Seconds (1966) on Netflix
Arthur Hamilton, a banker in Scarsdale, is unfulfilled at home. A call from Charlie, a friend he believed dead, points him to a company that fakes deaths and supplies new identities.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.6/1024,092 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
Arthur Hamilton, a banking executive in Scarsdale, has grown distant from his wife Emily and rarely sees his grown daughter. An unknown person hands him an address. Then Charlie, a childhood friend he thought dead, telephones: his life holds no motivation or choice, and he must keep the appointment. Arthur goes. The building appears to be a meat-packing plant, but he is led through it to the Company, which offers wealthy clients a rebirth for thirty thousand dollars: a cadaver stages a death, surgery alters the face, the voice, the teeth and the fingerprints, and a new life follows. Shown a film of an assault staged during his own drugged visit, Arthur agrees. Dr. Innes rebuilds him, and the Company relaunches him in Malibu as the painter Antiochus 'Tony' Wilson, with the employee John to assist his adjustment.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Seconds (1966)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Beach Boys' Brian Wilson became convinced that Phil Spector, one of the investors in Seconds, was taunting him through the film. He canceled the group's album Smile, and the film reportedly frightened him so much that he did not return to a cinema until E.T. in 1982.
- To shoot a transition sequence in Grand Central Station without interruption, John Frankenheimer hired a Playboy Bunny to pose as an actress who stripped down to a bikini in the terminal, distracting onlookers while he captured the footage he needed.
- Rock Hudson took the lead in Seconds even though friends and colleagues tried to talk him out of it; he wanted to expand his range and felt he was typecast from his many romantic comedy roles.
- Paramount Pictures made John Frankenheimer cut roughly seven minutes from Seconds for its American release: the grape-stomping party sequence, whose full-frontal nudity the studio judged too controversial.
- The uncut 107-minute Seconds was shown only in Europe until May 1997, when it was finally rereleased in the United States in its full form for its thirtieth anniversary.
- An actual rhinoplasty operation was filmed to supply shots of Arthur Hamilton's plastic surgery in Seconds, and John Frankenheimer shot some of that footage himself after the cameraman fainted.
- Seconds has become a cult film: the directors Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho and Gaspar Noé each named it one of their favorite films.
