Rent Seven Days in May (1964)

Tense Drama. - Seven Days in May review by NO

No action but a good story which seems appropriate today.Held together by good performances by the 3 main actors.Lancaster & Douglas are always worth watching as is March.Ava still beautiful but only a small part.

A Pinko-Knuckle Ride - Seven Days in May review by CH

Except for a brief but pivotal rôle by ever-sultry Ava Gardner, Seven Days in May (1964) is a well-nigh all-male concern with each of them, from the President down, concerned to keep a calm demeanour amid events which could have consequences for the Western world - even the world itself.

Based upon a recent novel which required two authors and was a bestseller in its time, this is part of that apocalyptic turn which Hollywood took when the Cuban crisis had one and all on edge for some while afterwards (director John Frankenheimer's previous film was The Manchurian Candidate). Put simply, here is a scenario in which the President has reached an accord with Russia to dismantle such armaments. That this is controversial is established at the outset by a brawl between rival demonstraters in front of the White House. Placards and limbs take a beating which is, in its way, a mirror of what happens more decorously inside the Oval Office with the stiff-suited military personified by Burt Lancaster as a General who opposes such appeasement. It emerges that he is part of a plan to oust the President (Frederic March) but little knowing that the upper ranks' Kirk Douglas, derided as a pinko sympathiser, will turn whistleblower.

Although preparatory events are taking place in a remote corner of the country while a crucial official is killed in a plane crash near Madrid, this is not a film in which action is to the fore; these two hours show that dialogue can provide an ever-shifting stand-off.

Oh, despite all these high flyers, let us not forget another woman, Collette Jackson. Who? She makes a brief and memorable appearance as an apparent barfly with useful information to relay. As she bops across the floor, she is, what with her hairstyle, a very emblem of the time. One must wonder what became of her. She married Preston Sturges's son Solomon, appeared in a few more films while never coming to the fore - and her death in 1969 at thirty-five, some say by an overdose, has never been explained.