Seconds - 1966

 In my nonsensical never-ending habit of picking up random movies that have the Criterion stamp on them, I grabbed Seconds.  The back of the DVD proclaimed something about being a thriller and a bizarre fantasy film, okay I'm in, sold.

Seconds stars Rock Hudson, John Randolph and Salome Jens.  In the beginning, we witness John Randolph as Arthur being terrorized by a phantom caller who is saying that he's Arthur's dead brother.  Arthur then gets sent on a mystery ride to a series of destinations that end at "The Company", which turns out to quite literally be a body swapping service. 

They will fake Arthur's death, in a tragic hotel fire, and then they'll surgically alter him to look different, and give him his ideal life.  There's a few really excellent existential moments here where Arthur is greeted with the meaningless of his life.  He is supposedly successful, set to become a bank manager, with a grown daughter and wife of many years.  By all accounts, he should be happy.  But he's not, he yearns for something else, and soon enough he agrees to go to The Company.

Seconds has a very bizarre, very undefined tone to the most of the film.  Like I said in my plot breakdown, there was a very deep, admirable sense of existentialism in the first 45 minutes or so.  I got super interested in invested when I thought that this movie was going to examine the loss of meaning to a life, the loss of the American Dream, and the what-have-you surrounding that.  Then, it changed.   

Then, the movie changes and as the changed Arthur becomes his new person, I think it's a version of the 60's notion: an anti-corporate, anti-conformist, embracive of free love and freedom sendup to hippie culture.  Then, it changes again and becomes a mystery or at least a thriller, and sorta ends up landing there.  Undecided and unclear is an understatement.

It's obvious though, that some things are really working.  The acting, the design.  The experimental quick edits and the camera work is all groundbreaking, as well as the newly restored scene at the grape crushing.  The girl of his interest, Salome Jens, I knew from Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and plays an alien in Terror From the Year 5000.  She's had a wild career.  

All in all, this is neither failure nor is it quite a success.  It felt like it never decided what it was, but what it really is, great early experimental film which would in the 70's of course flourish.  This movie was ahead of it's time, and I think it deserves recognition.  I give it 3.5.