Showtimes
Friday, September 12
7:00pm
Ticketing
$12 /Single Ticket
FACETS Members save 15%
Not a Member? Sign up today!
“Seconds is easily one of the most subversive films ever to have come out of Hollywood.” Andrew Johnston, Time Out New York
“Like Antonioni’s L’Avventura, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and Malick’s The Tree of Life, Frankenheimer’s Seconds was booed at the Cannes Film Festival for all the wrong reasons—for being way ahead of its time.” Wael Khairy, RogerEbert.com
A psychological labyrinth. An underseen sci-fi classic. A bold precursor to the1970s paranoid thriller boom. John Frankenheimer’s Seconds encapsulates the disillusioned, chaotic, tech-infused identity of Cold War America.
This special STAFF PICKS screening includes a sci-fi novel popup shop by Open Books, and a post-screening discussion led by programmer Lee Kepraios.
John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Ronin) directed this allegorical and paranoid 1966 sci-fi thriller that could be considered a forerunner to 2024’s The Substance, David Cronenberg’s body-horror oeuvre, or an adaptation of a non-existent Philip K Dick novel. In Seconds, a profoundly unfulfilled middle-aged banker stumbles onto a shadowy corporation called “The Company” that offers a cutting-edge escape from his growing ennui: a hi-tech conversion to a new, young body (that of Rock Hudson) and a fresh, bohemian identity.
Playing almost like a feature-length Twilight Zone episode, this way-ahead-of-its time piece of 60’s self-examination perfectly captures the ongoing American obsession with youth and vitality that’s every bit as pervasive today – stunningly highlighted by cinematographer James Wong Howe’s eye for the hip Big Sur milieu in which Hudson’s reborn artist is given his second chance at the dream life.
John Frankenheimer, USA, 1966, DCP, 107 mins.
POPUP SHOP
Open Books, a nonprofit organization that sells donated books to fund children’s literacy programs (with locations in Logan Square, Pilsen, and West Loop), will be selling books on-site during the event.
PROGRAMMER
Lee Kepraios is freelance programmer, critic, and actor who spent 13 years as a stand-up comic and now sees movie credits at the end of his dreams. He has an Arts degree from The Evergreen State College, and upon moving back home from Los Angeles, has acted in a few independent features shot in Chicago. He’s a jabbering autodidact who loves movies to an unreasonable degree and is thrilled and honored to be with FACETS.
