious office complex. Confused, he waits as directed, only to dose off. When he comes to, he finds that he cannot leave. He wanders for a moment, stumbling upon a group of other middle aged men who seem confined to a lackluster day room. Someone who seems to be in charge directs him back to the office where he waited. They’re ready for him now.
A salesman (Jeff Corey) explains that “the company” (the only name ever given for this strange group) that operates out of the complex provides a unique and valuable service. They offer men who’ve past their prime the opportunity to start life again as a different person, with a different past. They use the insurance money from a staged death to set the surgically altered man up in a new place, with a new profession, and a new life. All his needs are provided for until he is ready to function on his own in his metamorphosed world. His former family will be taken care of; living off of insurance residuals as well, never aware that he’s abandoned them.
Of course, this service is optional, but a fate worse than death and rebirth awaits the man who knows this much and doesn’t comply. After some convincing, Hamilton agrees to the radical surgical procedures and emerges as Tony Wilson (Hudson). The rehabilitation process is lengthy, but eventually Tony is ready to enter his life as a schooled painter, living in Southern California. The company provides him with a home and a butler; there to answer any questions and aid in his re-entry into life.
For a time, Tony finds happiness. He begins to paint his own works, “developing” the style of painting that had been provided for him. He enjoys his freedom, and walking on the shores of the Pacific. He even meets a woman who introduces him the pleasures of the swinging 60s. All is well, until at a party, he realizes just how much control and influence the company holds over his new existence.
Seconds has flaws. Continuity errors and potential plot holes keep it from greatness, but it navigates these shortcomings well enough to classify as a good movie, and it certainly warrants more attention than the basic cult classic status it has achieved. Technically it is brilliant in both look and sound, with black and white virtuoso James Wong Howe behind the camera, and a score from Jerry Goldsmith that perfectly complements the movie’s off-putting images of sedated fear. As well as being a cultural document of the shifting ideals of the 1960s, it’s also a notable film from a historic Hollywood standpoint.
Randolph, as well as Corey and several of the other players who comprise the company’s employees, were finding work in film for the first time in over a decade, as they had been victims of the notorious Hollywood blacklist. For Randolph, it was the first picture since 1952. The presence of these talents, who all more than understood what it was to questions who was with you, and to rebel against a controlling system, provide the film with just the right notes. Were it not for the fine work of Hudson in his role, they would all but steal the film.
Hudson, for his part, also must have understood paranoia, and as such the role seems tailor-made for him. To be a man trapped in the image of another man, unable to express his true self, must be unbearable. Hudson had cut his teeth in Hollywood in Anthony Mann Westerns and had transitioned to stardom as the strong-willed and iron-jawed rancher in 1956s Giant. By the late 1950s he was a sex symbol, starring opposite Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959). But Hudson was gay, perhaps the only thing in Hollywood worse for publicity than being a suspected communist. He brings to the role complexities that perhaps only he could understand. He enjoys being the strong and handsome Tony Wilson, but for as talented as the company surgeon was, he couldn’t remove the inner vulnerability of Hamilton, and in Seconds it becomes painfully obvious that this just won’t do for the quality control department.
Language: English
Runtime: 106 Minutes (107 Minutes, 1996 re-release)
Grade: 3.5 Hats Off
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