Seconds

Overview

Arthur Hamilton John Randolph is a listless Manhattan businessman who lives with his wife in the New York suburbs. One day, he runs into an old friend Murray Hamilton whom he thought had died. The friend leads him to The Company, a secretive operation run by The Old Man Will Geer. The Company is a high-tech service which, for a price, provides older men with plastic surgery, a beefed-up body, and a fresh start in life. To cover the "disappearance," a middle-aged male cadaver is "killed" in a hotel fire. Hamilton ...
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DVD (Wide Screen / B&W)
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Overview

Arthur Hamilton John Randolph is a listless Manhattan businessman who lives with his wife in the New York suburbs. One day, he runs into an old friend Murray Hamilton whom he thought had died. The friend leads him to The Company, a secretive operation run by The Old Man Will Geer. The Company is a high-tech service which, for a price, provides older men with plastic surgery, a beefed-up body, and a fresh start in life. To cover the "disappearance," a middle-aged male cadaver is "killed" in a hotel fire. Hamilton submits to the operation that will turn him into a "Second," and when the bandages are removed, he's shed twenty years, renamed Tony Wilson and portrayed by Rock Hudson. The Company creates a new identity for Hamilton, relocating him in a hedonistic California beach community with an identity as a painter. Celebrating during a local wine festival, Hamilton has his revelry cut short when he learns that all his new young friends are Seconds like himself and suddenly feels trapped in these surroundings. Unfortunately, finding a way out isn't nearly as easy as it was to find a way in.
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Editorial Reviews

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming
Given what we now know about Rock Hudson's personal life, it would be easy to read a great deal into his performance in Seconds; his work as a tortured man living a lie that he willingly allowed others to create for him may well be the best and most deeply felt acting of his career. But to view Seconds as a film about Rock Hudson is to underrate and misinterpret one of the most original thrillers of the 1960s. Just as America's obsession with youth culture was about to shift into overdrive, Seconds offered a potent warning about the desire to be young at all costs, and few movies have ever offered a more interesting (and more literal) spin on the notion that "You can't run away from yourself." Director John Frankenheimer brings a brooding and kinetic tension to the proceedings that seems ahead of its time for 1966 (and still feels potent today), while James Wong Howe's masterful camerawork is rich and crisply detailed when it needs to be, and superbly disorienting when the story is at its most bizarre. In the decade in which angst finally made its way to the surface of American popular culture, few other movies were as full of dread as Seconds, which looked into the dark and frightening heart of human identity and the American mindset and found it fascinating and bleakly funny.
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Product Details

  • Release Date: 8/13/2013
  • UPC: 715515108713
  • Original Release: 1966

    • Rating:

  • Source: Criterion
  • Presentation: Wide Screen / B&W
  • Language: English
  • Time: 1:47:00
  • Format: DVD
  • Sales rank: 489

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits
Rock Hudson Antiochus "Tony" Wilson
Salome Jens Norma Marcus
John Randolph Arthur Hamilton
Will Geer Boss
Jeff Corey Mr. Ruby
Richard Anderson Dr. Innes
Murray Hamilton Charlie Evans
Wesley Addy John
Robert Brubaker Mayberry
Frank Campanella Man in Station
Thom Conroy Dayroom Attendant
Khigh Dhiegh Davalo
Elisabeth Fraser Plump Blonde
Dody Heath She Bushman
John Lawrence Texan
Dorothy Morris Mrs. Filter
Frances Reid Emily Hamilton
François Ruggieri Girl in Boudoir
Edgar Stehli Tailor Shop Presser
Karl Swenson Dr. Morris
Barbara Werle Secretary
William Wintersole Operating Room Doctor
Ned Young Henry Bushman
Technical Credits
John Frankenheimer Director
John P. Austin Set Decoration/Design
Lewis John Carlino Screenwriter
Edward Lewis Producer
Jerry Goldsmith Score Composer
Edward S. Haworth Art Director
James Wong Howe Cinematographer
Jack Petty Makeup
Mark Reedall Makeup
David Webster Editor
Ferris Webster Editor
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