Seven Days in May (1964) - film review

The decision of U.S. President Jordan Lyman to sign a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union does not go down well.  His approval rating takes a sudden nosedive and he immediately finds himself in bitter conflict with the military and his political opponents.  The country is divided into two camps, those who support Lyman’s initiative, which should eliminate the threat of nuclear war, and those who are against, who believe that the USSR will renege on the deal and attack a defenceless nation.   The man who is most fervently opposed to the treaty is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Mattoon Scott.  In contrast to Lyman, a tired old man nearing the end of his term in office, Scott is passionate and seen by many as a natural leader at a crucial point in his country’s history.  Lyman is incredulous when he learns, through Scott’s closest aide Colonel Martin Casey, that the general is plotting a coup d’état in which the President will be kidnapped, allowing the military to step in and take control of the government.  Although he is at first sceptical of Scott’s ability to pull off such an audacious scheme, Lyman is soon convinced that this is precisely what will happen, in seven days’ time...

John Frankenheimer’s follow up to The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was this equally gripping political thriller offering an equally grim reflection of the Cold War paranoia that afflicted America in the early 1960s.  Real-life events that preceded and followed the making of Seven Days in May – ranging from a plot to seize power from Franklin Roosevelt,  through the Iran-Contra affair to the misguided invasion of Iraq in 2002 – have added to the chilling plausibility of what we see in this film.  It is a sobering thought to realise that one of the greatest threats to a country’s democracy may come from within, from its own military leaders.   The film was based on a novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, which was inspired by the activities of General Edwin A. Walker, an ultra-rightwing anti-Communist activist who was arrested on an insurrection charge in 1962.  

Frankenheimer’s flair for realism and some knockout performances from an exceptional cast combine to make Seven Days in May one of cinema’s most compelling and disturbing thrillers.  The nobility and humanity of Fredric March’s president is revealed in stark relief against the obsessive paranoia of Burt Lancaster’s deluded general as the two lock horns in a decisive battle of wills.   There is something viscerally chilling about Lancaster’s passionate tirades as he justifies a course of action that will inevitably lead to war.  How closely these seem to mirror the speeches by certain political leaders of our own times who justify military action with a religious certainty in their own belief.   The film asserts what we now know to be an unequivocal truth: the greatest threat to our cherished peace and democracy comes not from outside our borders, but from within, from those who see terror in every lurking shadow and who believe they are on a Heaven-sent mission to save us.  These are the Devil’s emissaries and we heed them at our peril.

© James Travers 2010

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