Seconds
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
A lot of movies have been made about characters in the grip of a midlife crisis. Maybe the dreams of youth haven’t quite worked out the way they hoped. Or they’re unhappy with the lives they’ve made for themselves.
For me, one of the very best midlife crisis movies is Seconds, a psychological thriller made in 1966. Directed by John Frankenheimer, it stars Rock Hudson and a lineup of classic Hollywood character actors. The story concerns a New York bank executive named Arthur Hamilton who has all the material wealth of success, but inside he’s burned out, emotionally hollow.
On the surface, Arthur shuffles robotically through the routine of his job and his passionless marriage. He’s bored, weighted down, one of the living dead. Then one day he gets a phone call from an old friend. The call terrifies him because the friend is dead. Or so Arthur thought. The friend says that his death was faked with the help of a mysterious organization called The Company, which offered him an irresistible opportunity: a chance to escape his empty life and start over again with a brand-new identity. That’s what he did and now he wants to share this remarkable second chance with Arthur.
In a compelling, hypnotic sequence, his death is faked.
At first, Arthur is reluctant, full of doubts. But then his existential angst boils over and he signs a contract with The Company. In a compelling, hypnotic sequence, his death is faked and he undergoes a series of cosmetic surgeries that wipe away the old Arthur…and he’s reborn with a new identity as Tony Wilson, a painter. As a young man, Arthur was interested in pursuing art as a career, but it never happened.
Now, Tony sets out to reclaim that unfulfilled dream. He moves to California where The Company arranges for him to live as an unmarried artist in a beachfront home among the beautiful people of Malibu. it’s an extraordinary second chance at happiness for him. Of course, there’s always a price to pay when such Faustian bargains are brought to life. And it’s the same for Tony. Day by day, the idyllic dream of his new life turns into a tortured, Twilight Zone-like nightmare with no way out.
Seconds is an unnerving classic, a must-see paranoid thriller about the futility of pursuing the American Dream. In fact, it’s said that when the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson saw the movie, he found it so unnerving that he suffered a psychotic breakdown. He was convinced that his rival—music producer Phil Spector—was somehow involved in making the movie just so it would drive Wilson mad. Knowing Brian Wilson’s story, it might be that too much LSD had something to do with his reaction.
I give the astonishing midlife crisis head trip of Seconds four out of four stars.
