Seven Days in May

Seven Days in May (1964) is another fine thriller from John Frankenheimer. Compared to the dark satire of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and rousing action of The Train (1964), it's subdued, sober and serious, highlighting liberal fears in the shadow of the Kennedy Assassination.

President Jordan Lyman (Frederic March) sees his popularity nose-dive after hammering a nuclear disarmanent treaty through the Senate. The opposition is led by General James Scott (Burt Lancaster), the charismatic, outspoken, and politically-ambitious Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Scott's aide, Colonel Casey (Kirk Douglas), comes to believe that Scott is plotting a military coup d'etat, kidnapping the President during an emergency drill and establishing a far-right government. The President and his associates are skeptical at first, but when the President's aide, Paul Girard (Martin Balsam) dies in a plane crash, and Senator Clark (Edmond O'Brien) is arrested while trying to visit a secret military base, the government must act to foil Scott's plans.

Seven Days in May expresses the fear of early '60s liberals: a coup by hardline Cold Warriors. This was a very real concern: the well-known distrust between John F. Kennedy and Generals Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor came to a head during the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the Joint Chiefs furious at Kennedy's emphasis on diplomacy over military action. The movie opens with right-wingers crashing a peace demonstration outside the White House: an eerie premonition of the hard-hat/hippie clashes to come. Kennedy was almost universally-loved for his charisma, charm and good looks; his politics were much more divisive than the Camelot myth suggests.

When Kennedy died in 1963, many fingered the military as culprits, killing their commander-in-chief for being "soft" on Communism. Certainly the Red-baiting ramblings of LeMay, Edwin Walker, J. Edgar Hoover and Barry Goldwater, painting anyone who spoke of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets as an anti-American pinko, did little to dissuade them. However exaggerated these fears seem today, they were certainly prevalent at the time, and echoes can be heard today in conservative hatred of the "socialist" President Obama.

Made in 1964, just before Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement kicked off, the film is a curious mix of paranoia and New Frontier optimism. It anticipates the paranoia and anti-militarism of post-Watergate thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, but lacks their bald cynicism, with President Lyman and Colonel Casey nobly upholding democracy. Here, Scott is an aberration, anathematic to American values; disillusioned seventies filmmakers would treat him as a natural product of the system. Lancaster himself would later star in Executive Action (1973), a crude prototype of Oliver Stone's JFK, illustrating just how much the '60s soured liberals on America.

The movie moves at a brisk clip, expertly reeling off exposition, introducing a large ensemble cast and generating a perfect mixture of paranoia, unease and suspense. Frankenheimer's direction is understated, providing an almost documentary feel to the proceedings. Storywise, there are two big faults: a pointless romance with Casey and Scott's mistress (Ava Gardner), which exists only to prove the nobility of our liberal heroes, and a dud finale. The final confrontation between Lyman and Scott is wonderfully explosive, but it's followed by a self-important lesson on democracy, concluding with a shot of the Constitution (!). The film makes its point well-enough without the patronizing social studies lecture.

Burt Lancaster owns the film, carefully hiding his anger fanaticism behind a facade of righteous rectitude. Kirk Douglas is fine in a one-note role; the attempts to portray his character as conflicted between country and military don't come off, and he's sidelined for the film's second half. Ava Gardner is squandered in a useless role. Frederic March (Inherit the Wind) personifies liberal nobility and fortitude, and the supporting cast includes fine actors like Edmund O'Brien (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Martin Balsam (Little Big Man), Andrew Duggan (Red Nightmare), George Macready (Vera Cruz) and John Houseman (Three Days of the Condor).

Seven Days in May is a fine thriller, and despite its flaws and obnoxious speech-making, is entertaining, nuanced and thoughtful. It probably couldn't happen this way, but the film remains unsettling regardless.