Teatro Sonambulo : "Seconds" by John Frankenheimer April 10, 2008

Teatro Sonambulo

Resurrecting foreign, art, cult, independent and niche films from the vaults of cinema! Join us in our bi-monthly film screenings and discussions focusing on the strange, inventive and deranged treasures of the film medium. Come prepared to be shocked, moved, stunned or simply confounded by these cinematic gems...

Discussions after the film and mingling before. A venue for film lovers and filmmakers to come together. Screenings are FREE, popcorn on the house!

HOST NAME & CONTACT INFO Carlos Marulanda, carlos@millionfishes.com Second and Last Thursday of the month.

This week:

"Seconds"
1966
Dir: John Frankenheimer

Synopsis:
John Frankenheimer's chilling vision of middle-aged malaise concerns 50ish banker, Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph).

Bored with his wife and comfortably retired life, Arthur happens to run into Charlie Evans (Murray Hamilton), an old friend he believed to be dead.

He gives Arthur a tip on a secret organization called The Company, run by the Old Man (Will Geer).

For a hefty fee, they offer to provide the old with entirely new, vigorous bodies, through a mysterious form of plastic surgery, and with completely new identities.

Arthur signs on and finds himself transformed into the much younger Anitochus "Tony" Wilson (Rock Hudson).

After a suitably middle-aged corpse has been burned to cover his disappearance, Tony is relocated to an idyllic Malibu beach community, where he already has a reputation as an artist.

He begins a relationship with the vivacious Norma Marcus (Salome Jens) and is happy for a time, before discovering that she's one of The Company's employees.

As he peels back the layers from his other neighbors, he begins to realize that nothing is as it seems.

This incisive twist on the Faust legend, a mordant commentary on the American obsession with youth, features Hudson in what is possibly his finest performance, as a man cast in a part he despises.

Hudson's sense of irony, then necessarily private, is now public.

The great cinematographer James Wong Howe creates a sense of quiet horror through a skillful variation of lenses.

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