John Frankenheimer
Operazione diabolica

It has probably happened to each of us, at least once in a lifetime, to draw a provisional assessment of our own existence. And if it doesn't turn out positively, the question arises: "and if I were someone else? How would it be?" All this without having the certainty of improving one's condition, on the contrary...

If you want to tackle such an important topic, I would strongly recommend watching a film like "Seconds" ("Operazione diabolica") also because it falls into the category of those films unfairly underrated when they were released, only to be reassessed later.

Directed by John Frankenheimer in 1966, a director of eclectic style technically trained in American TV of the 50s, the film is part of his paranoia trilogy started in 1962 with "The Manchurian Candidate" and continued in 1964 with "Seven Days in May".

The work is based on the novel "Seconds" by David Ely and at the start follows the steps of a successful bank executive named David Hamilton (played by John Randolph, an actor previously blacklisted during the McCarthy era). A typical figure of a career-oriented American, he appears to be gnawed by some existential doubts, recently exacerbated by strange phone calls he receives late at night from an unknown person named Charlie. Too bad that this person is a friend who, as far as Hamilton knows, had passed away some time ago. This strange phone interlocutor suggests he go to the address of a peculiar organization, presenting himself under the fictitious identity of Wilson. Driven by curiosity, Hamilton goes to the place and finds himself in an aseptic and mysterious location where the company's executives offer him an incredible opportunity: for a handsome reward, they would stage his death by violent means and, after a sophisticated plastic surgery operation, Hamilton would become Antiochus Tony Wilson, a successful painter. In this way, the former bank executive could express those artistic potentials already present in him under the surface. Although hesitant, the protagonist, properly pressured by the interlocutors of the phantom company (and here one could already smell the deception...), signs the contract.

And after the operation, out comes the new Tony Wilson (a Rock Hudson never again so brilliant in his long film career), a successful artist residing in Malibu, California. What more could you wish for? Here he is attending a cocktail party with his neighbors and getting involved in a colossal and embarrassing drunkenness (Hudson perfectly fits the character). Even participating in an orgiastic party in honor of Bacchus in which women and men, freed of their clothes, immerse in a giant tub where they press grapes with their bare feet (and here too, seeing a Hollywood star like Hudson joining naked in the general orgy leaves an impression on the American public and beyond of the time…).

However, it’s a pity that Wilson senses some doubts. If in the previous life he was a well-integrated banker in a powerful economic mechanism, now he finds himself in a general framework of coercive hedonism. And a spontaneous question arises about where his freedom of choice actually lies. Therefore, he decides to return to the corporation that lured him into taking the fateful step.

His intention would be to request a new chance, a new life opportunity more suitable for him, free from any constraints and such that he would not be externally directed anymore. But here's the catch: for that, Wilson would need to involve a new client into the company's project (the famous chain letter). And after all, what does he expect: doesn’t he know that in any signed contract (work, insurance, financial, matrimonial, etc.) there’s always some clause perhaps written in Lilliputian font, which traps the contracting person? For doubts, ask Mephistopheles and Doctor Faust. Obviously, given these premises, the outcome of the affair cannot but be chilling and such as to advise fastening your seatbelts...

Shot with advanced techniques thanks to the use of wide-angle shots that convey, from the very first scenes, a strong sense of anguish and unease, the film was received so coldly at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival (after the screening there were boos and howls of disapproval too) that it was strangely dismissed as a "cruel and inhuman" film (even!). The fact is, in a mix of horror and science fiction or sociological fantasy, Frankenheimer delivered an illuminating parable on the illusory nature of the American dream, which claims that economic success is all that counts in life. Nothing else matters, and there is no point in asking if this lifestyle truly makes the individual free. At that time (1966), the average American didn’t harbor many doubts, believed himself realized and went around perhaps whistling the hits of Frank Sinatra or the Beach Boys if he was surfing the ocean waves in front of California. The Vietnam War crisis and the dissent of young Yankees (flower children and not) were, however, imminent.

Certainly, a film like "Seconds" could have been ahead of its time. But the following year the film "The Graduate" (by Mike Nichols with Dustin Hoffman) would attest to the start of the new cinema trend in New Hollywood, less formal than classic Hollywood and more inclined to focus on subjects related to the American crisis between the 60s and 70s.

What still unsettles today, watching Frankenheimer's film, is noting how certain aspects, then too science-fictional, may today, in light of significant technological evolutions, be increasingly plausible. Even today, I wouldn't be surprised by the fictitious identity of certain interlocutors...