Amph 60+ Years of James Bond 007

I’ve been busy but I’m going to watch it and weigh in tomorrow.

 

The Bond movies have already been silly, campy, weird, and stupid before, but only momentarily. This is the first Bond that's plotted entirely on a constant string of nonsense and is frequently going off in bizarre, campy directions. The plot is just inexpressibly bad; none of it makes sense even for a minute, whether it's stuff as big as the village apparently not noticing the goddamn rockets landing next door or as small as Osato trying to kill Bond by letting him walk out of the building and then trying a tommy-gun drive-by immediately outside his own front door. Nothing suspicious about that! I also really enjoyed M's absurdly spacious recreation of his office aboard a submarine for no reason. The whole plot is full of inexplicable nonsense, stuff that just doesn't hold up to a moment's thought. I understand that it wouldn't be an easy task to make sense out of the novel's ridiculous fever dream of a plot, but this is no better. Incidentally, I feel like this is what EON gets for adapting all the books wildly out of order.

Throw in the terrible effects, Bond's total uselessness to the plot in the face of Tanaka and the Japanese's ultra-effectiveness, and the awful casting of Blofeld (nothing against Donald Pleasance, but they're not going remotely the right direction with the character by turning him into a weird, ridiculous gnome), and it's just not a good movie. It comes closer than you would think, for how generally misbegotten it is -- it's photographed very handsomely aside from the poor special effects, Tiger Tanaka is a great supporting character and top-notch Bond ally, and it has the right rhythms of a classic Bond thriller, with the deliberate investigation and some solid setpieces (or at least conceptually solid) leading up to a big action finale. Connery really isn't committed but he hasn't completely checked out of the role to the degree he would in Diamonds Are Forever. It's definitely not the utterly indifferently-made garbage-fire mess that Diamonds Are Forever will be. I'll have plenty to say about that when I get to it. But it's the first Bond movie to be outright lousy rather than just middle-of-the-road, and most importantly it's the point where the campy, idiotically-plotted, nonsense cartoonish spirit of the Moore age enters the series and things go completely off the rails.

 

Just wait until you see the Moore era

 

I forgot the ranking, but obviously,

1. From Russia with Love
2. Dr. No
3. Goldfinger
4. Thunderball
5. You Only Live Twice

 

From Russia With Love is possibly my favourite overall Bond film.

Connery took the best strengths of his performance in Dr. No and made them even better, it featured his grey suit (my favourite look of his) while the train carriage fight is still sublime.

I am hoping The Astor Theatre screen it sometime, I want to see it the way it was meant to be seen.

I also want to undo the shameless plagiarism of the carriage scene as featured in Spectre.

 

I keep meaning to continue the marathon but, with a couple of exceptions, I just can't be bothered to watch the campy ones anymore. I guess I've finally outgrown them.

 

1 year ago today, Sir Roger Moore left us.

Fitting then that we'll use the moment to remember the best Bond film of all time:


On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

OHMSS is in every way atypical as a Bond film whilst being arguably the most pure of all the films made. Sean Connery made the decision to leave the role, making his displeasure at the producers known and his general frustration at the personal cost of being the public's James Bond.

What do you do when the star walks away from a giant enterprise like this? Keep going. We wouldn't be discussing these films in this state had the producers not decided Bond was bigger than any one star.

The story around Lazenby getting the role is one told often; if you want a great docu-comedy, then you really need to check out Becoming Bond. Lazenby was a punchline for years; independently wealthy because of his shrewd property business sense, but a cultural footnote. Until, of course, people began to weather terribad Roger Moore films (RIP etc) and realise just how damned good the film was.

What makes it work? It's faithful to the novel which, Casino Royale be damned, was Fleming's absolute best. And it does this at the risk of disrupting its own fluid continuity, by having Blofeld not recognise Bond on sight. It slightly changes the novel, only because the novel starts in media res, with Bond and Tracey having been captured by Draco's men and being moved by boat to his hideout, and then through flashback covers the events seen at the start of the film. Bond is driving his Bentley Continental Type R Fastback to Royale-les-Eaux, before a pretty blond in a Lancia starts racing him and beating him due to the Lancia's handling in small French towns.

At the Casino Royale, Tracy - as per the film - bancos the dealer but has no money so Bond bails her out, etc - acts which Draco hears of and thinks make Bond ideal to 'save' his daughter.

What really works in the films are a few things:

* Lazenby - his delivery is considered wooden, but I don't feel it is. For a non-actor he's fine - but he's the most physical Bond ever. Yes, Craig is a beefcake but Lazenby - once billed as an army combat instructor - is clearly accustomed to actually throwing punches properly and so Bond as a fit killer is believable here. Roger Moore would spend about a week lining a punch up, to the point where you could step to the side, take out a camera, photograph the moment, and then return to your mark to be hit without ruining his momentum. Dalton didn't really fight, and nobody believed Pierce was doing more than acting!, thank you. Sean had the same lethality but you could tell he'd been in less stoushes than the Aussie.

* Diana Rigg - They cast her to offset Lazenby's inexperience, and I know every Bond girl says their girl is strong and empowered but Tracey actually was. And she actually visible chafed under patriarchy. Best Bond girl ever. No, sod off Vesper.

* Telly Savalas - Now, this is podra... Blofeld. Erudite, cultured, but also physically imposing.

* The plot - the Fleming plot has Bond bored of the SPECTRE hunt and threatening to resign; the film has Bond pulled off Operation: Bedlam because of the lack of results. It also has Blofeld under an assumed alias, seeking amnesty for his crimes. The film adds the proto-suicide bomber angle with the angels of death, but otherwise is pure Fleming.

* Bond's vulnerability - it's really clear Bond's afraid as he escapes Piz Gloria and Tracy rescues him. This is very Fleming too. Bond is frequently with frayed nerve; he's trapped, with no resources, in a small town with bugger all chance of being bailed out. He looks worried. He damned well should look worried. Call him wooden after watching this.

And when Tracy dies? Fleming based her on Muriel Wright, his lover during the war whose death broke his heart and probably made a huge impact on the emotional cripple he was when he wrote the books. You can feel the repression beneath the surface - he looks utterly lost. An American would emote, and emote in a vulgar fashion; a Brit will repress the hell out of their feelings and in doing so return to the place they learned repression - usually from parents, which is why he's just lost and childlike. Great moment.

* The clothes - I'm known to enjoy good suits and quality suiting, and as a model Lazenby knew how to wear clothes well. Bond looks the part here, none moreso than this Prince of Wales check grey suit with blue, pointed collar poplin shirt and knitted navy woollen tie.



By happy coincidence I'm wearing a knitted navy tie today, though the outfit is a shameless ripoff of Craig's Spectre press conference attire:



V-necked jumper though, because it just looks odd otherwise.

Also, I love the grey-green Aston Martin DBS he drives, and I saw what purported to be the original at the 2018 Melbourne Grand Prix:





The sign in the window claims it is the car.

This is still my favourite I think, easily, and I'll give it 007/007. A Bond masterpiece.

1. OHMSS
2. FRWL
3. Thunderball
4. Dr No
5. Goldfinger
6. YOLT

 

A masterpiece it is.

Observational bits:

-People keep saying that this would have been the best Bond film had Connery been in it. Well, I say to hell with him; unless he was willing to revert to his DN/FRWL interpretation, the movie's better off without him. Apart from a few terribly dubbed one-liners, Lazenby's great. Physically impressive, and sells every scene he shares with Rigg.

-The escape from Piz Gloria--beginning with Bond's initial capture and ending with the avalanche--stands alongside the FRWL Orient Express material and Casino Royale second act as pure, unadulterated cinematic magic. And the best moment? Bond escapes into the village, finds himself in another brawl, crawls out, sights the henchmen overrunning the rink left and right, is overcome with paranoiac images, tires, sits on a bench, and gives up!

-The final assault on Piz Gloria is the only "epic" climax in this series that actually works. Why? One word. Stakes.

-Wow, Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell really are terrific when they get to play characters, instead of furniture. Lee in particular delivers a nice blend of resolve and resignation when reflecting on Blofeld's amnesty.

-Yeah, we never got a true follow-up, but License to Kill makes for one hell of a consolation prize.

Score: 10/10

OHMSS - 10/10
YOLT - 4.5/10
TB - 8.0/10
GF - 9.5/10
FRWL - 10/10
DN - 9.5/10

Farewell and adieu, 60s-era Bond! You were the best! Two masterpieces. Two genre greats. One solid actioner. And a gilded turd.

THE END

BUT JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

IN

"NEVER SAY GOOD UNTIL DALTON"

 

Are we missing out Casino Royale '67 then ?

 

OK, time to play catch-up.

Thunderball is a real disappointment for me. It just goes off the rails nearly immediately for me. The pre-credits scene is forgettable and then we get the first Bond theme that is just legit terrible. Tom Jones' vocal performance is god-awful, just delivering everything at a full bellow and the lyrics are easily the most nonsensical of the entire franchise until Moonraker.

The Shrublands sequence drags a bit, but isn't terrible. But I feel like Connery is already starting to check out. And the underwater sequences deserve every ounce of criticism they get. Yes, I understand that they're beautiful in a languid kind of way, which might be okay if they weren't supposed to be action sequences. Again, this is unmatched really until Moonraker's lackadaisical space battle. It's a bad movie for sure and one I just consistently find myself bored with.

It does have a handful of nice moments. Bond's withering put-down to Fiona (who is pretty good in general) about sleeping with her for purely patriotic reasons is a great mic-drop moment. "You don't think it gave me any pleasure, do you?" And I love the moment when Bond essentially uses a woman as a human shield and then coolly waltzes her off the dance floor and drops her into the chair with one of the better one-liners of Connery's era: "She's just dead."

But on the whole, this one really just doesn't land at all for me. 002 out of 007

1. From Russia With Love
2. Goldfinger
3. Dr. No
4. Thunderball

 

I know it's terrible, but I've always liked that film.

 

There are some fun sequences in it, and I enjoy the music, but it is a patchwork stitched together with no real plan in mind. As a whole it's awful, but with a bottle of wine it becomes something of a guilty pleasure for me these days.

 

It is a gigantic 60s surrealist load of fun and parody and mess . Where else would you get Peter Sellers , Woody Allen , Orson Welles etc. etc.
And the music is gorgeous .

 

I wouldn't say we're missing it...

EON only my man. No CR 1954, 1967, or NSNA.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44250056

Boyle is officially directing Bond 25, which will open in the UK on October 25, 2019 and in the US on November 8th.

 

It'll be interesting to see how he handles the material, as he hasn't done a big action film like Bond before.

 

It would be even more interesting if the next film wasn't about big action, but had really solid plotting.

 

It would be nice to see another film in the mould of From Russia With Love

 

Very optimistic for Boyle's Bond. To tie this in with Ender's reviews, I believe the Craig era will be looked upon with the same admiration as the iconic 60s era (with Spectre serving as the YOLT outlier).

 

Oh, wow, Danny Boyle. That's awesome. I hope he brings something of his singular vision to the movie. And I think working with such an iconic director will help Craig get more engaged than he was in Spectre, which will be a very good thing.

Also, no time now, but I will get my YOLT comments up tonight I hope.

 

I have plenty to say about OHMSS .
First time I saw it I just I loved the opening , it's shot so stylishly , I don't like the quip to camera , but that title music - man that's good , perhaps my favorite , it's got a real serious feel of intrigue and danger and sensuality .

I remember as a kid when it was on tv I'd read the tv magazine review and it would always claim the same sorts of things :
This one was a flop .
Lazenby was so bad the producers got rid of him .
Neither of which is true of course , but it had a bad rep , it wasn't til I got to read some books about Bond that I discovered that fans shared my own good taste .

Lazenby's performance does vary in quality , probably his creakier bits were filmed earlier . It's amazing to think that he'd never acted before , the great tragedy is that he would've been so great in subsequent pictures having now learned the skills .

OHMSS brings us back to earth after the silly sub-Thunderbirds style of YOLT .

The decision to dub Lazenby with George Baker is bizarre , it's a curse of the 60s Bonds , they seem determined to post-dub everyone ! Now even the title character .

more later ....

 

Nice to have the official announcement about Boyle, etc. for Bond 25.

So OHMSS is really good, and it stands out as kind of this odd exception because its Bond only made one movie. I remember having the same disconnect others mention when hearing people say the movie was bad, the actor was a mistake or a joke, etc. The movie and its Bond were both actually quite pure Bond in the Fleming style.

1. From Russia With Love
2. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
3. Dr. No
4. Goldfinger
5. Thunderball
6. You Only Live Twice

 

OHMSS is a great Bond movie. It's not perfect -- it can't entirely escape the series' trend toward camp and audience-winking, and has a few quibbles here and there. I kind of hate the lazy sequence in which Bond kicks back, ogles a Playboy, and lets a machine do his job for him, sapping all the tension out of the office break-in scene. The shrouded opening scene ending with the quip at the audience, the credits just being a highlight reel assuring you this is totally still James Bond, and the godawful scene of Bond's desk o' movie mementos all suggest a lack of confidence in the transition that never should have showed up onscreen. Some of Bond's swinging sixties fashions are just godawful (that orange turtleneck, ugh). And I could really do without Blofeld trying to steal Bond's girl for no reason.

But those all take away very little from the movie, which is a wildly effective classic Bond romp -- it's a post-Goldfinger "Bond movie" in a way FRWL isn't -- while also being the deepest, most intelligent and mature movie the series would make until Casino Royale. It's a zippy adventure, full of solid sequences, but more importantly full of characterization, treating Bond as a real human being and building a really great relationship with Tracy, one of the all-time great Bond girls. It also has one of the all-time great Bond villains in Telly Savalas's Blofeld, who's menacing, smart, and suave, and one of the all-time great Bond allies in Draco, who's just a total blast throughout. I would love a movie where Bond, Kerim Bey, Draco, Tiger Tanaka, and Mathis go around fighting crazed villains. Lazenby is convincing as Bond, a great physical presence who can hit the requisite notes of humanity, as in the great escape sequence where he meets Tracy. I don't know that he would have matured into a great actor, but he was certainly more than serviceable and unquestionably would have been better than having to put up with Moore.

I'll also note that this is the best movie for Moneypenny, an exceptionally low bar to clear but still notable.

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. From Russia with Love
3. Dr. No
4. Goldfinger
5. Thunderball
6. You Only Live Twice

 

Okay, still playing catch up with You Only Live Twice!

It's quite an achievement really to make ninjas attacking a volcano stultifying dull, but this movie pulls it off. About the only thing I really like about this movie is the opening in which Bond is "murdered." I mean, it's instantly obvious that it's a trick, but it's still a shocking and cool moment to open the movie with. Well, actually there is one other thing that I like, probably the best thing about the movie and that is the title song. I think it's the best opening song so far (though I reserve the right to say the instrumentals are better).

It's too bad Connery went out with this one (for a while, at least) as it's the absolute antithesis of everything From Russia With Love was and Connery is as bored here as he was invested into that one. But it starts a real trend of Bonds going out with one of their absolute worst films. That said, I guess I still rank this one above Thunderball; this one isn't completely boring at least.

002 of 007.

1. From Russia with Love
2. Goldfinger
3. Dr. No
4. You Only Live Twice
5. Thunderball

Best Opening Title Music:

1. James Bond Theme (Dr. No)
2. Opening Titles: James Bond is Back/From Russia with Love/James Bond Theme
3. You Only Live Twice
4. Goldfinger
5. Thunderball
6. Kingston Calypso (Dr. No)