DAF, like all JB movies has some highlights and some low points. Unfortunately the balance in this movie is more towards the negative in my opinion. To sum it up:
Highlights:
- soundtrack. Barry and Bassey, it is impossible to go wrong
- locations. I was in vegas last month for work and it was nice to see the circus circus hotel and the las Vegas Hilton there still standing. Downtown looked different than during the car chase, but some casino's are still there.
- Set design. Not ken Adams best work, but still some nice sets. However, overall this movie had a much cheaper and dated look than the others.
Low:
- acting. Even Connery was mediocre here. The villains, bond girls, henchmen where all atrocious.
- plot. Hardly made any sense. They should have followed the novel which was so much better
- continuity. Blofeld looks totally different, yet Bond recognizes him. No mention of Tracy.
The biggest problem with this movie is that it tried to be camp and funny. You only live twice was also over thetop, yet was a serious action film also. This movie had just too many silly things: the moonbuggy, the mousetrap in Jim's pocket, Blofeld in drag, the gay henchmen, the 3 coroners, the rediculous ending....there is simply too much, and I am afraid this was the start of the lighter tone in the Bonds to follow, right until 1987.
Watching DAF, I understand why George lazenby and his agent thought James Bond was doomed. It is a miracle that the people kept on coming after DAF and accepted Moore's movies. In fact they were very succesful!
And yet...yet... I still kind of like DAF. I still can enjoy and laugh and its rediculousness, I can relate to Connery who realized he was in a trainwreck and acted that way. I do enjoy it, but cant take it serious as a spy-action movie.
It's more of a Moore romp film than a Connery film. The key was Connery back for one more film, so story, rest of cast, etc wasn't important.
It's a decent film, but like many other Bond films, gets silly towards the end.
No Moore film was as sleazy, tacky or grimy as DAF. Think of the lush exotic locations of Moonraker or Octopussy vs. the dimly lit casinos and glitzy hotels of Las Vegas.
If you aren't particularly enamored with Connery as Bond, especially the campier, one-liner seemingly every scene late-Connery Bond, then I would imagine DAF is rather easy to dislike
Connery was a brilliant Bond - even in DAF. But the point is that the film was a little cartoonish in places. It's big, brash and colourful - much as how I imagine Vegas to be, though I've never been - and somehow Vegas isn't a place I imagine the 'literary' Bond would embrace, given how snobbish he is about many things. Personally I love the film, it was the first one I saw in the cinema in 1971 and I've watched it many times since. Things like the Moon Buggy, the red Ford Mustang, Bond swinging in space above Vegas - I think they're wondrous.
But Connery is great, though the spectacle around him had taken over a little by then. Perhaps that's why he looks more relaxed, he almost strolls through the film in places. But when he gets going, such as the elevator fight, he's great. And the one-liners work brilliantly IMO.
Maybe it's just the slightly cartoonish nature of much of the film, the weak villain, and weaker ending that mark it down, so to speak. And because the film around Bond became the focal point, not Bond and how he drove the action as he did in, say, Dr No.
I think you have made the case for DAF quite well, and I agree.
"Felix Leiter, a brother from Langley."
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,871MI6 Agent
I think the reason why it's considered such a very poor James Bond film is down to the fact that it is such a poor follow-up to the brilliant OHMSS and the new type of James Bond in fidelity to the Fleming original of the novels that it admirably set up. Instead of the (welcome) return of George Lazenby, Peter Hunt and Richard Maibaum we get Sean Connery (his return to the role seems to be all some people liove DAF for, really), Guy Hamilton and Tom Mankiewicz (given a watered-down Maibaum script). Insteasde of further fidelity with Fleming we get bizarreness on a grand scale, campness on a grand scale and special effects that look like they came from a child's chemistry set. I could wruite more, but I don't want to spoil my review for the blog. Criticising this film is one of my favourite past-times, but as with all things Bond I can still see the merit in parts of it too. -{
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
I think the reason why it's considered such a very poor James Bond film is down to the fact that it is such a poor follow-up to the brilliant OHMSS and the new type of James Bond in fidelity to the Fleming original of the novels that it admirably set up. Instead of the (welcome) return of George Lazenby, Peter Hunt and Richard Maibaum we get Sean Connery (his return to the role seems to be all some people liove DAF for, really), Guy Hamilton and Tom Mankiewicz (given a watered-down Maibaum script). Insteasde of further fidelity with Fleming we get bizarreness on a grand scale, campness on a grand scale and special effects that look like they came from a child's chemistry set. I could wruite more, but I don't want to spoil my review for the blog. Criticising this film is one of my favourite past-times, but as with all things Bond I can still see the merit in parts of it too. -{
For me, its Connery thats the biggest probelm with the film, he should have stayed away and boy did he get old sad to see really. This isn't the type of Bond film he's really suited for imo. His Bond is suited to more darker fare, a little more serious. This has Roger Moore/Pierce Brosnan written all over it, just too silly and OTT for my tastes. I do agree after the masterpiece that is OHMSS, and the sheer downbeatness of the ending you wanted Lazenby's Bond to seek revenage and just kick ass. What we got was disgraceful PTS from DAF that pisses over OHMSS ending, seen a bloated rather old looking Connery struggle his way through so much crap is a crime, he was paid well so i guess he didn't mind. Everything that went wrog with Bond happens here and gone's on with the odd great Bond (FYEO LTK and GE) until Craig's Reboot bring's Bond back to his Roots.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,871MI6 Agent
I think the reason why it's considered such a very poor James Bond film is down to the fact that it is such a poor follow-up to the brilliant OHMSS and the new type of James Bond in fidelity to the Fleming original of the novels that it admirably set up. Instead of the (welcome) return of George Lazenby, Peter Hunt and Richard Maibaum we get Sean Connery (his return to the role seems to be all some people liove DAF for, really), Guy Hamilton and Tom Mankiewicz (given a watered-down Maibaum script). Insteasde of further fidelity with Fleming we get bizarreness on a grand scale, campness on a grand scale and special effects that look like they came from a child's chemistry set. I could wruite more, but I don't want to spoil my review for the blog. Criticising this film is one of my favourite past-times, but as with all things Bond I can still see the merit in parts of it too. -{
For me, its Connery thats the biggest probelm with the film, he should have stayed away and boy did he get old sad to see really. This isn't the type of Bond film he's really suited for imo. His Bond is suited to more darker fare, a little more serious. This has Roger Moore/Pierce Brosnan written all over it, just too silly and OTT for my tastes. I do agree after the masterpiece that is OHMSS, and the sheer downbeatness of the ending you wanted Lazenby's Bond to seek revenage and just kick ass. What we got was disgraceful PTS from DAF that pisses over OHMSS ending, seen a bloated rather old looking Connery struggle his way through so much crap is a crime, he was paid well so i guess he didn't mind. Everything that went wrog with Bond happens here and gone's on with the odd great Bond (FYEO LTK and GE) until Craig's Reboot bring's Bond back to his Roots.
I agree - I suppose you could quite fairly call DAF an honorary Roger Moore film - it probably should have been Moore's first as Connery's return to the series just confused thgings. I think the rot had set in with YOLT, really and it had spread very wide in DAF. It's one of the most rotten apples in world Bondom.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Whilst I respect others' honest gut reactions to the Bond movies, I'm depressed by repeated DAF bashing, so here's a summary reiteration of my defence of that film:
I fell in love with DAF when I saw it as a kid in the cinema on its initial release. It was an 'event' movie owing to Connery's return to the series. The film has worked its magic for me ever since, and I believe it to be a masterpiece of camp. Connery's relaxed interpretation of Bond as a maturing, sexy comedian is one of his most entertaining... a more accomplished performance in the role than any since GF. Sure, there are holes in the plot, but there's also a knowing wit in the screenplay which simultaneously celebrates and debunks Connery-AS-Bond's superstardom: audiences at the time really 'got' that and responded to it. Charles Gray's louche turn as Blofeld blends with the overall tone of the film: his camp persona brings amusing new meaning to the trope of the character's attachment to his Siamese pussy cat. (Blofeld never shares screen time with Wint and Kydd, but one wonders whether there may have been a queer 'casting couch' element to his recruitment of them as assassins! Witness Gray's other camp role in the series, as Henderson in YOLT, with his purring confession that he gets Russian vodka "from the doorman at the Russian embassy... amongst certain other things": the smutty implication is that the "other things" include sexual favours from the doorman as well as secret Soviet files.) Other highlights? John Barry brilliantly complements DAF's location work with one of his most evocative soundtracks, imbuing Amsterdam with a sense of sedate prettiness and Vegas with razzamatazz, while realising in his action cues a musical sense of "precariousness glorified" (to quote Pauline Kael's contemporary review of the film). DAF can be edgy: occasional moments of startling violence (historically cut from many TV broadcasts) and a slant towards morbid humour and the bizarre lend the film a frisson which is often overlooked.
A criticism frequently levelled at DAF is that it isn't, like FRWL, a taut thriller, and that its climax is relatively lame. John Brosnan was publishing such complaints as early as 1972, in his book 'James Bond In The Cinema': "there is no real sense of menace in the film ... [and it] has a very weak squib of an ending when one compares it to the climaxes of DN, GF, YOLT, and OHMSS." DAF admittedly has a loose structure with a token plot. It's also undeniable that the climax is staged on a smaller scale than in some previous Bonds, and that some of it is played for laughs. But DAF doesn't want to be a taut thriller. Nor could it hope to expand in its finale on the extravagance of YOLT's Pinewood volcano set.
Should DAF have taken a sober direction and attempted to be more faithful to Fleming's novel of the same title? I think it was too late for that. A true adaptation of 'Diamonds Are Forever' - assimilating its rather downbeat meditations on mortality, its fifties mise-en-scene and the psychological tangle of Bond's relationship with Tiffany - would have needed to have been Hitchcockian in style, and made during Terence Young's early Bond tenure, probably as a companion film to FRWL and certainly before the horse bolted with GF in terms of outlandish fantasy and spectacle.
So what is DAF trying to do? In 'The James Bond Man: The Films Of Sean Connery' (1983), Andrew Rissik puts his finger on it. He eloquently places the film in the specific pop-cultural context of the late 60s/early 70s, comparing its style with other decadent movies of the time: "[They conveyed] a sense of decaying Carnaby Street glamour combined with an idea of the movie as a pictorial and psychological game: they dealt in weird, contorted relationships between pictorially interesting groups of people." If DAF's appeal is partly to do with visual glamour it's also to do with verbal wit. DAF is often criticised for lacking a sense of danger, but the ostensible menace of Blofeld's latest bid for world domination is not where the film's conflict drama lies: rather, it's in the game of witty one-upmanship played between Connery's Bond, a graceful old pro, and the assortment of friends and foes who cross paths with him, assail him and try to debunk him. It's a 70s comedy of manners, with all the elements of the Bond genre at its disposal as points of reference during the repartee and banter - in the same way that LTK (my other favourite Bond film) is an 80s crime/revenge drama with a legacy of Bond stock from which to draw to give it its context. As light comedy, DAF is a movie I'd like to watch in a double-bill with, let's say, 'Plaza Suite' (1971), rather than with any serious crime or action movie of the same vintage. In fact, I can easily see DAF's humorous, thick set Sean Connery going back-to-back with a wisecracking Walter Matthau!
DAF is also wittily intelligent to the extent that it's one of the few Bond films which explores a single theme: in this case, the theme of artifice. Phoniness is evident throughout the movie: from cloned (and drag artist) Blofelds, to a pretend girl-to-gorilla transformation for the kids in 'Circus, Circus'; from a ludicrous 'zero gravity' simulation at Willard Whyte’s space research center (given the lie by Bond's sprint across the fabricated moonscape), to a red-herring pussy cat and a fake bombe surprise dessert; from "Felix Leiter, you old fraud," to Bond's own false identities (not only as Peter Franks but also his improvisations as Klaus Hergesheimer, the smoocher outside Tiffany's apartment and the genial Dutchman in the elevator); from Tiffany’s changing hair colour, to Bond’s bogus finger whorls, to the various voice boxes cunningly set to impersonate "the voice patterns and resonances" of Blofeld, Whyte and Burt Saxby. Indeed, phoniness is so pervasive as the film’s thematic strategy that it allows us to forgive, if we're willing, even unintended moments of exposed artifice, such as the unconvincing special effects work on the exploding helicopters in the playful climax and the comically resolved "Lean over!" continuity lapse in the execution of the Mustang wheelie stunt.
The oft-recycled fan criticism of DAF that it chooses not to be a serious sequel to OHMSS is misplaced. The common complaint is that although OHMSS ends with Blofeld's murder of Tracy, DAF deals only briefly / perfunctorily with the business of Bond's single-minded hunt for Blofeld, in the pre-credits sequence, and that even this has elements of slapstick. Connery's subsequent exchanges with the 'real' Blofeld seem almost genial, teetering on Adam West 'Batman'-style buffoonery by the time we're on the oil rig. (Blofeld's cheroot is certainly more The Penguin than Ian Fleming, and TV audiences may have remembered Jill St John for playing Molly, The Riddler's moll, in a 1966 episode of 'Batman'. Indeed, she became the only female character in the 'Batman' series to get killed. Shades of Tracy perhaps?) DAF misses a trick, or so the argument goes, and we have to wait till CR/QOS before we get a linked pair of Bond films which seriously address the theme of Bond following up the death of a loved woman. But all this misses the point. DAF should be enjoyed on its own terms. It chooses to leave alone OHMSS, a film which performed relatively slowly at the box office. It sets out instead to be a light-hearted romp, foregrounding Connery's return to the glittering playground of 007 - a mileu presented, entertainingly, as more decadent than ever with the demise of the swinging sixties. Sure, DAF's violent PTS is designed in such a way that viewers wishing to do so can infer a brief 'revenge' coda to OHMSS, but this isn't made explicit because it's not a reading meant to be obligatory. Although DAF's classic title song is sung from a female perspective, audiences disposed to identify a link with OHMSS could, if they wanted, interpret the song's lyrics as reflecting Bond's strategy for repressing his grief: the song's about an abandonment to hedonism, eschewing meaningful love and the pain which it brings in favour of impersonal pleasures symbolised by the hardest substance known to man. (The lyrics of the 'Live And Let Die' advocate a similarly repressive coping strategy, this time from a male perspective.)
So would a longer tenure for George Lazenby have been better for the series, ahead of Roger Moore's innings? Could DAF have been an out-and-out 'revenge' movie? No, I don't think so. A 'revenge' Bond needs a skilled actor as lead... and Lazenby wouldn't have cut it. We get emotive 'revenge' themes later on, in the brilliant but commercially disappointing LTK and in QOS (flawed for reasons other than Daniel Craig's acting abilities, which are fine). Lazenby wasn't a skilled enough actor to have been capable of the powerful performance which would have been necessary to drive a 'revenge' sequel to OHMSS. Despite arguments sometimes made to the contrary, his lack of training or experience as an actor mattered. He'd perhaps have passed muster in a movie like YOLT, where Bond has little more to do than punch his way from one location to the next and (literally) press a few buttons; but in OHMSS, which had much more of a personal story for Bond, Peter Hunt's idea that it's possible to use editing to get a good performance out of any 007 actor proved to be only partially true. Lazenby didn't want to return anyway, a fact explained by reports that at the time he was too immature to take on the challenge of becoming a 'movie star'. In 1971 it was the right decision, pleasing for contemporary audiences, to put some 'movie star' playboy pzaz back into the series, in the person of Sean Connery - and to make DAF a celebration of that rather than a film about some 'other fella's' unfinished business.
Besides, our current notions of serious movie sequels didn't really exist in 1971: it arguably wasn't until 'The Godfather: Part II', later in the 70s, that a cutting-edge template for sequels was established. The Bond series wasn't interested in high levels of continuity between films until CR/QOS, and even then the effectiveness of this approach (in QOS) was debatable. (In this respect, of course, the films differed from the novels, as 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'You Only Live Twice' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun' are closely linked.) I think the mainstream audiences of 1971 were just loving having Connery back as 007 in a fun-filled movie. That's my recollection, anyway. Although John Brosnan, whom I've quoted above, was writing in 1972, I'd hazard that his objections to DAF represented minority dissent. I suspect, ironically, that his complaints are more likely to resonate with the notional Bond fan of today, whose reified, critical experience of seeing DAF is typically alone, out of time, hankering for non-existent story arcs within a close-knit series of DVD viewings of the 60s/70s Bond movies as a set.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
I'm depressed by DAF bashing, so here's a summary reiteration of my defence of the film [...]
I have always ranked DAF as perhaps my least favourite Bond film. So camp. So silly. Such a letdown after the powerful ending of OHMSS. I haven't watched it in years.
Your very eloquent post has inspired me to watch it again with an open mind. I'll report back and let you know.
I'm glad Roger Moore didn't make this one! If he had the criticism that he turned the film series into a parody of itself would be worst than it is now! I think several of the earlier Bond movies had camp moments but DAF is a campy movie! Critics of the Moore era take note!
It's odd I don't dislike DAF, really there is only one film in the series that I dislike and that is LTK, but I do think that DAF is the worst film in the series. All the criticisms have been stated before - Connery looks old, tired, bored, the gags, the two henchwomen, the gay henchmen, Jimmy Dean, the worst casting choice EVER for a Blofeld, the moonbuggy chase, the finale is really lackluster..
Yet, I do find it entertaining and it's probably one of my most watched Connery movies. Now Blackleiter can say, and probably accurately here that I like DAF because I grew up on the movies that followed that retained the over-the-top antics and campiness. I'd agree that is part of it. But I also think that for all it's flaws it is fun to watch. Connery is bored, tired, looking old, AND STILL great as James Bond. There are scenes where he just shines and it's worth watching JUST for some of those scenes! The cremation scene is one of my favorites in the series! Connery is looking nervous and worried like he realizes this didn't go to plan and he's screwed then suddenly the coffin opens up and he is calm and cool, unflappable! THIS is what I loved about Roger Moore as Bond and here Connery just does it superbly!
If you watch the Bond movies out of order and judge each on its own merits, DAF is flawed, when you judge is as a chapter of the series.. Bond's lack of ruthlessness toward Blofeld the typical banter of Bond and Villain just seem absurd! And honestly EON has to be blamed for following up OHMSS with DAF. If the next film wasn't going to be serious and ruthless than it should have featured another villain!
DAF is ... one of the few Bond films which explores a single theme
Now that intelligent thought deserves a thread to itself. "Bond Films" by Jim Smith & Stephen Lavington (Virgin, 2002) suggests some others- FYEO's theme is "the pain of growing old and the pitfalls of becoming obsessed by revenge", while LALD is "about 'masks' and personae, in essence".
Connery is bored, tired, looking old, AND STILL great as James Bond. There are scenes where he just shines and it's worth watching JUST for some of those scenes! The cremation scene is one of my favorites in the series! Connery is looking nervous and worried like he realizes this didn't go to plan and he's screwed then suddenly the coffin opens up and he is calm and cool, unflappable! THIS is what I loved about Roger Moore as Bond and here Connery just does it superbly!
On this point we agree, although I don't think Connery seems as bored, tired or old as you and some other fans do. And as a self-professed "critic of the Moore era", I must say that I think you have hit on the very reason it's a good thing Moore didn't do DAF. Because it would not have been as entertaining as it was! Connery was the movie's biggest plus. You got the laughs and you got a few moments of toughness that I don't think Rog would have pulled off as convincingly (e.g. the elevator fight with Franks and the elbow to the face of the thug who tossed Plenty out the window). DAF is hardly the worst film in the series, in my opinion. I won't bother to give you my list of films it's superior to (unless you want it), but I can think of quite a few! )
I'm depressed by DAF bashing, so here's a summary reiteration of my defence of the film [...]
I have always ranked DAF as perhaps my least favourite Bond film. So camp. So silly. Such a letdown after the powerful ending of OHMSS. I haven't watched it in years.
Your very eloquent post has inspired me to watch it again with an open mind. I'll report back and let you know.
Shady, I just adore your act!
We are all anxiously waiting: what is the verdict?
For me, DAF is kind of a guilty pleasure. It is in terms of pure quality probably the worst movie. Yet, I have watched it quite a few times and DO enjoy it. It could not be further away from FRWL than anything else (funny that there are only 8 years in between these movies, that is nothing these days!) but still it is fun. In a weird way.
Comments
Highlights:
- soundtrack. Barry and Bassey, it is impossible to go wrong
- locations. I was in vegas last month for work and it was nice to see the circus circus hotel and the las Vegas Hilton there still standing. Downtown looked different than during the car chase, but some casino's are still there.
- Set design. Not ken Adams best work, but still some nice sets. However, overall this movie had a much cheaper and dated look than the others.
Low:
- acting. Even Connery was mediocre here. The villains, bond girls, henchmen where all atrocious.
- plot. Hardly made any sense. They should have followed the novel which was so much better
- continuity. Blofeld looks totally different, yet Bond recognizes him. No mention of Tracy.
The biggest problem with this movie is that it tried to be camp and funny. You only live twice was also over thetop, yet was a serious action film also. This movie had just too many silly things: the moonbuggy, the mousetrap in Jim's pocket, Blofeld in drag, the gay henchmen, the 3 coroners, the rediculous ending....there is simply too much, and I am afraid this was the start of the lighter tone in the Bonds to follow, right until 1987.
Watching DAF, I understand why George lazenby and his agent thought James Bond was doomed. It is a miracle that the people kept on coming after DAF and accepted Moore's movies. In fact they were very succesful!
And yet...yet... I still kind of like DAF. I still can enjoy and laugh and its rediculousness, I can relate to Connery who realized he was in a trainwreck and acted that way. I do enjoy it, but cant take it serious as a spy-action movie.
1. Connery 2. Craig 3. Brosnan 4. Dalton 5. Lazenby 6. Moore
I think you have made the case for DAF quite well, and I agree.
For me, its Connery thats the biggest probelm with the film, he should have stayed away and boy did he get old sad to see really. This isn't the type of Bond film he's really suited for imo. His Bond is suited to more darker fare, a little more serious. This has Roger Moore/Pierce Brosnan written all over it, just too silly and OTT for my tastes. I do agree after the masterpiece that is OHMSS, and the sheer downbeatness of the ending you wanted Lazenby's Bond to seek revenage and just kick ass. What we got was disgraceful PTS from DAF that pisses over OHMSS ending, seen a bloated rather old looking Connery struggle his way through so much crap is a crime, he was paid well so i guess he didn't mind. Everything that went wrog with Bond happens here and gone's on with the odd great Bond (FYEO LTK and GE) until Craig's Reboot bring's Bond back to his Roots.
I agree - I suppose you could quite fairly call DAF an honorary Roger Moore film - it probably should have been Moore's first as Connery's return to the series just confused thgings. I think the rot had set in with YOLT, really and it had spread very wide in DAF. It's one of the most rotten apples in world Bondom.
I fell in love with DAF when I saw it as a kid in the cinema on its initial release. It was an 'event' movie owing to Connery's return to the series. The film has worked its magic for me ever since, and I believe it to be a masterpiece of camp. Connery's relaxed interpretation of Bond as a maturing, sexy comedian is one of his most entertaining... a more accomplished performance in the role than any since GF. Sure, there are holes in the plot, but there's also a knowing wit in the screenplay which simultaneously celebrates and debunks Connery-AS-Bond's superstardom: audiences at the time really 'got' that and responded to it. Charles Gray's louche turn as Blofeld blends with the overall tone of the film: his camp persona brings amusing new meaning to the trope of the character's attachment to his Siamese pussy cat. (Blofeld never shares screen time with Wint and Kydd, but one wonders whether there may have been a queer 'casting couch' element to his recruitment of them as assassins! Witness Gray's other camp role in the series, as Henderson in YOLT, with his purring confession that he gets Russian vodka "from the doorman at the Russian embassy... amongst certain other things": the smutty implication is that the "other things" include sexual favours from the doorman as well as secret Soviet files.) Other highlights? John Barry brilliantly complements DAF's location work with one of his most evocative soundtracks, imbuing Amsterdam with a sense of sedate prettiness and Vegas with razzamatazz, while realising in his action cues a musical sense of "precariousness glorified" (to quote Pauline Kael's contemporary review of the film). DAF can be edgy: occasional moments of startling violence (historically cut from many TV broadcasts) and a slant towards morbid humour and the bizarre lend the film a frisson which is often overlooked.
A criticism frequently levelled at DAF is that it isn't, like FRWL, a taut thriller, and that its climax is relatively lame. John Brosnan was publishing such complaints as early as 1972, in his book 'James Bond In The Cinema': "there is no real sense of menace in the film ... [and it] has a very weak squib of an ending when one compares it to the climaxes of DN, GF, YOLT, and OHMSS." DAF admittedly has a loose structure with a token plot. It's also undeniable that the climax is staged on a smaller scale than in some previous Bonds, and that some of it is played for laughs. But DAF doesn't want to be a taut thriller. Nor could it hope to expand in its finale on the extravagance of YOLT's Pinewood volcano set.
Should DAF have taken a sober direction and attempted to be more faithful to Fleming's novel of the same title? I think it was too late for that. A true adaptation of 'Diamonds Are Forever' - assimilating its rather downbeat meditations on mortality, its fifties mise-en-scene and the psychological tangle of Bond's relationship with Tiffany - would have needed to have been Hitchcockian in style, and made during Terence Young's early Bond tenure, probably as a companion film to FRWL and certainly before the horse bolted with GF in terms of outlandish fantasy and spectacle.
So what is DAF trying to do? In 'The James Bond Man: The Films Of Sean Connery' (1983), Andrew Rissik puts his finger on it. He eloquently places the film in the specific pop-cultural context of the late 60s/early 70s, comparing its style with other decadent movies of the time: "[They conveyed] a sense of decaying Carnaby Street glamour combined with an idea of the movie as a pictorial and psychological game: they dealt in weird, contorted relationships between pictorially interesting groups of people." If DAF's appeal is partly to do with visual glamour it's also to do with verbal wit. DAF is often criticised for lacking a sense of danger, but the ostensible menace of Blofeld's latest bid for world domination is not where the film's conflict drama lies: rather, it's in the game of witty one-upmanship played between Connery's Bond, a graceful old pro, and the assortment of friends and foes who cross paths with him, assail him and try to debunk him. It's a 70s comedy of manners, with all the elements of the Bond genre at its disposal as points of reference during the repartee and banter - in the same way that LTK (my other favourite Bond film) is an 80s crime/revenge drama with a legacy of Bond stock from which to draw to give it its context. As light comedy, DAF is a movie I'd like to watch in a double-bill with, let's say, 'Plaza Suite' (1971), rather than with any serious crime or action movie of the same vintage. In fact, I can easily see DAF's humorous, thick set Sean Connery going back-to-back with a wisecracking Walter Matthau!
DAF is also wittily intelligent to the extent that it's one of the few Bond films which explores a single theme: in this case, the theme of artifice. Phoniness is evident throughout the movie: from cloned (and drag artist) Blofelds, to a pretend girl-to-gorilla transformation for the kids in 'Circus, Circus'; from a ludicrous 'zero gravity' simulation at Willard Whyte’s space research center (given the lie by Bond's sprint across the fabricated moonscape), to a red-herring pussy cat and a fake bombe surprise dessert; from "Felix Leiter, you old fraud," to Bond's own false identities (not only as Peter Franks but also his improvisations as Klaus Hergesheimer, the smoocher outside Tiffany's apartment and the genial Dutchman in the elevator); from Tiffany’s changing hair colour, to Bond’s bogus finger whorls, to the various voice boxes cunningly set to impersonate "the voice patterns and resonances" of Blofeld, Whyte and Burt Saxby. Indeed, phoniness is so pervasive as the film’s thematic strategy that it allows us to forgive, if we're willing, even unintended moments of exposed artifice, such as the unconvincing special effects work on the exploding helicopters in the playful climax and the comically resolved "Lean over!" continuity lapse in the execution of the Mustang wheelie stunt.
The oft-recycled fan criticism of DAF that it chooses not to be a serious sequel to OHMSS is misplaced. The common complaint is that although OHMSS ends with Blofeld's murder of Tracy, DAF deals only briefly / perfunctorily with the business of Bond's single-minded hunt for Blofeld, in the pre-credits sequence, and that even this has elements of slapstick. Connery's subsequent exchanges with the 'real' Blofeld seem almost genial, teetering on Adam West 'Batman'-style buffoonery by the time we're on the oil rig. (Blofeld's cheroot is certainly more The Penguin than Ian Fleming, and TV audiences may have remembered Jill St John for playing Molly, The Riddler's moll, in a 1966 episode of 'Batman'. Indeed, she became the only female character in the 'Batman' series to get killed. Shades of Tracy perhaps?) DAF misses a trick, or so the argument goes, and we have to wait till CR/QOS before we get a linked pair of Bond films which seriously address the theme of Bond following up the death of a loved woman. But all this misses the point. DAF should be enjoyed on its own terms. It chooses to leave alone OHMSS, a film which performed relatively slowly at the box office. It sets out instead to be a light-hearted romp, foregrounding Connery's return to the glittering playground of 007 - a mileu presented, entertainingly, as more decadent than ever with the demise of the swinging sixties. Sure, DAF's violent PTS is designed in such a way that viewers wishing to do so can infer a brief 'revenge' coda to OHMSS, but this isn't made explicit because it's not a reading meant to be obligatory. Although DAF's classic title song is sung from a female perspective, audiences disposed to identify a link with OHMSS could, if they wanted, interpret the song's lyrics as reflecting Bond's strategy for repressing his grief: the song's about an abandonment to hedonism, eschewing meaningful love and the pain which it brings in favour of impersonal pleasures symbolised by the hardest substance known to man. (The lyrics of the 'Live And Let Die' advocate a similarly repressive coping strategy, this time from a male perspective.)
So would a longer tenure for George Lazenby have been better for the series, ahead of Roger Moore's innings? Could DAF have been an out-and-out 'revenge' movie? No, I don't think so. A 'revenge' Bond needs a skilled actor as lead... and Lazenby wouldn't have cut it. We get emotive 'revenge' themes later on, in the brilliant but commercially disappointing LTK and in QOS (flawed for reasons other than Daniel Craig's acting abilities, which are fine). Lazenby wasn't a skilled enough actor to have been capable of the powerful performance which would have been necessary to drive a 'revenge' sequel to OHMSS. Despite arguments sometimes made to the contrary, his lack of training or experience as an actor mattered. He'd perhaps have passed muster in a movie like YOLT, where Bond has little more to do than punch his way from one location to the next and (literally) press a few buttons; but in OHMSS, which had much more of a personal story for Bond, Peter Hunt's idea that it's possible to use editing to get a good performance out of any 007 actor proved to be only partially true. Lazenby didn't want to return anyway, a fact explained by reports that at the time he was too immature to take on the challenge of becoming a 'movie star'. In 1971 it was the right decision, pleasing for contemporary audiences, to put some 'movie star' playboy pzaz back into the series, in the person of Sean Connery - and to make DAF a celebration of that rather than a film about some 'other fella's' unfinished business.
Besides, our current notions of serious movie sequels didn't really exist in 1971: it arguably wasn't until 'The Godfather: Part II', later in the 70s, that a cutting-edge template for sequels was established. The Bond series wasn't interested in high levels of continuity between films until CR/QOS, and even then the effectiveness of this approach (in QOS) was debatable. (In this respect, of course, the films differed from the novels, as 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'You Only Live Twice' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun' are closely linked.) I think the mainstream audiences of 1971 were just loving having Connery back as 007 in a fun-filled movie. That's my recollection, anyway. Although John Brosnan, whom I've quoted above, was writing in 1972, I'd hazard that his objections to DAF represented minority dissent. I suspect, ironically, that his complaints are more likely to resonate with the notional Bond fan of today, whose reified, critical experience of seeing DAF is typically alone, out of time, hankering for non-existent story arcs within a close-knit series of DVD viewings of the 60s/70s Bond movies as a set.
I have always ranked DAF as perhaps my least favourite Bond film. So camp. So silly. Such a letdown after the powerful ending of OHMSS. I haven't watched it in years.
Your very eloquent post has inspired me to watch it again with an open mind. I'll report back and let you know.
Shady, I just adore your act!
11- TB. 12- OP. 13- LALD. 14- TMWTGG. 15- FYEO. 16- YOLT. 17- TND. 18- QoS.
19- TWINE. 20- AVTAK. 21- MR. 22- DAF. 23- DAD.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
It's odd I don't dislike DAF, really there is only one film in the series that I dislike and that is LTK, but I do think that DAF is the worst film in the series. All the criticisms have been stated before - Connery looks old, tired, bored, the gags, the two henchwomen, the gay henchmen, Jimmy Dean, the worst casting choice EVER for a Blofeld, the moonbuggy chase, the finale is really lackluster..
Yet, I do find it entertaining and it's probably one of my most watched Connery movies. Now Blackleiter can say, and probably accurately here that I like DAF because I grew up on the movies that followed that retained the over-the-top antics and campiness. I'd agree that is part of it. But I also think that for all it's flaws it is fun to watch. Connery is bored, tired, looking old, AND STILL great as James Bond. There are scenes where he just shines and it's worth watching JUST for some of those scenes! The cremation scene is one of my favorites in the series! Connery is looking nervous and worried like he realizes this didn't go to plan and he's screwed then suddenly the coffin opens up and he is calm and cool, unflappable! THIS is what I loved about Roger Moore as Bond and here Connery just does it superbly!
If you watch the Bond movies out of order and judge each on its own merits, DAF is flawed, when you judge is as a chapter of the series.. Bond's lack of ruthlessness toward Blofeld the typical banter of Bond and Villain just seem absurd! And honestly EON has to be blamed for following up OHMSS with DAF. If the next film wasn't going to be serious and ruthless than it should have featured another villain!
Now that intelligent thought deserves a thread to itself. "Bond Films" by Jim Smith & Stephen Lavington (Virgin, 2002) suggests some others- FYEO's theme is "the pain of growing old and the pitfalls of becoming obsessed by revenge", while LALD is "about 'masks' and personae, in essence".
Anyone interested in following this one up?
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
We are all anxiously waiting: what is the verdict?
For me, DAF is kind of a guilty pleasure. It is in terms of pure quality probably the worst movie. Yet, I have watched it quite a few times and DO enjoy it. It could not be further away from FRWL than anything else (funny that there are only 8 years in between these movies, that is nothing these days!) but still it is fun. In a weird way.
1. Connery 2. Craig 3. Brosnan 4. Dalton 5. Lazenby 6. Moore