Going to catch OHMSS at the Vue Croydon. Having missed the Prince Charles screening through no fault of mine, I am rather looking forward to this. Currently I am one of only 6 guests.
Been listening to John Barry's OST in prep for OHMSS tonight. Superb soundtrack. Am really looking forward to this, although Vue @ Croydon isn't half as fun sounding as the Prince Chales Leicester Square!
I thoroughly enjoyed OHMSS, this evening, at my regular Vue where the number of patrons for these screenings, though still in single figures, is stable.
This is my third big screen viewing of OHMSS. The first two were both at the BFI Southbank. I remember the first, many years ago, when that cinema was still called The National Film Theatre. The print shown then was one which cut out the whole of the Gumbold's safe sequence and some of the Campbell material; I remember there being audible dismay among the audience when we realised. No such issue this evening, thankfully!
Until the first ski chase, the Fleming-faithful OHMSS is a stylish curiosity of a Bond film, and from then on it's consistently superb. Diana Rigg is excellent, of course. Lazenby comes across decently even in big screen viewings; his inexperience as an actor is evident but he expressively conveys a degree of vulnerability in Bond which is right for the story. Savalas has gravitas and his rich voice is certainly an asset in the eerie hypnotism sequences. (And it's heartening to think that Dame Joanna Lumley is still OHMS this year, preparing to join Sky's UK team of presenters to cover the Queen's Platinum Jubilee!)
I was reminded this evening of how, for me, Akiko Wakabayashi owns the titles sequence, with a nostalgic flashback resolving into her enchanting smile - but also how, in the end titles, a swinging, triumphalist arrangement of the Bond theme seems jarring against the image of the bullet hole in the windscreen in the wake of Tracy's death.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Thanks @Shady Tree I too caught Vue #6 and thoroughly enjoyed OHMSS. The movie works so well, I feel, because it decides to take itself seriously, which is how both DN and FRWL staked out the early success for Bond. In fact some of the supposed humorous aspects simply don't work in this film - it might be Lazenby's delivery, sometimes the lines simply are not necessary - and it is much better when playing things straight. I find Diana Rigg constantly a revelation as a Bond heroine. Has anyone ever come closer to encapsulating Fleming's 'bird with a wing down' ? The scene in the barn where Rigg removes her hat, all soft focus, and she and Lazenby cast knowing glances at each other - not in any saucy Sir Roger style, or any flagrant testosterone fuelled Connery manner - glances that demonstrate the couple's character's love for each other, their mutual need and appreciation, is brilliant and never been better - not even when CraigBond goes all mushy regretting his past with whatshername in NTTD. Lovely stuff. It's a great espionage movie on any level, Bond or otherwise.
About Vue: the houselights went up during the cable car stunt; no one moved a muscle so I saved the day and forfeited Blofeld's farewell to his Angles of Death to let the staff know. The lights went down again about five minutes later. Bit pony really.
About OHMSS: Two points only on snippets I'd never noticed before:
When Bond is in Berne and raiding the safe, he's being assisted by Bernard Horsfall as Campbell. Horsfall's character is never named. he delivers a safe cracking gadget of immense size via a winch from a construction site. The site is marked with big posters reading DRACO CONSTRUCTION. So, here's the thing. This is part of Draco's legitimate arm, but is this coincidence or is Draco aware of Bond's intention and organised Campbell and the safe cracking device himself. Is Campbell Draco's man, not MI6? This would make sense of the line from Tracy "Just one winter sportsman and Papa told me where to find him [OO7]" because Draco has asked Campbell to keep an eye on Bond, to make sure perhaps that he doesn't get in trouble and die, thus threatening the happiness of his daughter? In the novel, I know Campbell was one of Bond's colleagues, but is the intention different in the film - was there an editing decision taken to remove this explanation from the movie, perhaps because of time constraints?
In the proposal scene, Bond and Tracy are in a barn lying on a bed of hay and blankets and big coats. I'm not sure how warm it is. There's no fire and its blowing a howling snowy gale outside. There are animals inside, so some natural heat no doubt. Bond is still in his ski gear. But Tracy has removed her clothes except for the big fur coat and her knickers. If you look closely you'll see a long shot of the two of them in an embrace, Rigg's right leg is raised in the classic nude repose and her black underwear is clearly visible on her hip. She's certainly not wearing the ski pants. When Bond / Lazenby places her on the hay bed, her legs and feet are bare. This seems as if Tracy is really going for the shared bodily warmth solution Anya and OO7 discuss in TSWLM, but her man has chosen to be a bit less enthusiastic - he did say he was distracted, but hell, I'd be distracted too if Diana Rigg was lying next to me wearing only a fur coat and panties...
I'd have been annoyed if the house lights had gone up where I was!
I like your theory about 'Campbell', though I prefer the implication that he's a Secret Service agent, the usual assumption about him. Even if we disregard the novel, Campbell's quintessentially Brit persona when interacting with Grunther and Blofeld seems to make that the better fit - though we know, of course, that this is merely his cover (and you might argue that Tracy herself seems 'quintessentially Brit' - and she's Draco's daughter!)
I'd say that the photostat/ safecracking machine hoisted into Gumbold's office looks like the sort of device Q Branch would provide, supporting the assumption that Campbell is OHMSS - although, on the other hand, Bond has no official role in Operation Bedlam at that stage so I suppose there could be a question about the basis of the back-up he's getting then. (If it's Q's machine, its very bulkiness seems to run counter to Q's advocacy of miniaturisation in the odd little scene with which the movie begins.)
Anyway - or either way - we can agree that it adds to the film's relatively realistic and intriguing take on espionage that two spies on mission in the field, Bond and 'Campbell', operate as a team without ever being seen to talk to each other.
On the big screen, I registered, like you, how, in the barn, Diana Rigg's bare hip and leg, with the black underwear, are suggestively on show but in the context of a scene about genuine lovemaking between friends - as you say, not for puerile effect, in this case, or to create any carnal sense of eroticism.
Whereas the film is dated irredeemably by the ethnic stereotyping in some of the choices about what to show the girls eating in the overhead shots at dinner at Piz Gloria.
By the way, whoever arranges cushions on beds at the Hotel Palacio Estoril seems to be moonlighting as a SPECTRE housekeeper at Piz Gloria, too - because they arrange them in exactly the same style on the bed in Bond's apartment there!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
I'd say that the photostat/ safecracking machine hoisted into Gumbold's office looks like the sort of device Q Branch would provide, supporting the assumption that Campbell is OHMSS - although, on the other hand, Bond has no official role in Operation Bedlam at that stage so I suppose there could be a question about the basis of the back-up he's getting then. (If it's Q's machine, its very bulkiness seems to run counter to Q's advocacy of miniaturisation in the odd little scene with which the movie begins.)
but didn't Q provide a pocket sized safe cracking gadget in the previous film? in which case this oversized bulk model is what normal folks who aren't Q branch would come up with to do the same job.
I always assume everything is the same as in the book unless explicitly stated otherwise. but sometimes there are very subtle clues the film version is not identical, and this theory Campbell works for Draco not MI6 is a new one that may actually be more logical for all we can see on screen.
I never noticed the glimpse of black panties, shall have to watch more closely next time. Along with Honor Blackman, I think Diana Rigg is the only classic era BondGirl to not do a swimsuit or underwear scene, I always assumed those two actresses were big enough names they didnt need to. The things you see when watching on the big screen! you guys are lucky to have the experience
Fair point about the dimensions of the safe-cracking/ photostat combi unit compared with the pocket device used in YOLT, but we do have to take into account variant shifts in 'rules of engagement with reality' between different fantasy thrillers - even between consecutive films in the same franchise, given that it's the 60s!
Still, it's an intriguing question as to whether 'Campbell' could be one of Draco's men. I like the ambiguity.
If we'd had the Craig-Bond writers of today on board, or maybe Raymond Benson, they'd probably have ret-conned Campbell posthumously, in DAF, with a revelation that he'd been Draco's son, and Tracy's brother, all along... :-) :-) :-)
If I may indulge some further whimsical retconning: Draco complains early in OHMSS that some of his men have recently defected to SPECTRE. I'm wondering whether Terry Mountain can be counted as a late defector, after the raid on Piz Gloria and Tracy's wedding... because he turns up on Blofeld's team in the PTS of DAF, only to have a series of surgical scalpels thrown into him by Connery. He's on guard duty for Charles Gray alongside the middle aged chap with the Wolverine-style sideburns, the SPECTRE veteran last seen getting brained with a bell by Lazenby in OHMSS. Maybe an ill-fated turncoat Tel had never properly forgiven Bond for half drowning him on the beach in the OHMSS PTS... or maybe it's just that he was tempted to defect because he liked the idea of wearing a black helmet with a lightning flash design on it :-) :-) :-) At any rate, before flipping outright he could have been the mole in Draco's organisation who gave Savalas and Ilse Steppat the info they needed to perform their hit on Bond and Tracy...
My ticket for next Saturday's DAF is already booked :-)
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Seeing the Bond films at Vue in chronological order, at the rate of one a week, does bring into focus certain relationships between them. Such as the following.
"Ravishing red heads... bronzed brunettes... honey blondes... the Bond women, OO7 style!" Thus proclaimed TB's original trailer (not screened at Vue).
While YOLT missed out on honey blondes, its ravishing red head, Helga Brandt, was clearly modelled on TB's Fiona Volpe; both are buxom, flame-haired SPECTRE assassins, tangling with Bond.
I'd always thought of OHMSS's Fraulein Bunt as a Klebb type; yet it struck me on Saturday, revisiting OHMSS just a week after seeing YOLT again, that Ilse Steppat might also have put audiences in mind of Karin Dor. Had only Number 11 pleased Blofeld better and avoided his piranha pool, she'd have grown into a ringer for the frumpy Fraulein in middle age. Or put another way, Bunt looks as if she might once have exuded exactly Helga's glamour.
So now I'm seeing a lineage of looks between Fiona and Helga and Irma, as much as between Rosa and Irma...
What's more, Irma's line, "The Count believes very strongly in undisturbed rest" reminds me of Helga's line, "Mr Osato believes in a healthy chest." But whereas Helga is sexually suggestive, Irma is sexually repressive; Irma restores undisturbed rest for Blofeld's 'Angels of Death' by arranging a concussive end to Bond's bed-hopping capers at Piz Gloria...
Oh, those daughters - and matrons - of SPECTRE!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Wow, amazing find! This most definitely deserves to be shown elsewhere. Stumbled upon this post rather by accident, as being able to watch the old Bond movies in the cinema again is a privilege I unfortunately cannnot enjoy over here 😌
"I'm afraid I'm a complicated woman. "
"- That is something to be afraid of."
It was wonderful to enjoy DAF on the big screen again this evening, at Vue. For me, this was the one where it all started - my first Bond movie - so I can't really be objective about it; I love it! I first saw it on general release in 1972; then again in a double bill with 'Gold', with Roger Moore, in either 1976 or 1977; and two or three times in the cinema since then, in retrospectives at the NFT/BFI Southbank.
My best attempt to put a reasoned case for DAF's appeal is here:
That's a very thoughtful review from a few years back. Thanks for re-sharing @Shady Tree . I particularly enjoyed that you mentioned how everything in this film is suspiciously fake - it is a sadly overlooked aspect of DAF that it constantly plays with our expectations of reality, reminding us ever so gently that we are in a cinema and should not be taking this film seriously. I too find much to enjoy in DAF, but sadly couldn't attend yesterday's showing, and while I don't believe it to be a top Bond, it is certainly my pet Bond - watching it always cheers me up. The script has some of the best dialogue in the series. 😆😆😆 I won't go on, thanks again.
One thought I had when watching DAF again on Saturday is how Connery's slightly bloated, more jowelly look is mitigated against, maybe even embraced, by casting which surrounds him with a number of paunchy men... so that he doesn't look too much out of place! His extra pounds lend a dimension to Tiffany's gag which goes beyond the bawdy: "there's a lot more to you than I'd expected". But there's also Norman Burton as Leiter; Putter Smith as Kidd; E J 'Tex' Young as the Craps dealer; Jay Sarno as the sideshow barker; Leroy E Hollis as the Sheriff; David Healy as the Vanderburg launch director; Frank Olegario as the gambler in the Fez, Janos Kurucz as Metz's aide "and counting..." Perhaps it's Ed Call as Maxie whose facial flab (patted by Plenty) is the most significant because he, in a sense, represents a section of the audience: an overweight, ordinary joe who spectacularly fails to pull the kind of woman that Bond typically walks away with (i.e. Plenty herself, his fulsome friend undeterred, in turn, by Connery's OO7-style paunch)!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
I enjoyed LALD at Vue this evening. This was the first time I'd watched it again on the big screen since its general release, when, as it seemed to me, the whole world was crowding the foyer of my local cinema, in queues to see Roger Moore step into Sean Connery's shoes.
This time, of course, the rest of the nation's attention was elsewhere, apparently focussed on Duran Duran and Alicia Keys performing outside Buckingham Palace - *not* their Bond songs - and, of course, on Ben Whishaw's voicing of an iconic British character - *not* Q! It occurs to me that, if only Vue's Bond season had started a couple of weeks earlier, the Queen's Platinum Jubilee weekend would have seen a screening of TSWLM - which doubtless would have been just as poorly attended (there were only two of us in the cinema where I was this evening) but which would, at least, have come complete with its Silver Jubilee-themed climax to the PTS (that parachute)!
LALD's ethnic stereotyping dates the film awfully - it's white folks' idea of blaxploitation - but, as Bond films go, it feels breezy and fun-filled. If one ignores the extent to which the voodoo dancing scenes echo Eon's embarrassing 'Call Me Bwana', there's a freshness to Moore's inaugural outing as Bond.
Moore fits right in (bawdy pun intended) to OO7's world: the Saint in New York? Yaphet Kotto is imposing as the villain, and Tommy Lane as Adam is my favourite of LALD's henchmen - less cartoonish than the others and acting as if he might really have stepped out of the harder-edged worlds of 'Shaft' or 'Foxy Brown'. Incidentally, in a big screen viewing the nicotine line above Jane Seymour's upper lip really shows!
I won't be around next Saturday for TMWTGG - sadly, as it's one of my favourites - but I have seen it twice on the big screen in recent years: in an original, fading print at the BFI Southbank and in a digital restoration at the Prince Charles.
Having now caught the first eight Bonds in an unbroken run of weekly screenings, I can happily say it's been an exhilarating retrospective so far!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
The last I saw there was Thunderball, a few weeks ago, that had a full half hour of adverts and trailers beforehand so the film didn't start until 6.30pm. This time, I arrived in the cinema for 6.05pm. There were a couple of adverts then a 60th Anniversary Bond montage trailer that I hadn't seen before, which was great. Followed by the usual Vue 'get ready to enjoy' sequence with John Boyega, and bang the film started promptly around 6.15pm.
As I commented after Thunderball, watching these classic Bond films on the big screen that we've seen tens of times before on TV/DVD, really hones the senses and obviously holds your complete attention for the full 2 hours. If watching at home, I would be pausing for natural breaks, speaking to Mrs TRK, perhaps distracted by WA messages on my phone, and perhaps checking how to get my hands on Frank Foster shirts or vintage Gucci belts. But when you're sat there with the big screen in front of you and the surround sound (actually too loud and piercing for me at times. Perhaps I'm getting old, but the Solex scene toward the end was shrilling on the ears!) It all creates a completely immersive experience and almost a new appreciation for the films. Again, you always notice things that you have missed in the past. (I honestly can't remember if I saw Sonny Caldinez body floating in frozen liquid nitrogen in the electrolysis tanks, before!)
RM, CL and HV are all great and MA and BE both look even more stunning on the big screen.
For anyone yet to attend these screenings, I would highly recommend them. I'm not around for TSWLM next Sunday, but hoping to catch MR the week after.
I had social commitments so I missed Goldrn Gun last week, which curiously I had a hankering to see despite my lack of enthusiasm for it, but I'm making it up with a trip to Vue Valley Park for TSWLM. Someone's already booked my fav seat so I'm a row further back this time out.
A great night out at the movies with TSWLM! There were more people at my local Vue for this screening than for any of the others I've attended in this season so far, so things are looking up...
"Bond and Beyond"? TSWLM is not a film that's ever greater than the sum of its parts, and it takes a rather 'checklist' approach to doing Bond's 'greatest hits' at scale, but it's certainly enormous fun. I was surprised to find that the ski chase of the PTS still sends shivers down my spine when enjoyed on the big screen. Watching the Egyptian and Sardinian sequences feels satisfyingly like the movie equivalent of leafing through the pages of a glossy 70s travel brochure, and the action staged on the tanker set is spectacular.
One notable seventies feature: on the big screen, like Jane Seymour in LALD, the beautiful but one-note Barbara Bach is seen in some shots to have a nicotine line above her upper lip. The same is true of Britt Ekland in TMWTGG, if I recall rightly, though sadly I missed that screening last week.
On a personal note, I met John Salthouse, the ginger crew member of TSWLM's HMS Ranger, a couple of times in the early nineties, in an unrelated context. It amused me this evening to see him again at the centre of an opening shot on the submarine after the gunbarrel, and later charging around the Liparus with his crew mates, to the catchy disco beat of 'Bond 77'!
As for Roger Moore, the current edition of 'Sight And Sound' magazine (Vol. 32 issue 6) includes the following comment about him, in Robert Hanks's review of the latest bluray release of 'The Persuaders!' I was reminded of Hanks's comment when watching TSWLM this evening, as it definitely applies here:
"Moore's range as an actor was, as he happily admitted, not wide, but within his limits he is impeccable: terrific comic timing, conviction even when confronted with the most preposterous scripts and absolute confidence in front of the camera."
After a longer than usual wait between Bond films, part of the joy of TSWLM is that it confirmed Moore as a OO7 able to thrive in the series across films made by more than one director (from Guy Hamilton to Lewis Gilbert): Moore, by now, was assuredly James Bond, just as Connery had made the part his own during the sixties (straddling Terence Young and Guy Hamilton, before zoning out in his one Lewis Gilbert Bond).
With hindsight, in the early scenes of TSWLM, Moore's ownership of OO7 - he's truly 'Commander' Bond, this time - is consolidated by a congregation of 'alumni' supporting actors in addition to the series regulars, M, Q and Monepenny: i.e. we have the reappearance, in new roles, of actors memorable from the series' past - Walter Gotell and George Baker - intersecting with an introduction of other character actors who (like Gotell) would figure significantly as support in the series' future - Geoffrey Keen and Robert Brown. This, sort of, makes it seem like a belated coronation for Moore as Bond, a feeling paralleled by the significance of TSWLM and its success to Cubby Broccoli: this was Broccoli's first Bond film without a shared credit with former partner Harry Saltzman. In the process, Moore's Bond becomes something of an 'establishment' figure, with occasional shades of Lord Brett Sinclair. Admiral Hargreaves recognises Bond from The Ark Royal, and Bond's on first name terms with "Freddy", the Minister of Defence.
I'm all set up for 'Moonraker' next week, and a welcome return for John Barry to the winning formula. Meanwhile, I'm dipping back into Christopher Wood's novelisation, 'James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me' for a different sort of Bond experience, a Fleming pastiche with a more sadistic edge than the Fleming Estate would probably ever licence in original Bond novels today (and including the literary return of a certain General G far nastier than the movies' avuncular Gogol...)
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Thanks for that @Shady Tree I too noticed how many more people were at my screening. TSWLM seems to tick all the right boxes. There were even some teenagers seated at the front munching popcorn and commenting on the silly incidents.
I thought the movie was a bit like a comic book at the start, very incident orientated and some of the humour and the action (PTS aside) seemed a bit heavy handed. It's interesting you're reading Wood's novelisation as I believe it gives more depth to the action we see on screen, depth which is entirely lacking. It's all surface gloss, excepting perhaps Anya's love affair and revenge notions. I enjoy the briefing, but I dislike M not being there; the expansion of the MI6 team is not something I enjoyed then or enjoy now. The field trip to the desert for a pointless crap of information is borderline insulting to Arabs and women alike.
The villains in this one are given no decent introduction or opportunity to explain themselves. Jaws kinda doesn't neeed it, but Naomi is - well, what exactly? Very underwritten. I think she was so insignificant Wood's novel removes her completely. The meeting between Bond and Stromberg is a mere trifle compared to the confrontations between OO7 and Blofeld, Goldfinger, Dr No, Mr Big and Scaramanga. While I adore Barbara Bach, who looks as if she's dropped in from an episode of Charlie's Angels, spectacular and spectacularly vacant all at once, I find this rather suits her role as a devious KGB operative. She is inscrutable because of it. Moore, an actor who is much better at developing the performance of his co-stars than he's given credit for, allows her to shine in their scenes together. In fact Bach is probably better than Moore in the scenes at the Mojave Club, the Karnak episode, the felucca 'seduction', the Egypt briefing as well as her own introductory scenes. Thinsg only start going astray in Sardinia. I still can't figure out what kind of train journey goes from Egypt to Sardinia. Later on Bond says he was skiing three weeks ago - THREE WEEKS ! What the hell's been happening in those three weeks ???? Maybe they took a train via Istanbul and the Orient Express or something... Great fight with Jaws though. Disappointingly she's virtually written out of the script after she exits the Liparus. Stromberg ties her to a chair and says "You have a propensity to violence..." and I wonder if there was a deleted scene where she fought Stromberg's guards and attempted to escape Atlantis [her outfit has changed also] maybe she was supposed to be having dinner with Stromberg who offered her the Queen-ship of the Undersea Kingdom and she went all Diana Rigg on the bad guy and tried to kill him??? I'd love to know if I'm correct; does anyone have any knowledge of scenes excised from the screenplay? In fact, when Bond and Anya investigate Atlantis in the Lotus sub, they are able to view a fully manned control centre with a globe similar to the one on the Liparus. What happened to that? Far better one feels, if she could have been with OO7 all along on the Liparus, maybe she could have reprogrammed the submarine attack coordinates. At this point the movie is really back to being a boy's own adventure.
I don't think TSWLM has aged as well as some of the Bond's which came before, although when I reread my review
I see I expressed the same convictions and dubiousities as I do here, yet at the time, I rated it very highly. I am fighting with myself over this one. In terms of a product, it is certainly a successful and stunning looking entry, but it is a little corny and the repetitions from past Bond films - especially YOLT - are obvious. I think it is worth remembering these films were not repeated on TV every week or dissected by watching DVDs over and over, so these sort of copy-cat occurrences were no bother in 1977. For all that, I did enjoy sections of the film immensely. The film is rather jigsaw-like in construction. It doesn't feel very organic, and the incidents don't sit well next to each other. For all its deficiencies, this can't be said of MR.
thanks for the detailed analyses of the Spy Who Loved Me fellers! that was my first BondFilm ever, and I still wish all films looked like that, so good to see it given extra attention. and I'm not surprised it attracted a bigger audience than some of the earlier films.
I see what you mean about it not being more than the sum of its parts. but what parts, all scaled up and polished and they fit together almost seamlessly despite maybe a lack of organic logic. More recent films have a few good parts too, mostly borrowed from earlier films, but surrounded by lots of bloat, they dont even add up to a decent sum.
in the book Stromberg intends to breed Anya and Jaws as parents to a new human race after destroying all the surface dwellers. the characters are all given a chapters' backstory, the way Fleming wouldve done. I don't remember Nomi in the book, now you mention it. I only just realised in my last viewing she is introduced in the same scene as Stomberg and Jaws near the start of the film, but doesn't say anything in that scene, and doesn't reappear until much later in the film.
maybe they took a train from Cairo to Tunis, then island hopped by ferry, first to Sicily then Sardinia? thatd be more direct than going round the east end of the Mediterranean, all across Turkey, the Balkans and Northern Italy, at least on a map. No idea how those connections work in real life. Libya was probably a hassle to travel through in those days.
Maybe Naomi was Jaws' original breeder and Anya becomes her replacement? I don't remember that story line from the novel, but it sounds like a Christopher Wood idea. And both women look similar: buxom, tanned, long limbed, long dark hair. This really did need an explanation. I also hadn't notice that Naomi escorts the two scientists into Stromberg's dining salon, and promptly exists without a sound. TSWLM, despite its rollicking reputation, does have a tendency to not explore its narrative beyond the barest of bones, yet it includes stuff like the inconsequential fight at the pyramids, the scene with Hossein which I already mentioned or the flirting with the hotel receptionist. This might be because a dozen scriptwriters had a hand in it and Wood / Maibaum had to cram in the scenes Broccoli didn't want to lose, while Wood himself probably wanted to stamp his own mark (I again mention the Hossein scene; quite frankly one of the most un-PC scenes ever in a Bond film, even given it was from 1977)
Sumptious though it is, I have to agree with @chrisno1 about the cheese (fondue?) of the Egyptian sequences and the dated forms of sexism/ xenophobia in some of it: the scene between Moore and Edward de Souza is like Frankie Howard without the laughs - probably down to Wood (phnarr phnarr!) But I disagree that Ms Bach betters Moore's acting anywhere: he's hands down more accomplished, and never more so than during Bond's and Anya's exchange at the bar in the Mojave Club - especially with that sidelong glint in his eye as he walks away from her, rattled by her apparent insensitivity.
I share the enthusiasm of @caractacus potts As the action moves to Sardinia, I'd say that the whole Lotus Esprit sequence is the most exciting, wittiest 'mid-film' set piece in a Bond movie since the ski chases in OHMSS. I love the way that one element after another is introduced to the sequence, from the pursuit by the motor cyclist with the missile-laden side car (as Hamlisch briefly tributes George Martin's LALD score) to the Key Stone Cops-style comedy in the car chase with Jaws; from the helicopter action with Caroline Munro squeezing every second of femme fatale sexiness out of her limited screen time (as the sfx of raking machine gunfire mixes with a stop/ start use of the Bee Gees-inflected 'Bond 77') to the surprise submersible conversion of the Lotus; from the TB-throwback underwater action (as Hamlisch adds to 'Bond 77' some Barry-esque wah-wah brass, for extra pzaz) to the images of eerie marine beauty and the comic pay-off with the Lotus emerging on the beach (cheekily alluding to 'Jaws', while the classic guitar riff of the Bond theme rounds it all off): it's relentlessly sublime; Bond for the Spielberg generation. As Bond himself puts it, "That's what we've come to see!"
A final note from me... By contrast with Gert Frobe in GF, Curt Jurgens is rotund in a way that doesn't work well for his character's image: the cut of his jacket makes it look more like a smock!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
@Shady Tree I like your analysis of the big car chase as music video, that refreshes it for me. I'd gotten to thinking it was too much about the gadgets to be a decent car-chase, and Kingsley Amis wrote a review calling out all the improbable contingencies, that made me think less of it. Now you've pointed out how perfectly edited and scored that sequence is, who cares of it doesn't make sense? It is perfect at being exactly what it is.
By coincidence(?), there's a lengthy article in the Telegraph today that includes some behind-the-scenes info I've never seen before. Because its behind a dastardly paywall, I posted the entire text over in the Pros and Cons thread.
Have I completely imagined this, but I'm sure there was footage released of Roger Moore's injury when the stunt went wrong in TSWLM? I feel like I've seen a video of it but can't place where - it doesn't look like it's on YouTube. Any ideas?
Comments
Going to catch OHMSS at the Vue Croydon. Having missed the Prince Charles screening through no fault of mine, I am rather looking forward to this. Currently I am one of only 6 guests.
Yikes, I booked in for Valley Park for one of the upcoming ones! 😬
Been listening to John Barry's OST in prep for OHMSS tonight. Superb soundtrack. Am really looking forward to this, although Vue @ Croydon isn't half as fun sounding as the Prince Chales Leicester Square!
I thoroughly enjoyed OHMSS, this evening, at my regular Vue where the number of patrons for these screenings, though still in single figures, is stable.
This is my third big screen viewing of OHMSS. The first two were both at the BFI Southbank. I remember the first, many years ago, when that cinema was still called The National Film Theatre. The print shown then was one which cut out the whole of the Gumbold's safe sequence and some of the Campbell material; I remember there being audible dismay among the audience when we realised. No such issue this evening, thankfully!
Until the first ski chase, the Fleming-faithful OHMSS is a stylish curiosity of a Bond film, and from then on it's consistently superb. Diana Rigg is excellent, of course. Lazenby comes across decently even in big screen viewings; his inexperience as an actor is evident but he expressively conveys a degree of vulnerability in Bond which is right for the story. Savalas has gravitas and his rich voice is certainly an asset in the eerie hypnotism sequences. (And it's heartening to think that Dame Joanna Lumley is still OHMS this year, preparing to join Sky's UK team of presenters to cover the Queen's Platinum Jubilee!)
I was reminded this evening of how, for me, Akiko Wakabayashi owns the titles sequence, with a nostalgic flashback resolving into her enchanting smile - but also how, in the end titles, a swinging, triumphalist arrangement of the Bond theme seems jarring against the image of the bullet hole in the windscreen in the wake of Tracy's death.
Thanks @Shady Tree I too caught Vue #6 and thoroughly enjoyed OHMSS. The movie works so well, I feel, because it decides to take itself seriously, which is how both DN and FRWL staked out the early success for Bond. In fact some of the supposed humorous aspects simply don't work in this film - it might be Lazenby's delivery, sometimes the lines simply are not necessary - and it is much better when playing things straight. I find Diana Rigg constantly a revelation as a Bond heroine. Has anyone ever come closer to encapsulating Fleming's 'bird with a wing down' ? The scene in the barn where Rigg removes her hat, all soft focus, and she and Lazenby cast knowing glances at each other - not in any saucy Sir Roger style, or any flagrant testosterone fuelled Connery manner - glances that demonstrate the couple's character's love for each other, their mutual need and appreciation, is brilliant and never been better - not even when CraigBond goes all mushy regretting his past with whatshername in NTTD. Lovely stuff. It's a great espionage movie on any level, Bond or otherwise.
About Vue: the houselights went up during the cable car stunt; no one moved a muscle so I saved the day and forfeited Blofeld's farewell to his Angles of Death to let the staff know. The lights went down again about five minutes later. Bit pony really.
About OHMSS: Two points only on snippets I'd never noticed before:
@chrisno1
I'd have been annoyed if the house lights had gone up where I was!
I like your theory about 'Campbell', though I prefer the implication that he's a Secret Service agent, the usual assumption about him. Even if we disregard the novel, Campbell's quintessentially Brit persona when interacting with Grunther and Blofeld seems to make that the better fit - though we know, of course, that this is merely his cover (and you might argue that Tracy herself seems 'quintessentially Brit' - and she's Draco's daughter!)
I'd say that the photostat/ safecracking machine hoisted into Gumbold's office looks like the sort of device Q Branch would provide, supporting the assumption that Campbell is OHMSS - although, on the other hand, Bond has no official role in Operation Bedlam at that stage so I suppose there could be a question about the basis of the back-up he's getting then. (If it's Q's machine, its very bulkiness seems to run counter to Q's advocacy of miniaturisation in the odd little scene with which the movie begins.)
Anyway - or either way - we can agree that it adds to the film's relatively realistic and intriguing take on espionage that two spies on mission in the field, Bond and 'Campbell', operate as a team without ever being seen to talk to each other.
On the big screen, I registered, like you, how, in the barn, Diana Rigg's bare hip and leg, with the black underwear, are suggestively on show but in the context of a scene about genuine lovemaking between friends - as you say, not for puerile effect, in this case, or to create any carnal sense of eroticism.
Whereas the film is dated irredeemably by the ethnic stereotyping in some of the choices about what to show the girls eating in the overhead shots at dinner at Piz Gloria.
By the way, whoever arranges cushions on beds at the Hotel Palacio Estoril seems to be moonlighting as a SPECTRE housekeeper at Piz Gloria, too - because they arrange them in exactly the same style on the bed in Bond's apartment there!
shady says
I'd say that the photostat/ safecracking machine hoisted into Gumbold's office looks like the sort of device Q Branch would provide, supporting the assumption that Campbell is OHMSS - although, on the other hand, Bond has no official role in Operation Bedlam at that stage so I suppose there could be a question about the basis of the back-up he's getting then. (If it's Q's machine, its very bulkiness seems to run counter to Q's advocacy of miniaturisation in the odd little scene with which the movie begins.)
but didn't Q provide a pocket sized safe cracking gadget in the previous film? in which case this oversized bulk model is what normal folks who aren't Q branch would come up with to do the same job.
I always assume everything is the same as in the book unless explicitly stated otherwise. but sometimes there are very subtle clues the film version is not identical, and this theory Campbell works for Draco not MI6 is a new one that may actually be more logical for all we can see on screen.
I never noticed the glimpse of black panties, shall have to watch more closely next time. Along with Honor Blackman, I think Diana Rigg is the only classic era BondGirl to not do a swimsuit or underwear scene, I always assumed those two actresses were big enough names they didnt need to. The things you see when watching on the big screen! you guys are lucky to have the experience
Fair point about the dimensions of the safe-cracking/ photostat combi unit compared with the pocket device used in YOLT, but we do have to take into account variant shifts in 'rules of engagement with reality' between different fantasy thrillers - even between consecutive films in the same franchise, given that it's the 60s!
Still, it's an intriguing question as to whether 'Campbell' could be one of Draco's men. I like the ambiguity.
If we'd had the Craig-Bond writers of today on board, or maybe Raymond Benson, they'd probably have ret-conned Campbell posthumously, in DAF, with a revelation that he'd been Draco's son, and Tracy's brother, all along... :-) :-) :-)
If I may indulge some further whimsical retconning: Draco complains early in OHMSS that some of his men have recently defected to SPECTRE. I'm wondering whether Terry Mountain can be counted as a late defector, after the raid on Piz Gloria and Tracy's wedding... because he turns up on Blofeld's team in the PTS of DAF, only to have a series of surgical scalpels thrown into him by Connery. He's on guard duty for Charles Gray alongside the middle aged chap with the Wolverine-style sideburns, the SPECTRE veteran last seen getting brained with a bell by Lazenby in OHMSS. Maybe an ill-fated turncoat Tel had never properly forgiven Bond for half drowning him on the beach in the OHMSS PTS... or maybe it's just that he was tempted to defect because he liked the idea of wearing a black helmet with a lightning flash design on it :-) :-) :-) At any rate, before flipping outright he could have been the mole in Draco's organisation who gave Savalas and Ilse Steppat the info they needed to perform their hit on Bond and Tracy...
My ticket for next Saturday's DAF is already booked :-)
🤣 very good, I haven't decided on Diamonds yet ...
Seeing the Bond films at Vue in chronological order, at the rate of one a week, does bring into focus certain relationships between them. Such as the following.
"Ravishing red heads... bronzed brunettes... honey blondes... the Bond women, OO7 style!" Thus proclaimed TB's original trailer (not screened at Vue).
While YOLT missed out on honey blondes, its ravishing red head, Helga Brandt, was clearly modelled on TB's Fiona Volpe; both are buxom, flame-haired SPECTRE assassins, tangling with Bond.
I'd always thought of OHMSS's Fraulein Bunt as a Klebb type; yet it struck me on Saturday, revisiting OHMSS just a week after seeing YOLT again, that Ilse Steppat might also have put audiences in mind of Karin Dor. Had only Number 11 pleased Blofeld better and avoided his piranha pool, she'd have grown into a ringer for the frumpy Fraulein in middle age. Or put another way, Bunt looks as if she might once have exuded exactly Helga's glamour.
So now I'm seeing a lineage of looks between Fiona and Helga and Irma, as much as between Rosa and Irma...
What's more, Irma's line, "The Count believes very strongly in undisturbed rest" reminds me of Helga's line, "Mr Osato believes in a healthy chest." But whereas Helga is sexually suggestive, Irma is sexually repressive; Irma restores undisturbed rest for Blofeld's 'Angels of Death' by arranging a concussive end to Bond's bed-hopping capers at Piz Gloria...
Oh, those daughters - and matrons - of SPECTRE!
Wow, amazing find! This most definitely deserves to be shown elsewhere. Stumbled upon this post rather by accident, as being able to watch the old Bond movies in the cinema again is a privilege I unfortunately cannnot enjoy over here 😌
"- That is something to be afraid of."
Also on Bond Twitter - a deleted scene from the final reel of OHMSS... @Ornithologist
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I've never seen that OHMSS scene. Thanks.
It was wonderful to enjoy DAF on the big screen again this evening, at Vue. For me, this was the one where it all started - my first Bond movie - so I can't really be objective about it; I love it! I first saw it on general release in 1972; then again in a double bill with 'Gold', with Roger Moore, in either 1976 or 1977; and two or three times in the cinema since then, in retrospectives at the NFT/BFI Southbank.
My best attempt to put a reasoned case for DAF's appeal is here:
https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/767494#Comment_767494
That's a very thoughtful review from a few years back. Thanks for re-sharing @Shady Tree . I particularly enjoyed that you mentioned how everything in this film is suspiciously fake - it is a sadly overlooked aspect of DAF that it constantly plays with our expectations of reality, reminding us ever so gently that we are in a cinema and should not be taking this film seriously. I too find much to enjoy in DAF, but sadly couldn't attend yesterday's showing, and while I don't believe it to be a top Bond, it is certainly my pet Bond - watching it always cheers me up. The script has some of the best dialogue in the series. 😆😆😆 I won't go on, thanks again.
Thanks @chrisno1
One thought I had when watching DAF again on Saturday is how Connery's slightly bloated, more jowelly look is mitigated against, maybe even embraced, by casting which surrounds him with a number of paunchy men... so that he doesn't look too much out of place! His extra pounds lend a dimension to Tiffany's gag which goes beyond the bawdy: "there's a lot more to you than I'd expected". But there's also Norman Burton as Leiter; Putter Smith as Kidd; E J 'Tex' Young as the Craps dealer; Jay Sarno as the sideshow barker; Leroy E Hollis as the Sheriff; David Healy as the Vanderburg launch director; Frank Olegario as the gambler in the Fez, Janos Kurucz as Metz's aide "and counting..." Perhaps it's Ed Call as Maxie whose facial flab (patted by Plenty) is the most significant because he, in a sense, represents a section of the audience: an overweight, ordinary joe who spectacularly fails to pull the kind of woman that Bond typically walks away with (i.e. Plenty herself, his fulsome friend undeterred, in turn, by Connery's OO7-style paunch)!
I enjoyed LALD at Vue this evening. This was the first time I'd watched it again on the big screen since its general release, when, as it seemed to me, the whole world was crowding the foyer of my local cinema, in queues to see Roger Moore step into Sean Connery's shoes.
This time, of course, the rest of the nation's attention was elsewhere, apparently focussed on Duran Duran and Alicia Keys performing outside Buckingham Palace - *not* their Bond songs - and, of course, on Ben Whishaw's voicing of an iconic British character - *not* Q! It occurs to me that, if only Vue's Bond season had started a couple of weeks earlier, the Queen's Platinum Jubilee weekend would have seen a screening of TSWLM - which doubtless would have been just as poorly attended (there were only two of us in the cinema where I was this evening) but which would, at least, have come complete with its Silver Jubilee-themed climax to the PTS (that parachute)!
LALD's ethnic stereotyping dates the film awfully - it's white folks' idea of blaxploitation - but, as Bond films go, it feels breezy and fun-filled. If one ignores the extent to which the voodoo dancing scenes echo Eon's embarrassing 'Call Me Bwana', there's a freshness to Moore's inaugural outing as Bond.
Moore fits right in (bawdy pun intended) to OO7's world: the Saint in New York? Yaphet Kotto is imposing as the villain, and Tommy Lane as Adam is my favourite of LALD's henchmen - less cartoonish than the others and acting as if he might really have stepped out of the harder-edged worlds of 'Shaft' or 'Foxy Brown'. Incidentally, in a big screen viewing the nicotine line above Jane Seymour's upper lip really shows!
I won't be around next Saturday for TMWTGG - sadly, as it's one of my favourites - but I have seen it twice on the big screen in recent years: in an original, fading print at the BFI Southbank and in a digital restoration at the Prince Charles.
Having now caught the first eight Bonds in an unbroken run of weekly screenings, I can happily say it's been an exhilarating retrospective so far!
Really enjoyed TMWTGG at Vue on Sunday 12th June.
The last I saw there was Thunderball, a few weeks ago, that had a full half hour of adverts and trailers beforehand so the film didn't start until 6.30pm. This time, I arrived in the cinema for 6.05pm. There were a couple of adverts then a 60th Anniversary Bond montage trailer that I hadn't seen before, which was great. Followed by the usual Vue 'get ready to enjoy' sequence with John Boyega, and bang the film started promptly around 6.15pm.
As I commented after Thunderball, watching these classic Bond films on the big screen that we've seen tens of times before on TV/DVD, really hones the senses and obviously holds your complete attention for the full 2 hours. If watching at home, I would be pausing for natural breaks, speaking to Mrs TRK, perhaps distracted by WA messages on my phone, and perhaps checking how to get my hands on Frank Foster shirts or vintage Gucci belts. But when you're sat there with the big screen in front of you and the surround sound (actually too loud and piercing for me at times. Perhaps I'm getting old, but the Solex scene toward the end was shrilling on the ears!) It all creates a completely immersive experience and almost a new appreciation for the films. Again, you always notice things that you have missed in the past. (I honestly can't remember if I saw Sonny Caldinez body floating in frozen liquid nitrogen in the electrolysis tanks, before!)
RM, CL and HV are all great and MA and BE both look even more stunning on the big screen.
For anyone yet to attend these screenings, I would highly recommend them. I'm not around for TSWLM next Sunday, but hoping to catch MR the week after.
RedKind said:
... a 60th Anniversary Bond montage trailer that I hadn't seen before, which was great
can you tell us anything more about this?
Here it is @caractacus potts 👍️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1w4sEdWsMQ
thanks for the link @The Red Kind
I note CraigBond says his hobby is "Resurrection", which provides a way for James Bond to return in Bond26 we havent thought of yet
I had social commitments so I missed Goldrn Gun last week, which curiously I had a hankering to see despite my lack of enthusiasm for it, but I'm making it up with a trip to Vue Valley Park for TSWLM. Someone's already booked my fav seat so I'm a row further back this time out.
A great night out at the movies with TSWLM! There were more people at my local Vue for this screening than for any of the others I've attended in this season so far, so things are looking up...
"Bond and Beyond"? TSWLM is not a film that's ever greater than the sum of its parts, and it takes a rather 'checklist' approach to doing Bond's 'greatest hits' at scale, but it's certainly enormous fun. I was surprised to find that the ski chase of the PTS still sends shivers down my spine when enjoyed on the big screen. Watching the Egyptian and Sardinian sequences feels satisfyingly like the movie equivalent of leafing through the pages of a glossy 70s travel brochure, and the action staged on the tanker set is spectacular.
One notable seventies feature: on the big screen, like Jane Seymour in LALD, the beautiful but one-note Barbara Bach is seen in some shots to have a nicotine line above her upper lip. The same is true of Britt Ekland in TMWTGG, if I recall rightly, though sadly I missed that screening last week.
On a personal note, I met John Salthouse, the ginger crew member of TSWLM's HMS Ranger, a couple of times in the early nineties, in an unrelated context. It amused me this evening to see him again at the centre of an opening shot on the submarine after the gunbarrel, and later charging around the Liparus with his crew mates, to the catchy disco beat of 'Bond 77'!
As for Roger Moore, the current edition of 'Sight And Sound' magazine (Vol. 32 issue 6) includes the following comment about him, in Robert Hanks's review of the latest bluray release of 'The Persuaders!' I was reminded of Hanks's comment when watching TSWLM this evening, as it definitely applies here:
"Moore's range as an actor was, as he happily admitted, not wide, but within his limits he is impeccable: terrific comic timing, conviction even when confronted with the most preposterous scripts and absolute confidence in front of the camera."
After a longer than usual wait between Bond films, part of the joy of TSWLM is that it confirmed Moore as a OO7 able to thrive in the series across films made by more than one director (from Guy Hamilton to Lewis Gilbert): Moore, by now, was assuredly James Bond, just as Connery had made the part his own during the sixties (straddling Terence Young and Guy Hamilton, before zoning out in his one Lewis Gilbert Bond).
With hindsight, in the early scenes of TSWLM, Moore's ownership of OO7 - he's truly 'Commander' Bond, this time - is consolidated by a congregation of 'alumni' supporting actors in addition to the series regulars, M, Q and Monepenny: i.e. we have the reappearance, in new roles, of actors memorable from the series' past - Walter Gotell and George Baker - intersecting with an introduction of other character actors who (like Gotell) would figure significantly as support in the series' future - Geoffrey Keen and Robert Brown. This, sort of, makes it seem like a belated coronation for Moore as Bond, a feeling paralleled by the significance of TSWLM and its success to Cubby Broccoli: this was Broccoli's first Bond film without a shared credit with former partner Harry Saltzman. In the process, Moore's Bond becomes something of an 'establishment' figure, with occasional shades of Lord Brett Sinclair. Admiral Hargreaves recognises Bond from The Ark Royal, and Bond's on first name terms with "Freddy", the Minister of Defence.
I'm all set up for 'Moonraker' next week, and a welcome return for John Barry to the winning formula. Meanwhile, I'm dipping back into Christopher Wood's novelisation, 'James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me' for a different sort of Bond experience, a Fleming pastiche with a more sadistic edge than the Fleming Estate would probably ever licence in original Bond novels today (and including the literary return of a certain General G far nastier than the movies' avuncular Gogol...)
Thanks for that @Shady Tree I too noticed how many more people were at my screening. TSWLM seems to tick all the right boxes. There were even some teenagers seated at the front munching popcorn and commenting on the silly incidents.
I thought the movie was a bit like a comic book at the start, very incident orientated and some of the humour and the action (PTS aside) seemed a bit heavy handed. It's interesting you're reading Wood's novelisation as I believe it gives more depth to the action we see on screen, depth which is entirely lacking. It's all surface gloss, excepting perhaps Anya's love affair and revenge notions. I enjoy the briefing, but I dislike M not being there; the expansion of the MI6 team is not something I enjoyed then or enjoy now. The field trip to the desert for a pointless crap of information is borderline insulting to Arabs and women alike.
The villains in this one are given no decent introduction or opportunity to explain themselves. Jaws kinda doesn't neeed it, but Naomi is - well, what exactly? Very underwritten. I think she was so insignificant Wood's novel removes her completely. The meeting between Bond and Stromberg is a mere trifle compared to the confrontations between OO7 and Blofeld, Goldfinger, Dr No, Mr Big and Scaramanga. While I adore Barbara Bach, who looks as if she's dropped in from an episode of Charlie's Angels, spectacular and spectacularly vacant all at once, I find this rather suits her role as a devious KGB operative. She is inscrutable because of it. Moore, an actor who is much better at developing the performance of his co-stars than he's given credit for, allows her to shine in their scenes together. In fact Bach is probably better than Moore in the scenes at the Mojave Club, the Karnak episode, the felucca 'seduction', the Egypt briefing as well as her own introductory scenes. Thinsg only start going astray in Sardinia. I still can't figure out what kind of train journey goes from Egypt to Sardinia. Later on Bond says he was skiing three weeks ago - THREE WEEKS ! What the hell's been happening in those three weeks ???? Maybe they took a train via Istanbul and the Orient Express or something... Great fight with Jaws though. Disappointingly she's virtually written out of the script after she exits the Liparus. Stromberg ties her to a chair and says "You have a propensity to violence..." and I wonder if there was a deleted scene where she fought Stromberg's guards and attempted to escape Atlantis [her outfit has changed also] maybe she was supposed to be having dinner with Stromberg who offered her the Queen-ship of the Undersea Kingdom and she went all Diana Rigg on the bad guy and tried to kill him??? I'd love to know if I'm correct; does anyone have any knowledge of scenes excised from the screenplay? In fact, when Bond and Anya investigate Atlantis in the Lotus sub, they are able to view a fully manned control centre with a globe similar to the one on the Liparus. What happened to that? Far better one feels, if she could have been with OO7 all along on the Liparus, maybe she could have reprogrammed the submarine attack coordinates. At this point the movie is really back to being a boy's own adventure.
I don't think TSWLM has aged as well as some of the Bond's which came before, although when I reread my review
https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/527134#Comment_527134
I see I expressed the same convictions and dubiousities as I do here, yet at the time, I rated it very highly. I am fighting with myself over this one. In terms of a product, it is certainly a successful and stunning looking entry, but it is a little corny and the repetitions from past Bond films - especially YOLT - are obvious. I think it is worth remembering these films were not repeated on TV every week or dissected by watching DVDs over and over, so these sort of copy-cat occurrences were no bother in 1977. For all that, I did enjoy sections of the film immensely. The film is rather jigsaw-like in construction. It doesn't feel very organic, and the incidents don't sit well next to each other. For all its deficiencies, this can't be said of MR.
Very tempted to go next week.
thanks for the detailed analyses of the Spy Who Loved Me fellers! that was my first BondFilm ever, and I still wish all films looked like that, so good to see it given extra attention. and I'm not surprised it attracted a bigger audience than some of the earlier films.
I see what you mean about it not being more than the sum of its parts. but what parts, all scaled up and polished and they fit together almost seamlessly despite maybe a lack of organic logic. More recent films have a few good parts too, mostly borrowed from earlier films, but surrounded by lots of bloat, they dont even add up to a decent sum.
in the book Stromberg intends to breed Anya and Jaws as parents to a new human race after destroying all the surface dwellers. the characters are all given a chapters' backstory, the way Fleming wouldve done. I don't remember Nomi in the book, now you mention it. I only just realised in my last viewing she is introduced in the same scene as Stomberg and Jaws near the start of the film, but doesn't say anything in that scene, and doesn't reappear until much later in the film.
maybe they took a train from Cairo to Tunis, then island hopped by ferry, first to Sicily then Sardinia? thatd be more direct than going round the east end of the Mediterranean, all across Turkey, the Balkans and Northern Italy, at least on a map. No idea how those connections work in real life. Libya was probably a hassle to travel through in those days.
Maybe Naomi was Jaws' original breeder and Anya becomes her replacement? I don't remember that story line from the novel, but it sounds like a Christopher Wood idea. And both women look similar: buxom, tanned, long limbed, long dark hair. This really did need an explanation. I also hadn't notice that Naomi escorts the two scientists into Stromberg's dining salon, and promptly exists without a sound. TSWLM, despite its rollicking reputation, does have a tendency to not explore its narrative beyond the barest of bones, yet it includes stuff like the inconsequential fight at the pyramids, the scene with Hossein which I already mentioned or the flirting with the hotel receptionist. This might be because a dozen scriptwriters had a hand in it and Wood / Maibaum had to cram in the scenes Broccoli didn't want to lose, while Wood himself probably wanted to stamp his own mark (I again mention the Hossein scene; quite frankly one of the most un-PC scenes ever in a Bond film, even given it was from 1977)
Sumptious though it is, I have to agree with @chrisno1 about the cheese (fondue?) of the Egyptian sequences and the dated forms of sexism/ xenophobia in some of it: the scene between Moore and Edward de Souza is like Frankie Howard without the laughs - probably down to Wood (phnarr phnarr!) But I disagree that Ms Bach betters Moore's acting anywhere: he's hands down more accomplished, and never more so than during Bond's and Anya's exchange at the bar in the Mojave Club - especially with that sidelong glint in his eye as he walks away from her, rattled by her apparent insensitivity.
I share the enthusiasm of @caractacus potts As the action moves to Sardinia, I'd say that the whole Lotus Esprit sequence is the most exciting, wittiest 'mid-film' set piece in a Bond movie since the ski chases in OHMSS. I love the way that one element after another is introduced to the sequence, from the pursuit by the motor cyclist with the missile-laden side car (as Hamlisch briefly tributes George Martin's LALD score) to the Key Stone Cops-style comedy in the car chase with Jaws; from the helicopter action with Caroline Munro squeezing every second of femme fatale sexiness out of her limited screen time (as the sfx of raking machine gunfire mixes with a stop/ start use of the Bee Gees-inflected 'Bond 77') to the surprise submersible conversion of the Lotus; from the TB-throwback underwater action (as Hamlisch adds to 'Bond 77' some Barry-esque wah-wah brass, for extra pzaz) to the images of eerie marine beauty and the comic pay-off with the Lotus emerging on the beach (cheekily alluding to 'Jaws', while the classic guitar riff of the Bond theme rounds it all off): it's relentlessly sublime; Bond for the Spielberg generation. As Bond himself puts it, "That's what we've come to see!"
A final note from me... By contrast with Gert Frobe in GF, Curt Jurgens is rotund in a way that doesn't work well for his character's image: the cut of his jacket makes it look more like a smock!
Yeh, I maybe shouldn't have included the Mojave club scene, I was distracted by Barbara's beautiful dress....
@Shady Tree I like your analysis of the big car chase as music video, that refreshes it for me. I'd gotten to thinking it was too much about the gadgets to be a decent car-chase, and Kingsley Amis wrote a review calling out all the improbable contingencies, that made me think less of it. Now you've pointed out how perfectly edited and scored that sequence is, who cares of it doesn't make sense? It is perfect at being exactly what it is.
By coincidence(?), there's a lengthy article in the Telegraph today that includes some behind-the-scenes info I've never seen before. Because its behind a dastardly paywall, I posted the entire text over in the Pros and Cons thread.
Have I completely imagined this, but I'm sure there was footage released of Roger Moore's injury when the stunt went wrong in TSWLM? I feel like I've seen a video of it but can't place where - it doesn't look like it's on YouTube. Any ideas?