Skip to main contentSometimes I lie in bed at night and think about all the decisions I've made--the opportunities I've let slip by, the relationships I've screwed up, the dreams I have never pursued out of fear of failure, or success, or both. I think about the time I wasted in college, or I think about Raquel Escamilla--the one who got away--and sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I had the chance to do it all again.
Who wouldn't welcome the opportunity to do it all again--to make all the wrong things right? In director John Frankenheimer's 1966 film Seconds, Rock Hudson stars as a man crippled by a life of regret and unrealized dreams. He gets the greatest gift of all--the chance to live life all over again, knowing then what he knows now. Or is it really a curse?
Leading an empty life, devoid of passion and emotion, Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) wanders through the world like a zombie, waiting for his body to join his spirit in death. But when Arthur receives a cryptic phone call from someone claiming to be a dead friend, the 50-year-old businessman is presented with the opportunity for a new lease on life--a second chance. It seems Arthur has been recruited by a clandestine organization that offers aging men newfound youth and the chance to live life all over again with the benefit of all the wisdom they have acquired. Soon his death has been faked, and Arthur undergoes radical reconstructive surgery, emerging as a much younger Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson). But as Arthur tries to adjust to his perfect new life as Tony, he soon discovers that with age does not necessarily come wisdom, and that a damaged soul will remain damaged, even if the body that it dwells in is refurbished.
Arriving this week on DVD, complete with commentary by Frankenheimer, Seconds is an underappreciated film that deserves to be discovered. Riding on the heels of Frankenheimer's earlier classics The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964), Seconds was America's official entry at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, where it was booed. From there, things didn't get much better: The film failed at the box office and, despite some positive reviews, was blasted by many for being too disturbing and depressing. Even today, after nearly 40 years, the end of the movie is profoundly unsettling.
In a weird way, Seconds is the It's a Wonderful Life of the Vietnam era--a bleak, fatalistic look at a life in shambles and an attempt to fix that life. Had the film come out two or three years later, after the wave of cynical movies like Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Easy Rider (1969), it might have been better received and appreciated. Yet somehow, Seconds has managed to develop a loyal cult following, despite the fact that it rarely plays on television and until a few years ago wasn't even available on home video.
In what amounts to one of his best--and perhaps, given his own public/private schism, most symbolic--roles, Hudson gives an Oscar-worthy performance as a man trapped in a life that is a lie. Even though Hudson's Tony has been given the opportunity to live life all over again, the curse he faces is not that he is growing older, but that he never figured out how to really live in the first place. It is Tony's new lady friend, Nora (Salome Jens), who best describes him--and Arthur, the man he once was--when she says it is "as if somewhere in the man, there is still a key unturned."
Ultimately, Seconds resonates with a jangling discord of unturned keys--those unresolved issues that feed the demons eating away at our souls. Perhaps that's why the film failed to find a cinematic home when it first came out; it tells us a new coat of paint is not enough to fix the leaky roof, the bad plumbing or the faulty wiring. But Seconds is a film that mocks the notion of "doing it all over again," because it reminds us that second chances are usually nothing more than the opportunity for us to make the same mistakes.
Sometimes I lie in bed at night and think about all the decisions I've made, wishing I had a second chance. Like Hudson's character, I just know I could correct all the mistakes of my past. I would study harder in school. I would try harder to make it work with Raquel--tell her that I really did love her and I wanted her in my life. At least that's what I've convinced myself.
is now available on video and DVD (in wide-screen, with director's commentary).
Even though Rock Hudson is the star of
, he doesn't appear until 45 minutes into the film.
James Wong Howe's photography received an Oscar nomination for Best Black and White Cinematography.
WWeek 2015