guy hamilton - anti action?

chrisno1

Although I am a fan, I dont watch the Bond films that regularly as my enjoyment of them tends to fade by familiarity, but I do think about them a lot (you know in the car on the way to work etc)
Thing is, was Guy Hamilton a director afriad of action scenes?

I know he made DAF a pretty tough movie for 1971, but it still has silly non-threatening scenes like the car chase with the police, the fight with Bambi and Thumper (named after rabbits FFS) the anti-climatic oil rig battle and the PTS which while mysterious isnt nearly violent enough for a man out for revenge; even the killing of Wint and Kidd is played for laughs.

So I thought about Guy's other movies and lo! GF -a great movie, but very little action, the best scenes being the car chase and the PTS; the fight with Oddjob is relatively sedate and the death of GF himself very short.

Ditto LALD and TMWTGG, where villians like Mr Big and Nick Nack have short, maybe comical ends, and Sherriff Pepper provides light relief at moments of tension.

I just dont get it; even Terence Young got brilliant, violent action scenes in FRWL and TB, while Peter Hunt delivered spectacularly for OHMSS. So where does Guy Hamilton go wrong? Im a big fan of GF, but his other three films spend most of their time lower down my lists; while he excels with the dialogue, he just doesnt seen to get to grips with big action scenes, or am I being too harsh?

Mark Hazard

Admitedly it was with machines rather than people, but he did a pretty good job of the air battles in Battle of Britain.

Napoleon Plural

I agree, his films were more comedy romps. His lack of action prowess was disguised by the groundbreaking stunts: the gadgets on the DB5 for instance, the car on two wheels in DAF and the boat stuff in LALD.

cbdouble07

Yeah, I'd tend to agree that Hamilton's movies featured were lighter overall and lacked great hard-hitting action scenes. There is one fight however that I think stands out in his films as a good gritty fight and that is the fight between Bond and Peter Franks in the elevator. That is reminescent of some of the Peter Hunt stuff and one of the highlights of the film IMO. It's a pity more of this stuff couldn't be incorporated into Hamilton's films, it could have only improved them.

chrisno1

cbdouble07 wrote:

Yeah, I'd tend to agree that Hamilton's movies featured were lighter overall and lacked great hard-hitting action scenes. There is one fight however that I think stands out in his films as a good gritty fight and that is the fight between Bond and Peter Franks in the elevator. That is reminescent of some of the Peter Hunt stuff and one of the highlights of the film IMO. It's a pity more of this stuff couldn't be incorporated into Hamilton's films, it could have only improved them.

Great point about the elevator fight! it is so vicious they edit it for daytime tv in the UK. however i read that this scene owes more to the stunt directors and fight arrangers than the director himself. I read the fight arranger organised almost the whole sequence, including the best camera angles etc (it was after all in a lift, and with such close quarter fighting, they had to disguise the fact they were not actually hitting each other very cleverly). Maybe Hamilton never picked the right stunt men for his action scenes! I definately agree that Hamilton had a light hearted approach, and while this works for GF it doesnt seem to cut it for the rest.

taity

I'd be cautious to say Hamilton was anti action. I'd say Goldfinger probably had more than FRWL, made directly before it. DAF seemed to have bucket loads of the stuff.

Finally both LALD and TMWTGG had much smaller scales to them compared to the excess of the Connery era.

the golden gun guy

Well I've always thought that GF was the first ACTION film in the Bond series. DN was more of a mystery and FRWL was more of a cold war suspense/thriller. DAF however is a good spy film but is does lack action EXTREMELY! LALD I think is the most boring and dull Bond film out there. TMWTGG has a good amount of action and it seems to grow on me the more I watch it. But all in all I agree that Hamilton was anti action (mainly because of DAF and LALD)

Mr Yanni

I love the lower key action scenes in older bond movies. I believe less is more. Although I enjoyed C R I felt the action scenes repetetive and boringly filmed and directed. they were much like any other 'high octane' action film out there. The old films carefully developed characters with clever scripts and the directors took extra effort with clever camera angles and interesting lighting techniques. The fewer action scenes were far more memorable for this and due to lower key action more believable.
It' a shame (I think) that the current films merely copy the Willis, Arny and Stallone films of recent years instead of the daring new approach they took 40 years ago.
Just my opinion.
One of my all time favourite films is the quiller memorandum which has barely any action. It does have though a John barry score. Maybe that's what makes a good bond film!!!

superado

The fight scenes in the FRWL train sequence and the TB PTS, both under Terrence Young's wings, stand out as taut and vicious action scenes. To consider other factors, Bond stunt pioneers Bob Simmons and George Leech appeared consistently in Guy Hamilton's and Terrence Young's films, so it must be direction. However, I don't think Young was "perfect." Given though that the tussle between Bond and the chauffer in Dr. No was the first Bond fight ever, I felt it could have been better. The gypsy fight scene in FRWL seems hokey nowadays, particularly the shooting stances (hand under armpit of shooting arm, for example), but to be fair that too was the first ever Bond "raid" sequence.

What distinguishes Young over Hamilton or even Lewis Gilbert...and even Peter Hunt, is his propensity to unabashed cruelty (again, the FRWL train fight and the killing of Prof. Dent), which was pretty daring in those days compared to how cruelty has been made staple by the likes of Quentin Tarrantino nowadays.

Also, because Young pretty much set the standard for many elements of the so called Bond forumula, esp. the action scenes, it's unfortunate that those who followed had to more or less mimick those staples, like the "crash edit" fight scenes; note too that Peter Hunt came closest to approximating that for OHMSS because he edited those other fights! Mimickry is why the DAF elevator fight (and IMO the GE fight between 006 & 007 was an attempt to bring back/pay homage to that early fight style that was never done again after DAF) seems pale in comparison and looks like Leach and Simmons (or whoever arranged and/or doubled for that sequence) resorted to pulling moves from their established bag of fight choreography tricks.

For the record, GF is not nearly my favorite Bond film, but it's critically considered the archetypical Bond film perhaps because it's well rounded, and I believe in order to achieve that, if intentional at all, Bond needed to tone down the ruthlessness and become more affably suave.