seconds (d. john frankenheimer, w. lewis john carlino, david ely)

Seconds has a bravura opening sequence. A distorted face in close up. Approximating the surreal. It triggers a lengthy sequence, the likes of which the algorithms would surely nix nowadays, as a suburban banker comes home to receive a call from a dead friend. This will eventually lead to the man’s death and subsequent reincarnation, as Rock Hudson, a socialite painter. It’s an out-there premise for an out-there movie. There are several scenes which could be straight out of The Substance. But Frankenheimer uses extended narrative beats to go further. A Bacchanalian Californian wine-pressing festival. A party that is reminiscent of Antonioni’s La Notte. There’s a Fellini-esque air to much of the action, underpinning the supernatural premise. Although it’s deliberately slow-paced, the director luxuriating in the extended sequences, there’s a relentless sense of madness which seems to inhabit Hudson, whose  woodenness makes the weirdness all the stranger, all the more off-beat. It’s far from a perfect film but it’s fascinating to see in this and Mickey One the kind of psychological complexity these sixties-era USA directors were reaching for, a complexity which got left by the wayside when Lucas and the marketing boys came to town.