Park Chan Wook reviews Frankenheimer's Seconds
This year's Cannes film festival's jury president Park Chan Wook was once a film critic before his successful career as a director. Here I translated and going to introduce one of his reviews, John Frankenheimer's classic Seconds from his book Park Chan Wook's Homage.
A cursed classic. No words could better describe this film. The history of Seconds is literally a piece of drama. A best-seller novel bought by Kirk Douglas and adapted by Lewis John Carlino - one of the best playwrights in his era. After the initial plan of Laurence Olivier playing a dual role was rejected due to him being lack of marketability, Rock Hudson and Jack Randolph - who was out of show business since having been blacklisted in the era of McCarthyism - decided to play each roles. And it was completed by the works of the most promising director John Frankenheimer and the legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe. It was the only American film selected as In Competition section in Cannes Film Festival but had to retreat with boos from audience and critics. Domestic box office results were devastating as well.
(Spoiler Alert)
>!It brings me tears to watch Tony visiting Arthur's house to see the lady who was once his wife. She recalls her deceased husband with no pity, unaware that the man she is talking to has been missing since the surgery. You can see how deadly he wants to get his life back while watching Tony who introduces himself as a friend of Arthur, saying how much he has loved him. Here it seems to me that Hudson is revealing his homosexual lover, and it is much more tragic considering he was gay and eventually died of AIDS. And it is much more realistic to see when Tony confesses himself as Arthur to his neighbors after getting drunk since the actor had to hide his homosexuality and constantly lie to public. Hudson thought it was an opportunity to show his another character rather than playing an usual romantic role and naively expected to win an Oscar afterwards.!<
It was 1966 in the era of neo-avant-garde and hippie culture and this film is filled with experimental boldness, still hard to imagine today. It has undoubtedly never been made and will never be in this dark atmosphere. And most of all, I would like to give an applaud to Hudson's painful once-in-a-lifetime performance and put Seconds as one of my all-time top 10 movies without any hesitation.