Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph, Will Geer
Screenplay: Lewis John Carlino
107 mins. Rated R for some nudity.

• Academy Award Nominee: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White

When I think of the evolution of mature themes and content in cinema, I always find Psycho as a time capsule. Imagine, it’s the first film to show a flushing toilet on film and had a risque appearance of an unmarried couple in a bed together. My God, she’s wearing undergarments! Everything that happens from a content perspective gets compared to that, so when I watched Seconds, I had never anticipated the content of this film or how it would absolutely shatter my very being with a simple idea that’s taken to an extreme conclusion.

Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph, Christmas Vacation) is an unhappy middle-aged man who craves something new, something to give his life a spark, and he’s just been offered it when a believed-dead friend reaches out and offers him a completely new life. He has the chance to fake his death, get enough plastic surgery to destroy any part of his body that could link him to the life of Arthur Hamilton and, essentially, give him a new one. He’ll get a new place to live, a new occupation, and a new life. He even gets a cadaver that will take his place and a say in how he’ll “die.” Now, with a new body and a new name, Tony Wilson (now played by Rock Hudson, All That Heaven Allows) begins a new life, but he quickly sees that what he pines for may be what he already had.

Seconds is perhaps the closest a feature film has ever felt to a big movie version of a Twilight Zone episode. It presents a moral and ethical quandary all based around a universal idea of the midlife crisis, and then lets it play to a logical conclusion. There’s not much that’s surprising about the character arc of Arthur/Tony, but the excitement and tension derive from the science fiction elements that are slowly parsed out as the run time moves along. Also just like The Twilight Zone, it has a universality that is larger than the time period it was produced in.

The themes are simple yet realistic, and while some balk at the ideas, there is a universality to them, and I don’t think it strictly applies to men. Human beings are fickle creatures, we scrimp and save for decades to afford a comfortable lifestyle (if we’re lucky) and when we achieve that, we look over the fence and see what someone else has and come to the notion that our lives are boring and in need of a shakeup. We never consider the implications of our actions or how we may be unable to reverse course. At the outset the shakeup seems great for Arthur Tony, but we begin to consider what he’s lost before he does. There’s a few exciting moments that never would’ve happened in his old life, but as he quickly realizes his new normal, he comes to know what he really wants, but he may be too late to change it.

I always remind myself how lucky I am to have the life I have because it’s so easy to convince oneself that life is missing…something. During COVID especially, I reminded myself that I had safety, food to eat, a home to live in, and a family to care for and be cared for. I had income and an endless supply of physical media, books, and things to do, and some people don’t have that. When I see Arthur’s life, I see a man who has it all but doesn’t seem to know it, and it makes me pity him. Life can always be better, but it most certainly can always be much much worse.

Rock Hudson and John Randolph actually do a great job of playing each other. I can’t tell if Randolph is emulating some of Hudson or if Hudson is emulating some of Randolph, or perhaps both. Oftentimes in films like this, there is 1 actor under a bunch of makeup to avoid difficulty in bridging the performance, but I never once questioned that these two actors were playing versions of the same man. It’s a wonderful grouping of acting performances that make a fully-layered character piece.

Seconds is a damn surprise, especially in how little I actually hear it discussed among film fans. I know it’s in the Criterion Collection, and it appears in the CC40 box, so it must be brought up a lot in Criterion Closet visits, but it’s a damn shame that it isn’t bigger than that. I highly recommend finding a copy of this one which has great sci-fi, a shocking horror ending, and a relatable character arc that still finds relevance today.

4½/5
-Kyle A. Goethe