With: Rock Hudson (Antiochus Wilson), Salome Jens (Nora Marcus), John Randolph (Arthur Hamilton), Will Geer (old man), Jeff Corey (Mr Ruby), Richard Anderson (Dr Innes), Murray Hamilton (Charlie), Karl Swenson (Dr Morris), Khigh Dhiegh (Davalo), Frances Reid (Emily Hamilton), Wesley Addy (John), John Lawrence (Texan), Elisabeth Fraser (plump blonde), Dody Heath (Sue Bushman), Robert Brubaker (Mayberry), Dorothy Morris (Mrs Filter), Barbara Werle (secretary)

Director: John Frankenheimer
Producer: Edward Lewis
Production co: Joel Productions, John Frankenheimer Film, Gibraltar Productions
Screenplay: Lewis John Carlino. Based on the novel by David Ely
Photography: James Wong Howe
Editors: David Newhouse, Ferris Webster
Music: Jerry Goldsmith

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REVIEWS

“Rock Hudson is a revelation in this sinister, science-fiction-inflected dispatch from the fractured 1960s.  Seconds, directed by John Frankenheimer, concerns a middle-aged banker who, dissatisfied with his suburban existence, elects to undergo a strange and elaborate procedure that will grant him a new life.  Starting over in America, however, is not as easy as it sounds.  This paranoiac symphony of canted camera angles (courtesy of famed cinematographer James Wong Howe), fragmented editing, and layered sound design is a remarkably risk-taking Hollywood film that ranks high on the list of its legendary director’s achievements.”

— Criterion

“Startlingly modern in its preoccupations – the cult of youth, body modification, corporate evil and soul-sucking materialism – it’s an expressionist snapshot of emerging 60s concerns.  So modern, in fact, that both David Fincher’s The Game and the body-swap thriller Self/less drew extensively on it…  Pricklingly original from Saul Bass’s face-contortion credit sequence onwards, the film owes much of its impact to Howe’s expressive deep-focus camerawork and optical distortions, which bend and fracture key scenes in an impermeably unsettling fashion.”

— Kate Stables, Sight & Sound

Restoration by Paramount Pictures

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FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

​Dunedin
Wednesday, 7 March, 7:30pm

New Plymouth
Wednesday, 21 March, 6:00pm

Hamilton
Monday, 9 April, 8:00pm

Tauranga
Wednesday, 2 May, 6:15pm

Wellington
Monday, 11 June, 6:15pm

Canterbury
Monday, 18 June, 7:30pm

Whanganui
Monday, 2 July, 7:00pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 14 August, 8:15pm

Auckland
Monday, 24 September, 6:30pm

Palmerston North
​ Monday, 1 October, 6:00pm

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Find more CULT & CLASSIC cinema >>

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