Seconds
1966
***
Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph, Will Geer, Jeff Corey, Richard Anderson, Murray Hamilton
An interesting but messy drama about a worn-down middle-aged man who is offered a fresh start by a mysterious and cynical Company. Through reconstructive surgery grey, chubby and balding John Randolph turns into tall and handsome Rock Hudson. The science behind the transformation seems dubious, but the character's ambivalence regarding his two identities feels very real. James Wong Howe's eerie black and white photography with its wonky angles creates an appropriately disorienting (and deliberately weird) mood. There's drama, romance, paranoia and some gratuitous nudity. Maybe there's a little bit too much of everything in fact.
