babblon26

Masterly British understatement, sang froid in the chilly corridors of secret service during the cold war. Superlative acting, as expected from a brilliant cast, does not fail to deliver the complexities and twists of a Graham Greene novel, equally well scripted by Tom Stoppard. The plot is not clever for cleverness sake but full of insight, dealing with many sensitive issues, personal and political. Yet the cast portray all this quite naturally, as people caught up in their professional and emotional dilemmas. Sound boring? Well it is entitled The Human Factor. Perhaps the ever shrinking attention span of the modern "culture" factory can account for this excellent movie's inexplicable disappearance. It's as pertinent and poignant now as ever. Must confess I saw it for the first time only a week ago on the telly.

Just had to add a note of admiration for this greatly overlooked masterpiece of modern angst. I saw it when a student in Glasgow in 1969. That is probably why it has stayed to haunt me - possibly to the grave. Beyond that, I really don't know.

I'm no film critic but like several of the cinema cognoscenti, I was surprised Rock had a movie like this in him. Probably his best. The camera work takes you right in. You don't remember willingly suspending disbelief. It is as plausible and convincing as a good nightmare. Bleak, black and white, terse like John Boorman's Point Blank. Round about the same time as Blow Up appeared. Also a surprisingly mature performance from David Hemmings, matched the mood of powerlessness and fatalism that pervades Seconds.

A little further off it recalled the Incredible Shrinking Man. The same mood of fatalism pervades but from a different perspective. In the latter, the isolated individual is redeemed by some metaphysical union with the universe. In Seconds the isolated, narcissistic self implodes.

John Frankenheimer's modern Frankenstein. Or another parallel universemight be Dorian Grey. It is a multi layered movie.