Rent Seven Days in May (1964)

Powerhouse Acting In This Political Thriller - Seven Days in May review by GI

This is one of several collaborations by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, a political thriller directed by John Frankenheimer who has made some real classics. Whilst he's a director that can turn out some superb action sequences this is a more contemplative film and some might find it a little too 'talky' for their taste. But it's an acting tour de force especially from Lancaster and Frederic March who plays the US President. It's also a great story too. The President has a pacifist agenda and is seeking a nuclear disarmament treaty with the USSR, this has divided public opinion but more importantly made him unpopular with the military. General Scott (Lancaster), who has political ambitions of his own, has begun to make plans to ensure the treaty doesn't happen. His aide Colonel Casey begins to suspect Scott is preparing a coup d'état and there's a race against time to foil Scott's plans. Ultimately this is a film that challenges the nuclear proliferation policies of the 60s and the futility of the Cold War. It's an interesting film viewed today and everyone is really good here including Edmond O'Brien and Ava Gardner. The extended scene between Burt Lancaster and Frederic March where the President challenges Scott is some fantastic screen acting. It may seem a little dated today but it's certainly a film worthy of rediscovery and one that you should seek out if you've never seen it.

WHITE FEAR OF OTHER WHITE PEOPLE - Seven Days in May review by Frank Talker™

This science-fiction movie is set seven-years-on from the time it was made and is broadly reminiscent of the 1933 White House Putsch: "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot". Although an above-averagely well-acted and well-written Hollywood movie, it still fails to fully explore its global themes of the dangers of nuclear war, along with the inherent fascism of Western countries - fascism necessitated by its need to justify exorbitant military-spending in order to deter nuclear attack. It prefers, instead, to claim that America is in danger of becoming the fascist dictatorship it always was-designed-to-be, springing from among the even-more-totalitarian members of its own military forces.

So long as the essential facts of the undemocratic essence of the United States (US) and of Western culture, in general, are ignored (corporations disguised as countries), the film works just fine as a dramatised battle between the forces of light and those of darkness - albeit one in which the forces of light can only pretend to be somewhat better than those of darkness.

This false dramatic-contest mirrors the pseudo-polarised politics of White countries in their continually-presenting those allowed-to-vote with a Hobson's Choice at the ballot box; all the while ensuring that underlying political-policies are kept intact in order to hypocritically maintain a status quo at home, while funding coups d'état abroad which perpetuate the very authoritarianism being critiqued here; proving that, in the West, it doesn't really matter whom you vote for.

Similarly, the theme of a lack of any genuine political-choice - which this movie evades - gives the audience no-one to really root-for because both sides are just as bad as the other in one side spouting morally-platitudinous pieties about the flawed-by-design sanctity of the US Constitution, while the other claims that nationalism, patriotism & political loyalty permits sedition and treason against any democratically-elected politicians that one happens to disagree with. And this very Constitution was, in fact, used to spread death-and-destruction around the Earth; eg, South Korea in 1948, Iran in 1953 & Vietnam in 1963.