USA
3.5*
Director:
John Frankenheimer
Screenwriter:
Rod Serling
Director of Photography:
Ellsworth Fredericks
Running time: 118 minutes
John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May is a slow cooker, and even though it doesn’t punch you as hard as some other political films, most notably Frankenheimer’s own The Manchurian Candidate, released two years earlier, it is as eerily relevant today as it was during the Cold War.
It’s early May in Washington, D.C., and the temperature is rising fast. Outside the White House, protesters are lamenting the president’s decision to sign a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, which, they say, would put the United States at a disadvantage, and demonstrates the naiveté of their commander-in-chief, President Jordan Lyman. On their side is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a four-star general named James Mattoon Scott, who has nothing but contempt for the treaty and the Russian communists it seems to appease.
The story centres on the administration’s concerns with Scott and his secretive dealings at the highest levels of the government, including the construction of a secret base near El Paso. Thanks to a number of fortunate slips of the tongue in the company of one of Scott’s subordinates, General Casey, known simply as “Jiggs”, a plan to overthrow the government slowly comes to light, and it is the administration’s task to contain the imminent threat to their national security.
Two questions surface: How does one go about containing this threat, when this act of sedition (by one of the most public, vocally patriotic individuals in the government, no less) is almost unthinkable? And does General Scott, despite his plans being labelled as treason, actually have a point when he stands up to defend his country against what he deems to be enemies both foreign and domestic?
The first question is obviously the narrative thread of the film, while the second question relates to the film’s relevance to politics today. Does patriotism (or nationalism) ever trump democracy and its institutions? The populism of General Scott is made clear during an address to a stadium packed with like-minded individuals furious at the president’s insistence on peace with communist Russia. Scott declares that patriotism, loyalty and sentiment define the USA, but he fails to recognise the importance of the institution of democracy. He has a Messiah complex and pretends to speak for “the people”, but his judgement is clouded by arrogance and a refusal to compromise or to discuss. Referring to the era of uncertainty brought about by the Cold War, Lyman makes the following statement:
And from this, this desperation, we look for a champion in red, white and blue. Every now and then, a man on a white horse rides by, and we appoint him to be our personal god for the duration. For some men it was a Senator McCarthy, for others it was a General Walker, and now it’s a General Scott.
Parallels with current politicians and presidential candidates are self-evident, although they make a point of using the Constitution to protect themselves, even though, more often than not, they confuse the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
The film has many highlights, including our first view of General Scott – in close-up, from behind, so we can’t see his face during a committee hearing. When Jiggs watches television, to see General Scott speak in front of the big crowd, the tension built up by the crowd’s euphoric reaction (they keep chanting “We want Scott!”) is also very well depicted by means of quick-fire editing, both inside the frame on the television set, and between these images and Jiggs’s face. There are also two excellent scenes inside the White House: In the first, Jiggs tells the president of his suspicions; in another, the showdown between the president and General Scott, the atmosphere is electric.
But the film also has its faults. Boom and camera shadows are visible, some scenes seem a bit too contrived (the scenes at El Paso, both in the restaurant and at the base, and the extraordinary timing of a key piece of evidence in the final scene), and the film ends with a speech every bit as cheesy as President Thomas Whitmore’s victory speech in Independence Day.
The film was ahead of its time with its use of videophones (giving an accurate impression that the film was set a few years into the future), and it has some wonderful moments of sharp dialogue. The use of actor Martin Balsam, who had appeared as detective Arbogast in Hitchcock’s Psycho a few years earlier, is also very clever, and when he picks up the phone after a significant encounter, we know that he won’t make it back in one piece.
Seven Days in May is a serious look at the potential for betrayal in government ranks and is worth a look. Though it doesn’t have the dramatic power of The Manchurian Candidate nor the power of drama disguised as comedy, as in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the film provides an insightful glimpse of the fear that the Cold War not only had dire international, but also intranational, implications. And these fears have not disappeared with the fall of the Iron Curtain, for populism and the likelihood of a man or woman “on a white horse” are even more frightening as the years pass.