Barbel said he'd be catching The Spy Who Loved Me at the cinema in Glasgow - I don't know if he made that showing but I said I'd record my latest thoughts on the film so here they are. After yet another TV reshowing I discovered it was brilliant. If that sort of insightful criticism floats your boat, read on.
Of course, in any game of Top Trumps, this film comes out… tops. Pre-credits, song, poster, actor in premium Bond mode, villain plot for worldwide domination, locations, iconic henchman, iconic car, Cold War and the Russians, gorgeous female lead, amazing sets… perhaps against so many competing elements Curt Jurgens can be forgiven for not quite making his mark .
That said, this is not usually a Top 5 Bond for me. I find it lacks the camp charm of Moore’s debut, Live And Let Die, or the easy warmth of his later outings, such as Moonraker or Octopussy.
When I saw it as a mega Bond fan kid in 1977 it didn’t quite work for me? Why? Well, my fandom was really based on just two Connery movies - Goldfinger and Thunderball on telly. The first two never seemed to be shown on TV. And You Only Live Twice was yet to be shown on UK telly - that would be later in the year. With this in mind, Moore’s The Spy Who Loved Me didn’t seem like the Bond I was used to - not just that it was Moore as Bond, but the whole world was different, more different than if I’d seen YOLT first. It seemed a bit of a con, Bond in name only.
This was echoed by the Corgi Bond car. For a year or more, I’d tried to obtain the cool Aston Martin DB5 Corgi toy with its myriad of gadgets - ejector seat, machine guns, bullet shield, tyre slashers and revolving numberplate. Along with the Batmobile, the best toy ever and unlike the Batmobile, discontinued. In a world before eBay there was no way of getting one from any top shop.
Then a toy shop in my nearby village called to say they had the James Bond car in! But it was of course the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me - a toy that never really quite worked because the fins went in, but there were never any wheels, understandably they couldn’t make it work as it seemed to in the film.
But even today, I feel there can be a hollow quality to the film.There’s almost something careful about some of it, as if it’s a checklist.
This may be because it was the first Bond film in three years - I’m showing my age here, aren’t I? I mean, in the last decade we’ve had just two
films but back in the fast-moving 70s this was like a pop band being out of the charts for any length of time, where upon your return you might not be able to resume your place at the table. With The Man With The Golden Gun being not a massive success, it seems that the next one was ‘everything or nothing’ and what’s more, they seem to rely on other genres a bit - Hammer Horror for instance, in the scene with the blonde receptionist and the shark pool. Even now, I find Kiel’s Jaws to be viscerally frightening in a way I don’t get in many Hammer movies.
And Jaws shouldn’t be much of a henchman, should he? He doesn’t move fast. You get the sense you could just run away from him. He doesn’t seem too smart. Point a gun at him and he’s dead. While Wint and Kidd didn’t seem to use a gun or be much good in a fight, they did blend in as innocent passers-by, beyond suspicion. You wouldn’t say Jaws was inconspicuous, either with his height or teeth. His main ability is to strike fear into opponents - and this adds to the sense that all this owes more to a Hammer movie than any conventional thriller.
There’s another unusual visceral sensation watching Barbara Bach as Major Anya Amasova. Yes, there are plenty of good-looking Bond women, but there is something about this particular one that lets slip a fellow’s moorings. While she’s meant to be a modern Bond woman who challenges and equals our hero that doesn’t stop her resembling a soft porn star than most. Again, it echoes the sort of thing you’d see in a Hammer movie, the only other contender of course copter pilot Naomi, played by Caroline Munro, who really was in a few Hammer films. (As was receptionist Valeria Leon). Maybe Britt Ekland who of course was in Hammer’s [citation needed] The Wicker Man. Other than that I suppose Bibi in For Your Eyes Only awakens that sort of sex appeal that’s inappropriate for a Bond film - it just feels wrong.
Barbara Bach and Richard Kiel are huge assets for this film, which simply wouldn’t be as good with other actors in the roles. That said, I think they are too sexy and scary for a Bond film.
In the same way, there are many action scenes in the Bonds, but few in the classic era that were truly thrilling, edge-of-your-seat stuff. The car chase in Bullitt is superior to that of Diamonds are Forever, and does more with less. But many chase scenes in the Bonds exist purely as enjoyable spectacle. The primary emotion is one of enjoyment and laughter as we see Bond easily outwit his foes. It’s a modern day version of The Scarlet Pimpernel or Robin Hood. Baser emotions of fear or lust are rarely given their head in the Bond series, though there is a sense of greater jeopardy in the Craig movies. For many Bond fans however, there can be a sense of sometimes misplaced annoyance or frustration that similar scenes in other movies of the same era are more excitingly directed.
Another genre tapped in this 1977 film is the disaster movie, a big deal for Hollywood since Earthquake in 1975. This we see in the early scene in the submarine, when the glass of water starts shaking. (Jaws’ name is a nod to Speilberg’s smash hit watery thriller of the same year.)
Another film released with some uncertainty about the appeal of the Bond genre after some years absence was of course GoldenEye and that also leaned on other genres, not to my liking I must say. The helicopter ejector seat escape by Bond was similar to a scene in Die Hard 2. The trick by General Ouromov to gain access to the weapons plant by imposing an abrupt test owed something to a very nasty scene in the then-recent Schindler’s List, as did the gunning down by machine gun of countless innocents in a way I found tasteless - and the makers were ‘lucky’ with the timing of the film, which predated the notorious Dunblane massacre by but a few months.
Never Say Never Again is another movie unsure of its place in the world and its reception, and also borrowed references to other Bond films in a slightly self-conscious way. Of course, other action thrillers do this all the time, from Hugh Jackman’s vampire movie to Arnie’s True Lies and I understand the current Marvel blockbuster Black Widow.
Now we come to something highly unusual in a Bond film - its suspense. It’s easy to forget, with all these re-showings, that we know what is going on here, but cinema audiences wouldn’t. When the periscope comes down and the captain says ‘Good God!’ We have no idea what he’s looking at. It might be some giant kraken that’s wrapped its coils around the sub. It might be that the sub is now bizarrely on dry land, with enemy tanks bearing down on it. Or it might be Peter Cook picking lobsters out of Jayne Mansfield’s backside. We just don’t know.
And it takes over an hour or so of the film to find out.
I’m not sure there’s another Bond film that does that - where we have to wait to find out what has been set down in the opener. In some instances the issue may be better explained later - the space capsule swallowing enemy space ship in the pre-credits of YOLT - but the idea of what’s actually going on is not kept from us.
Of course, what is the sub captain seeing that makes him cry out? It can only be the inside of Stromberg’s supertanker - but why would that be so horrifying in itself? The director perhaps thinking that the reaction of head scratching and ‘Eh? Yer what?’ might not offer the reinvigorating relaunch this series needed.
Perhaps he saw the bodies of the Russian submarines hanging up and flayed - that would be horrifying and not even out of keeping with Christopher Wood’s more adult, sadistic novelisation. (in the opener, rather than the cheery, sabre rattling ‘So does England!’ Bond on a hunch checks out an overhead locker and makes a sick, gruesome discovery that points to his being framed by the Russians for murder…)
In fact, after many viewings I’ve never quite figured out what happened to the Russian crew of the Russian sub. We don’t see the sub being hijacked, only hear of it second hand. We don’t see any Russians team up with the Americans to storm the tanker at the end. Where did they go?
It’s also unclear how the tanker somehow got bumped up into the supertanker. We don’t see it happen, and they must be a dab at parking going by how they’re squeezed in like sardines. Not a prang in sight.
The other brilliant thing is the surprise of XXX’s introduction. Okay, it’s no surprise to us, but it would be big deal to audiences at the time and the smooth way it is filmed, as her lover sits forward and Barbara Bach leans into the mike to respond to her request is perfection.
It’s not really clear why her lover is trying to kill Bond. Cold War, innit? Likewise, it’s not clear why Brosnan’s Bond was trying to blow up a Soviet facility in the pre-credits of GoldenEye. It’s perhaps an attempt to re-establish the old traditional certainties after a time away from the cinema.
Other stuff impresses, namely the sets, even the lesser ones. Stromberg’s Atlantis rises from the water and we see sea water cascade down the windows of his drawing room. How was this done? With a 4K TV screen of water? Or was the actor in a set that allowed itself to be submerged and then risen up. I’ve never seen any account of how that was done, it’s simply incidental, in passing. Actually the interior of Atlantis doesn’t quite seem to match up to the model, and it’s hard to get a sense of its scale.
The whole thing is of course meant to represent the Spectre spider or something but as they couldn’t use Spectre… That also explains why Stromberg doesn’t have much of a backstory and is a bit thin. It was meant to be Blofeld, who generally doesn’t require it. That said, you wonder how the meeting with Bond undercover would have gone, again as with OHMSS wouldn’t they have recognised each other?
The presence of two Jewish businessmen who promptly get dispatched to a watery grave prompted thoughts about Jews in the Bond films that may be ill advised - but there don’t seem to be many of them, do they? This may follow the Hollywood adage that Jews should go behind the camera - producing - and not in front, though many Jewish actors Anglicised themselves including their names in the Golden Era - Leslie Howard and Lauren Bacall, for instance.
It also however suggests something about the Bond world that defies that traditional wise-guy Jewish take on stuff. The only one knocking stuff should be Bond, otherwise it takes the centre of gravity away from him. As it is, I can think of many different races and nationalities that pop up in Bond films, but not many Jews really, of course you get Diamonds’ Jill St John under her anglicised name and the usual Dr Metz type boffin but that’s about it. It’s not like Jewish-looking women aren’t hot, but I can’t think of many or any in the Bond series and it’s been over 50 years. While there have been a number of black women - Rosie Carver, May Day, Jinx - okay, not that many.
On a more prosaic note, Bond doesn't visit Israel much, does he? Tel Aviv for one unconvincing scene in Golden Gun - okay I guess the dancer who loses her charm is Jewish, all the way from Golders Green one suspects, and straight out of Carry On.
Is Stromberg Jewish? Is the suffix ‘berg’ always Jewish? If so, it’s odd to have him played by a German known for playing German war generals, most notably in The Longest Day. Again, no Jewish villains ever, perhaps they might begin to look like Mike Myer’s Dr Evil? It’s as if Bond occupies a Wasp like world where Jews don’t get much of a look in, though of course Jewish fans may prefer it that way. The humour does seem Jewish of course, so it’s similar perhaps to The Wizard of Oz with has a heart that is cornball but a script that is pure New York City, it’s The Big Bang Theory set in the dust bowl.
Perhaps the world of Bond is a fantasy one for many Jewish guys - I’m thinking of Bond nerd Seymour in The Cannonball Run, amusingly played by Roger Moore himself - who would not maybe want to see someone like him in a Bond film, just as I suspect that American Bond girls such as Case, Sutton and Jinx get a bad rap because many Americans don’t want to hear a voice like one they can hear down the mall. They want to escape from themselves. Similarly I’m not mad keen on English women such as Diana Ring or Rosumund Pike - the voices are associated with some measure of social rejection. (Below: A still from The Cannonball Run.)
I only watched the first half hour or so of this Bond film when I had this epiphany. The film was highly assured, far superior to its predecessor and largely unfussy. Class moments include Moore’s briefing where he is stalked by a submarine in the loch. Now, much as I admire the films’ pulling power it does reluctantly occur to me that this was a model for this particular shot and not a real sub booked for the day. Otherwise, can you imagine? ‘Yes, I’m afraid you have to reverse the sub again, or do another lap of the loch, Roger messed up his line that time, we’ll have to go again…’ Better to have a massive prop, one supposes.
Similarly, and maybe skip this paragraph if you want your fantasies to go unchallenged - but the scene where the Lotus dives into the water. Was that stunt really done with a car and not a model? Who was driving it? How did they get out of the submerged vehicle? How deep did it go? Why have we never heard about this particular stunt, unlike the equally famous ski jump? What happened if they messed up the shot - would they have a fleet of Lotus’s on standby for the one they got right? Did they fish the car out of the drink later, like Bond’s Aston in Spectre?
The success of The Spy Who Loved Me also relates to a theory I’ve been meaning to post on this site but never got around to - 'Thunderball and the Three-Card Trick'. Of course, The Spy Who Loved Me was devised to shoot Kevin McClory’s fox as in 1975 he regained the right to remake Thunderball which he intended to do under the name Warhead. Many of the underwater themes he mooted for this treatment are said to have been ‘borrowed’ for this film.
But having read a draft of Warhead, I have to say I think this film was always going to be better. Why? Well, understand that along with the main plot, you must then consider what the film is really about. Live And Let Die is not about cooking up drugs in the jungle, it’s about Bond and voodoo. You Only Live Twice is not really about the hijacking of a space capsule, it’s about Bond’s culture clash with the Far East. That’s the real theme. Likewise, the theme here is not so much submarines as Bond’s relationship with the Russian Soviet agent, that occupies the bulk of the narrative. Thunderball falls flat with some fans because it’s just about one thing - the hijacking of nuclear weapons. It’s okay as far as it goes, but as a narrative it’s a sitting duck. There’s no underlying theme to make it more interesting, ditto mostly with Never Say Never Again, though they do a bit with an older Bond at odds with the young management and changing times.
With The Spy Who Loved Me, if you take out the Soviet romance, the Cold War undercurrents, the unnatural locations for a water-based action thriller - the ski pre-credits, the Egyptian desert - then basically you have something similar to McClory’s Warhead, a movie that’s not that interesting, especially when - unlike with other thrillers - we always know that Bond is going to survive anyway, so no sense of jeapody.
Other Bond films that fail with fans tend to be ones where that subtext just doesn’t quite come through or, in the case of, say imo The Man With The Golden Gun - neither the main plot nor the subtext are really up to much. The main plot is Scaramanga trying to kill Bond - well, he isn’t it turns out. The sub-plot or alternative plot is the solar complex and the energy crisis - I’ve really no idea what is going on there, even now. Likewise the superior OHMSS fails for me because the official plot - Blofeld implausibly trying to pass himself off as a Count and win diplomatic immunity for past crimes - doesn’t work for me and nor does the sub-plot - an ageing Bond looking to settle down, because Lazenby is the youngest Bond yet and there’s not much chemistry between him and Rigg. There might be a sub plot about class and snobbery going on there - you’d think so with Rigg playing a ‘Countessa’ - but again, this is under-utilised.
Likewise, Licence to Kill is nominally about Sanchez’s drug operation - two a penny in the action genre - but it’s not bolstered by the meat of the story where Bond seeks to avenge his mate Felix Leiter, because he was only ever a cypher in the films anyway, and played by so many different actors that it’s hard to care - about either plots imo.
So not only does The Spy Who Loved Me have so many elements that would win a game of Top Trumps, it also consists of two plots - the official business on the tin, and the actual meat of the film, which is Bond’s culture clash and romantic friction with the Russian agent.
The moment one might get bored with one, they introduce the other and keep two balls up in the air. It does this more successfully than just about any other Bond film.
On a side note, I understand that The Spy Who Loved Me was the last film that Elvis Presley ever saw, in the week prior to his death.
That's a lot to take in, np, so here's just a few random responses-
Yes, Elvis did like this movie a lot.
"Wicker Man" wasn't a Hammer film (though with Lee and Pitt starring it could easily be thought one).
Love your thoughts on the themes of the films, or indeed the lack of same. The snobbery in OHMSS isn't so much of a sub-plot as you seem to think- it's right there as Fleming wrote it. There are 3 main characters in this story- a man who wants to be a Count, a woman who doesn't want to be a Countess, and Bond himself. I'd argue that it isn't under-utilised but subtle. So much of the plot depends on Blofeld wanting to be a Count that it isn't often mentioned that by marrying Bond Tracy ceases to be a Countess. In fact, "isn't often" isn't strong enough- "very rarely" would be better.
Loved the Lotus thoughts, both in the film and on the toy. I think I still have mine in the attic, next to a Moonraker and a helicopter or two.
Not once in all these years did I think the two scientists were Jewish, and not once have I given the presence/absence of Jewish people or references in the Bond films one thought.
Hmm, only some of my meticulously sourced photos are coming up! What's going on there - they were there last night. [Edit: They're now back...]
I could be wrong, but I think one of those financiers (the Ernie Wist as opposed to the tall Eric Morecambe one) pops up in the The Counterfeiters, an acclaimed drama filmed decades later and set in a concentration camp.
I think the only suggestion of a Jewish presence in the films seems to be these boffin types that get wheeled on from time to time - whether the actors who play them are actually Jewish I don't know. The two in the Venice lab who die after Bond's incursion, for instance. In contrast, the MI6 headquarters over several decades is largely of a kind. Otherwise the whole thing - whether actually Israeli or as a sociological presence or outlook on life - is absent in a series that usually celebrates diversity.
The snobbery thing ought to be an enjoyable subtext in OHMSS and I suppose is there as written but it doesn't hit home for me - I think I might have worked better with Connery in the role.
Thanks NP. Very interesting thoughts. A lot of work has gone into that!
TSWLM is always in my top three (it vies with OHMSS and FRWL). Roger will always be my favourite Bond and this film just has everything for me. The car chase with the Esprit and Helicopter side by side is still my favourite moment in Bond movie history.
Even though this film is from 1977 is still feels modern for me, contextually. Roger is at his peak. Jaws is a revelation and still fascinates kids seeing him for the first time. The locations don't look dated, as they're timeless anyway (the scene at Faslane is great and could have been filmed yesterday). The Esprit was years ahead of its time and still looks awesome. The Bell Jet Ranger has stayed (pretty much) the same since its launch.
I remember as a child the Bond films on TV in the late seventies, early eighties, were often Connery's, which for me felt a little bit dated and of an era I didn't associate with, so whenever one of Roger's films came on, they just felt modern, new and exciting. TSWLM, MR and FYEO are all just such fun and take me back to a wonderful time.
Barbara Bach is just out of this world, and I do get your 'soft porn star' point. It might be the nice 70's hairstyle and her revealing clothing throughout the film, I love both btw😍
I have never once thought about the scientists being Jewish. Not sure if I should, or think too much into that?
The film does draw from other films and genres in places, obviously the similarities with YOLT have been discussed at length, but I don't mind that. It's done in a different way and works.
I only have two negatives with TSWLM, one is Stromberg, as generally agreed, the character doesn't have enough depth. Second is the piece whilst they're trying to break into Stromberg's control centre. I just find it drags a bit.
All in all, a truly great Bond film and if I could watch one more before meeting my maker, this would be it.
This man really did have the best job in the whole world..😊;
excellent work Napoleon! lotsa discussion points in there to keep us busy!
Jaws too scary for a Bond film? a character named Agent XXX too sexy? as this was my first Bondfilm ever, they are exactly scary and sexy as a henchman or Bondgirl oughta be. After starting with this film none of the others were scary or sexy enough.
There were a lot of antisemitic stereotypes in the In the spy novels of the prewar era, The 39 Steps, Bulldog Drummond, early Saint novels. Jewish financiers who secretly ran the world and were ultimately responsible for the buildup to war. Tintin also, Herge rewrote at least two of his Tintin books in later years to remove those stereotypes. That's one of the more embarrassing aspects of early spy fiction, especially since they got the villains 180 degrees wrong. I think after the war, and acknowledgement of the Holocaust, the creators of a popular spyfilm series may have tried to be distance themselves from the most offensive of prewar spystory stereotypes, but maybe to the extent that Jewish people were not represented at all. (overemotional Latin types were fair game, but the filmmaker was named Broccoli after all so he's allowed)
Hmm, only some of my meticulously sourced photos are coming up! What's going on there - they were there last night.
I think in some cases, the display of images is dependent on cookies. Meaning if you open another website, its cookies are in your browser memory. and when you imagelink to that other site from ajb007, you can see the image in your post because you still have those cookies. The rest of us can't see it because we don't have the cookies from the other website in our browser memory. Just a hypothesis.
I test for this problem by opening the ajb007 page in a second browser. The second browser wont have the cookies in memory, If the images don't appear there, I know nobody else can see them either and I need to find another source.
In this new forum software we can paste our own images in directly from our harddrive, which we couldnt do before. When I want to include an image, instead of imagelinking, I save it to a temporary folder on my harddrive and then drag or paste it into my post. Or sometimes I can just copy and paste directly from another website into my post. That's much more reliable, and we don't have to worry about some other site going down in the future. (but we may one day have to worry about ajb007 getting overloaded with big image files)
The photos were on my desktop - however I promptly put them in the bin and deleted them, so that may the reason some don't exist. I'll try to reinstate them.
Kudos to @caractacus potts for referring to my comments on the socio-cultural presence of Jews in Bond films without somehow insinuating I have an attic full of Nazi memorabilia including a flag I drape myself in where I down vodka shots and sing songs to the Motherland every night...
Actually, there is a fascinating element to it - Ken Adam was a Jewish German emigre who fought in the Battle of Britain and who's to say his mock volcano in You Only Live Twice doesn't carry elements of those V2 rocket bases one sees in films like The Guns of Naverone and that one with George Peppard, name escapes me. It even is redolent of Ian Fleming's voiced fear in Thrilling Cities two decades after the war that the Germans may still want to launch such an attack; this was the premise of the novel Moonraker of course. Just about all those early villains could have been in those World War II movies, they have that sort of grand evil going on, it's on another scale, ends with Max Zorin I guess. (Yaphet Kotto appears the exception though he does turn up as a good guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn't he, as the submarine captain?) You can't imagine Dalton or Brosnan's villains being in a World War II thriller, it's relative humdrum stuff. Hitler no longer cast his shadow.
Perhaps it's more that those later villains just don't seem to be part of any larger network, not really. They are individual rogues. Otherwise, tbf, Pryce's Carver would make an excellent Nazi officer really but in Tomorrow Never Dies the evil he represents is just his own, kill him and it's over.
But my main thing with my review was - for over an hour we've no idea what the submarine captain saw in the pre-credits! And The Spy Who Loved Me plays with the overall plot and the underlying theme very nicely, better than most other films.
Don't worry NP, I also read your thoughts and commentary as intended👍️
Nazi, Anti-semitism and Fascist views and history have been referenced in all genres of cinema for years. Some more obvious than others of course, the biggest probably being Star Wars. It's impossible for creators of fiction not to be hugely influenced from the world's darkest hours and the lowest ebb of human history. It is the ultimate good v evil narrative. Sadly, I think Hitler's and other genocidal maniac's shadow is still there..
Just listen to Bond's line in NTTD; "History isn't kind to men who play God".
I'm sure Ian Fleming and Ken Adam must have been influenced by the V2 bases. Before 1944, was there any known or pictorial reference of a rocket base..?
btw It wasn't Yaphet Kotto in Raiders btw, it was George Harris. A fine actor.
"Any of the opposition around..?"
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,927Chief of Staff
Watched Licence To Kill on ITV4 yesterday…it started around 6pm and was SO heavily cut it ended by about 6:30pm 😡
What made you think the two scientists were Jewish ? I assumed they were German [Bechmann and Markowitz] I agree they certainly could be Jewish, but are they? Is this something Christopher Wood put in the novel ?
Hi @chrisno1 I don't know, I was reaching around for examples. I mean, I don't know if the two financiers in Spy are Jewish, they sort of look it thought that observation might seem a bit off., I'm just referring to sort of a stereotype. Or is it? I'm kind of talking about an image here. I mean, someone told me in reference to this thread, well Jane Seymour's Jewish. Is she? I don't know, but like Jill St John, she doesn't present that way, it's an image thing. It's nebulous.
The sort of self-depecrating thing... I think actually Harrison Ford does do it a bit as Indy... Other than that, I dunno, I suppose I could make that that Airplane! joke about the passenger requesting a little light reading when it comes to action heroes. I think the image thing might have been referenced in that Tarantino film Ingloroius Basterds...
You could say also that the white working classes are unrepresented in the films... but that's not quite true on reflection as they tend to turn up as military personnel, such as the grotty lads in the submarine playing chess, or getting chained to the ATAK in For Your Eyes Only. Or in Q's workshop - or even as Q, in NSNA. Other than that though it's not a world they're encouraged to inhabit.
There is something in this... I can criticise the film all day. But watching a bit of it on telly, it is one of the few Bonds that seems to create its own universe, look, atmosphere. Just the cinematography itself has a particular sheen, a metallic look. It is pleasing.
I suppose I'm not praising it when I see it works best as a harder, cooler Bond than The Man With The Golden Gun; the scene of Bond and Natalya flying over 006's Cuban island - is that were it is - reminds me of Bond's approach to Scaramanga's island and I don't find GE quite credible enough to find it shades many other films. I'd enjoy it as a companion piece, in fact why not a Golden trilogy with Goldfinger first?
The Boris character seems a nod of sorts to the black boffin or computer wizz kid in Die Hard, the relationship between Alec and him resembles that of Gruber and said computer nerd: 'You can do the job....?' 'You didn't bring me along for my sparkling personality' - one of many great lines in Die Hard. There's that bit of tension between them, and it is an example of one of the points I made about The Spy Who Loved Me and GoldenEye - that with Bond being off the screen for so long, they had to inject a few scenes reminiscent of other box office hits to make it seem relevant.
...on the big screen. Sadly the last in this season. It wasn't a great print either, but I of course enjoyed it. I've never thought of this one as being a Bond that benefitted especially from the cinema experience (YOLT, TSWLM, MR leaping to mind) but it certainly does- the PTS, the Eiffel Tower, even the firetruck chase all were so much more enjoyable and the mine scenes were tense and thrilling.
Oddly enough, the frequent replacement of Sir Roger with stunt doubles seemed less obvious than on TV, I can't explain why.
Barry's score sounded magnificent, Walken and Jones filled the screen. My friend, who's not as dedicated a Bond fan as me (big surprise there) thought it a much more grim and serious film than he'd been expecting which I don't think is its usual reputation.
On the way out I asked the staff for the poster, but they said that wasn't possible. Pity.
On a recent rewatch of GE it did occur to me GE has its own unique look and feel for large parts of the film, you can't say that for many of the Bond films.
Admittedly it borrows a lot from films around at the time, Die Hard 2 immediately springs to mind. In fact I shook my head in disapproval when watching GE in the cinema at the Tiger Helicopter ejector seat escape. Time has been kind to GE.
Good shout regarding Boris resembling the typical 90's techno geek from Die Hard. Boris is one aspect of the film I ignore not a fan of the character. The passwords that Boris chose did not age well at all 😂
A Golden Trilogy works, some of the cinematography in GE and TMWTGG is quite similar in the scenes you mentioned.
The police siren you hear before Bond and Tanya get on the train sounds awfully similar to the one we hear from the Italian police car before it ends up in the drink in The Italian Job some years later.
Red Grant is silent but deadly up to the point where he turns garrulous to Bond, as if making up for lost time. Gets a bit chatty.
I've always found GF to be average after each viewing; I guess if I had been born much earlier and was among those who saw it in 1964, at the start of Bondmania, I MIGHT have loved it more, but that's something we'll never know.
TWINE was not bad; what I picked up the most this time was everybody treated the material more seriously than the usual Bond movie. I thought Pierce Brosnan puts in his best performance as Bond in this movie.
The supremely enjoyable Goldfinger, on telly today.
The way they pick lots of nubile bikinied women for the scene around Miami Beach Hotel...! About 10 in one shot, made to walk past as Leiter is briefing Bond.
Not terribly competitive fight in the pre-credits - is the guy a foot shorter than Bond? Ditto the pre-credits of Thunderball where he seems to be fighting Jack Lemmon - not inappropriate given he was in drag. 'Nobody's perfect!'
The thing about GF is much as I enjoy it, there's some dodgy stuff in it. Not just the 'assault' on Pussy Galore. It's the way the film could end earlier is Bond had let Tilly take her shot rather than expose her, thus getting her killed, as he sort of did her sister. He's not a good luck charm, is he?
Then the whole nonsense of the military coming to life again... if they'd been tipped off by Pussy Galore then just WTF were they doing letting Goldfinger near Fort Knox to plant the bomb anyway? Oh, we know what they're up to, just let them stroll in. Like saying, yeah, we know these Saudis will hijack the planes on 9/11, just let them do that and try to shoot the planes down as they near the WTC.
If Galore betrayed Goldfinger why is he letting he pilot the plane out of there? There must be better ways of making an escape than trying to hijack the very plane your cunning adversary is on having been booked by the FBI, piloted by the very person who's betrayed you.... Admittedly the film is enjoyable enough you just go with it.
The World Is Not Enough, shown on telly last night, is my fave Pierce Brosnan film.
For all that, I probably prefer dipping into any of his other films.
Visually, it's a bit dark without being noir-ish. Despite the title it doesn't really traverse the world or make it seem all ecompassing - no Moscow, New York, Dubai. There is something also a bit low key about it. This is a pre-9/11 Bond so the 'threat' is not really there, it's like they're reaching for it a bit. Of course, after 9/11 the threat was all too obvious but they couldn't make Al Quaida the villains for obvious reasons, it would be asking for trouble. Dare I say the sheer visual power of those attacks shook everything up even if we then subsequently had the brash, noisy and obvious Die Another Day. Anyway, I found Brosnan playing it broad in this but tbf it's that kind of film. A comedy thriller. Some great lines in it but also some real clunkers.
Now watching Thunderball. It's a very talky film aside from when it's underwater. It's like being stuck with a needy date. Bond doesn't shut up - I don't know if there's a talkier Bond film. This despite the plot being very simple and hardly needs explaining.
Comments
Barbel said he'd be catching The Spy Who Loved Me at the cinema in Glasgow - I don't know if he made that showing but I said I'd record my latest thoughts on the film so here they are. After yet another TV reshowing I discovered it was brilliant. If that sort of insightful criticism floats your boat, read on.
Of course, in any game of Top Trumps, this film comes out… tops. Pre-credits, song, poster, actor in premium Bond mode, villain plot for worldwide domination, locations, iconic henchman, iconic car, Cold War and the Russians, gorgeous female lead, amazing sets… perhaps against so many competing elements Curt Jurgens can be forgiven for not quite making his mark .
That said, this is not usually a Top 5 Bond for me. I find it lacks the camp charm of Moore’s debut, Live And Let Die, or the easy warmth of his later outings, such as Moonraker or Octopussy.
When I saw it as a mega Bond fan kid in 1977 it didn’t quite work for me? Why? Well, my fandom was really based on just two Connery movies - Goldfinger and Thunderball on telly. The first two never seemed to be shown on TV. And You Only Live Twice was yet to be shown on UK telly - that would be later in the year. With this in mind, Moore’s The Spy Who Loved Me didn’t seem like the Bond I was used to - not just that it was Moore as Bond, but the whole world was different, more different than if I’d seen YOLT first. It seemed a bit of a con, Bond in name only.
This was echoed by the Corgi Bond car. For a year or more, I’d tried to obtain the cool Aston Martin DB5 Corgi toy with its myriad of gadgets - ejector seat, machine guns, bullet shield, tyre slashers and revolving numberplate. Along with the Batmobile, the best toy ever and unlike the Batmobile, discontinued. In a world before eBay there was no way of getting one from any top shop.
Then a toy shop in my nearby village called to say they had the James Bond car in! But it was of course the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me - a toy that never really quite worked because the fins went in, but there were never any wheels, understandably they couldn’t make it work as it seemed to in the film.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
But even today, I feel there can be a hollow quality to the film.There’s almost something careful about some of it, as if it’s a checklist.
This may be because it was the first Bond film in three years - I’m showing my age here, aren’t I? I mean, in the last decade we’ve had just two
films but back in the fast-moving 70s this was like a pop band being out of the charts for any length of time, where upon your return you might not be able to resume your place at the table. With The Man With The Golden Gun being not a massive success, it seems that the next one was ‘everything or nothing’ and what’s more, they seem to rely on other genres a bit - Hammer Horror for instance, in the scene with the blonde receptionist and the shark pool. Even now, I find Kiel’s Jaws to be viscerally frightening in a way I don’t get in many Hammer movies.
And Jaws shouldn’t be much of a henchman, should he? He doesn’t move fast. You get the sense you could just run away from him. He doesn’t seem too smart. Point a gun at him and he’s dead. While Wint and Kidd didn’t seem to use a gun or be much good in a fight, they did blend in as innocent passers-by, beyond suspicion. You wouldn’t say Jaws was inconspicuous, either with his height or teeth. His main ability is to strike fear into opponents - and this adds to the sense that all this owes more to a Hammer movie than any conventional thriller.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
There’s another unusual visceral sensation watching Barbara Bach as Major Anya Amasova. Yes, there are plenty of good-looking Bond women, but there is something about this particular one that lets slip a fellow’s moorings. While she’s meant to be a modern Bond woman who challenges and equals our hero that doesn’t stop her resembling a soft porn star than most. Again, it echoes the sort of thing you’d see in a Hammer movie, the only other contender of course copter pilot Naomi, played by Caroline Munro, who really was in a few Hammer films. (As was receptionist Valeria Leon). Maybe Britt Ekland who of course was in Hammer’s [citation needed] The Wicker Man. Other than that I suppose Bibi in For Your Eyes Only awakens that sort of sex appeal that’s inappropriate for a Bond film - it just feels wrong.
Barbara Bach and Richard Kiel are huge assets for this film, which simply wouldn’t be as good with other actors in the roles. That said, I think they are too sexy and scary for a Bond film.
In the same way, there are many action scenes in the Bonds, but few in the classic era that were truly thrilling, edge-of-your-seat stuff. The car chase in Bullitt is superior to that of Diamonds are Forever, and does more with less. But many chase scenes in the Bonds exist purely as enjoyable spectacle. The primary emotion is one of enjoyment and laughter as we see Bond easily outwit his foes. It’s a modern day version of The Scarlet Pimpernel or Robin Hood. Baser emotions of fear or lust are rarely given their head in the Bond series, though there is a sense of greater jeopardy in the Craig movies. For many Bond fans however, there can be a sense of sometimes misplaced annoyance or frustration that similar scenes in other movies of the same era are more excitingly directed.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Another genre tapped in this 1977 film is the disaster movie, a big deal for Hollywood since Earthquake in 1975. This we see in the early scene in the submarine, when the glass of water starts shaking. (Jaws’ name is a nod to Speilberg’s smash hit watery thriller of the same year.)
Another film released with some uncertainty about the appeal of the Bond genre after some years absence was of course GoldenEye and that also leaned on other genres, not to my liking I must say. The helicopter ejector seat escape by Bond was similar to a scene in Die Hard 2. The trick by General Ouromov to gain access to the weapons plant by imposing an abrupt test owed something to a very nasty scene in the then-recent Schindler’s List, as did the gunning down by machine gun of countless innocents in a way I found tasteless - and the makers were ‘lucky’ with the timing of the film, which predated the notorious Dunblane massacre by but a few months.
Never Say Never Again is another movie unsure of its place in the world and its reception, and also borrowed references to other Bond films in a slightly self-conscious way. Of course, other action thrillers do this all the time, from Hugh Jackman’s vampire movie to Arnie’s True Lies and I understand the current Marvel blockbuster Black Widow.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Now we come to something highly unusual in a Bond film - its suspense. It’s easy to forget, with all these re-showings, that we know what is going on here, but cinema audiences wouldn’t. When the periscope comes down and the captain says ‘Good God!’ We have no idea what he’s looking at. It might be some giant kraken that’s wrapped its coils around the sub. It might be that the sub is now bizarrely on dry land, with enemy tanks bearing down on it. Or it might be Peter Cook picking lobsters out of Jayne Mansfield’s backside. We just don’t know.
And it takes over an hour or so of the film to find out.
I’m not sure there’s another Bond film that does that - where we have to wait to find out what has been set down in the opener. In some instances the issue may be better explained later - the space capsule swallowing enemy space ship in the pre-credits of YOLT - but the idea of what’s actually going on is not kept from us.
Of course, what is the sub captain seeing that makes him cry out? It can only be the inside of Stromberg’s supertanker - but why would that be so horrifying in itself? The director perhaps thinking that the reaction of head scratching and ‘Eh? Yer what?’ might not offer the reinvigorating relaunch this series needed.
Perhaps he saw the bodies of the Russian submarines hanging up and flayed - that would be horrifying and not even out of keeping with Christopher Wood’s more adult, sadistic novelisation. (in the opener, rather than the cheery, sabre rattling ‘So does England!’ Bond on a hunch checks out an overhead locker and makes a sick, gruesome discovery that points to his being framed by the Russians for murder…)
In fact, after many viewings I’ve never quite figured out what happened to the Russian crew of the Russian sub. We don’t see the sub being hijacked, only hear of it second hand. We don’t see any Russians team up with the Americans to storm the tanker at the end. Where did they go?
It’s also unclear how the tanker somehow got bumped up into the supertanker. We don’t see it happen, and they must be a dab at parking going by how they’re squeezed in like sardines. Not a prang in sight.
The other brilliant thing is the surprise of XXX’s introduction. Okay, it’s no surprise to us, but it would be big deal to audiences at the time and the smooth way it is filmed, as her lover sits forward and Barbara Bach leans into the mike to respond to her request is perfection.
It’s not really clear why her lover is trying to kill Bond. Cold War, innit? Likewise, it’s not clear why Brosnan’s Bond was trying to blow up a Soviet facility in the pre-credits of GoldenEye. It’s perhaps an attempt to re-establish the old traditional certainties after a time away from the cinema.
Other stuff impresses, namely the sets, even the lesser ones. Stromberg’s Atlantis rises from the water and we see sea water cascade down the windows of his drawing room. How was this done? With a 4K TV screen of water? Or was the actor in a set that allowed itself to be submerged and then risen up. I’ve never seen any account of how that was done, it’s simply incidental, in passing. Actually the interior of Atlantis doesn’t quite seem to match up to the model, and it’s hard to get a sense of its scale.
The whole thing is of course meant to represent the Spectre spider or something but as they couldn’t use Spectre… That also explains why Stromberg doesn’t have much of a backstory and is a bit thin. It was meant to be Blofeld, who generally doesn’t require it. That said, you wonder how the meeting with Bond undercover would have gone, again as with OHMSS wouldn’t they have recognised each other?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The presence of two Jewish businessmen who promptly get dispatched to a watery grave prompted thoughts about Jews in the Bond films that may be ill advised - but there don’t seem to be many of them, do they? This may follow the Hollywood adage that Jews should go behind the camera - producing - and not in front, though many Jewish actors Anglicised themselves including their names in the Golden Era - Leslie Howard and Lauren Bacall, for instance.
It also however suggests something about the Bond world that defies that traditional wise-guy Jewish take on stuff. The only one knocking stuff should be Bond, otherwise it takes the centre of gravity away from him. As it is, I can think of many different races and nationalities that pop up in Bond films, but not many Jews really, of course you get Diamonds’ Jill St John under her anglicised name and the usual Dr Metz type boffin but that’s about it. It’s not like Jewish-looking women aren’t hot, but I can’t think of many or any in the Bond series and it’s been over 50 years. While there have been a number of black women - Rosie Carver, May Day, Jinx - okay, not that many.
On a more prosaic note, Bond doesn't visit Israel much, does he? Tel Aviv for one unconvincing scene in Golden Gun - okay I guess the dancer who loses her charm is Jewish, all the way from Golders Green one suspects, and straight out of Carry On.
Is Stromberg Jewish? Is the suffix ‘berg’ always Jewish? If so, it’s odd to have him played by a German known for playing German war generals, most notably in The Longest Day. Again, no Jewish villains ever, perhaps they might begin to look like Mike Myer’s Dr Evil? It’s as if Bond occupies a Wasp like world where Jews don’t get much of a look in, though of course Jewish fans may prefer it that way. The humour does seem Jewish of course, so it’s similar perhaps to The Wizard of Oz with has a heart that is cornball but a script that is pure New York City, it’s The Big Bang Theory set in the dust bowl.
Perhaps the world of Bond is a fantasy one for many Jewish guys - I’m thinking of Bond nerd Seymour in The Cannonball Run, amusingly played by Roger Moore himself - who would not maybe want to see someone like him in a Bond film, just as I suspect that American Bond girls such as Case, Sutton and Jinx get a bad rap because many Americans don’t want to hear a voice like one they can hear down the mall. They want to escape from themselves. Similarly I’m not mad keen on English women such as Diana Ring or Rosumund Pike - the voices are associated with some measure of social rejection. (Below: A still from The Cannonball Run.)
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I only watched the first half hour or so of this Bond film when I had this epiphany. The film was highly assured, far superior to its predecessor and largely unfussy. Class moments include Moore’s briefing where he is stalked by a submarine in the loch. Now, much as I admire the films’ pulling power it does reluctantly occur to me that this was a model for this particular shot and not a real sub booked for the day. Otherwise, can you imagine? ‘Yes, I’m afraid you have to reverse the sub again, or do another lap of the loch, Roger messed up his line that time, we’ll have to go again…’ Better to have a massive prop, one supposes.
Similarly, and maybe skip this paragraph if you want your fantasies to go unchallenged - but the scene where the Lotus dives into the water. Was that stunt really done with a car and not a model? Who was driving it? How did they get out of the submerged vehicle? How deep did it go? Why have we never heard about this particular stunt, unlike the equally famous ski jump? What happened if they messed up the shot - would they have a fleet of Lotus’s on standby for the one they got right? Did they fish the car out of the drink later, like Bond’s Aston in Spectre?
The success of The Spy Who Loved Me also relates to a theory I’ve been meaning to post on this site but never got around to - 'Thunderball and the Three-Card Trick'. Of course, The Spy Who Loved Me was devised to shoot Kevin McClory’s fox as in 1975 he regained the right to remake Thunderball which he intended to do under the name Warhead. Many of the underwater themes he mooted for this treatment are said to have been ‘borrowed’ for this film.
But having read a draft of Warhead, I have to say I think this film was always going to be better. Why? Well, understand that along with the main plot, you must then consider what the film is really about. Live And Let Die is not about cooking up drugs in the jungle, it’s about Bond and voodoo. You Only Live Twice is not really about the hijacking of a space capsule, it’s about Bond’s culture clash with the Far East. That’s the real theme. Likewise, the theme here is not so much submarines as Bond’s relationship with the Russian Soviet agent, that occupies the bulk of the narrative. Thunderball falls flat with some fans because it’s just about one thing - the hijacking of nuclear weapons. It’s okay as far as it goes, but as a narrative it’s a sitting duck. There’s no underlying theme to make it more interesting, ditto mostly with Never Say Never Again, though they do a bit with an older Bond at odds with the young management and changing times.
With The Spy Who Loved Me, if you take out the Soviet romance, the Cold War undercurrents, the unnatural locations for a water-based action thriller - the ski pre-credits, the Egyptian desert - then basically you have something similar to McClory’s Warhead, a movie that’s not that interesting, especially when - unlike with other thrillers - we always know that Bond is going to survive anyway, so no sense of jeapody.
Other Bond films that fail with fans tend to be ones where that subtext just doesn’t quite come through or, in the case of, say imo The Man With The Golden Gun - neither the main plot nor the subtext are really up to much. The main plot is Scaramanga trying to kill Bond - well, he isn’t it turns out. The sub-plot or alternative plot is the solar complex and the energy crisis - I’ve really no idea what is going on there, even now. Likewise the superior OHMSS fails for me because the official plot - Blofeld implausibly trying to pass himself off as a Count and win diplomatic immunity for past crimes - doesn’t work for me and nor does the sub-plot - an ageing Bond looking to settle down, because Lazenby is the youngest Bond yet and there’s not much chemistry between him and Rigg. There might be a sub plot about class and snobbery going on there - you’d think so with Rigg playing a ‘Countessa’ - but again, this is under-utilised.
Likewise, Licence to Kill is nominally about Sanchez’s drug operation - two a penny in the action genre - but it’s not bolstered by the meat of the story where Bond seeks to avenge his mate Felix Leiter, because he was only ever a cypher in the films anyway, and played by so many different actors that it’s hard to care - about either plots imo.
So not only does The Spy Who Loved Me have so many elements that would win a game of Top Trumps, it also consists of two plots - the official business on the tin, and the actual meat of the film, which is Bond’s culture clash and romantic friction with the Russian agent.
The moment one might get bored with one, they introduce the other and keep two balls up in the air. It does this more successfully than just about any other Bond film.
On a side note, I understand that The Spy Who Loved Me was the last film that Elvis Presley ever saw, in the week prior to his death.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That's a lot to take in, np, so here's just a few random responses-
Yes, Elvis did like this movie a lot.
"Wicker Man" wasn't a Hammer film (though with Lee and Pitt starring it could easily be thought one).
Love your thoughts on the themes of the films, or indeed the lack of same. The snobbery in OHMSS isn't so much of a sub-plot as you seem to think- it's right there as Fleming wrote it. There are 3 main characters in this story- a man who wants to be a Count, a woman who doesn't want to be a Countess, and Bond himself. I'd argue that it isn't under-utilised but subtle. So much of the plot depends on Blofeld wanting to be a Count that it isn't often mentioned that by marrying Bond Tracy ceases to be a Countess. In fact, "isn't often" isn't strong enough- "very rarely" would be better.
Loved the Lotus thoughts, both in the film and on the toy. I think I still have mine in the attic, next to a Moonraker and a helicopter or two.
Not once in all these years did I think the two scientists were Jewish, and not once have I given the presence/absence of Jewish people or references in the Bond films one thought.
Hmm, only some of my meticulously sourced photos are coming up! What's going on there - they were there last night. [Edit: They're now back...]
I could be wrong, but I think one of those financiers (the Ernie Wist as opposed to the tall Eric Morecambe one) pops up in the The Counterfeiters, an acclaimed drama filmed decades later and set in a concentration camp.
I think the only suggestion of a Jewish presence in the films seems to be these boffin types that get wheeled on from time to time - whether the actors who play them are actually Jewish I don't know. The two in the Venice lab who die after Bond's incursion, for instance. In contrast, the MI6 headquarters over several decades is largely of a kind. Otherwise the whole thing - whether actually Israeli or as a sociological presence or outlook on life - is absent in a series that usually celebrates diversity.
The snobbery thing ought to be an enjoyable subtext in OHMSS and I suppose is there as written but it doesn't hit home for me - I think I might have worked better with Connery in the role.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Thanks NP. Very interesting thoughts. A lot of work has gone into that!
TSWLM is always in my top three (it vies with OHMSS and FRWL). Roger will always be my favourite Bond and this film just has everything for me. The car chase with the Esprit and Helicopter side by side is still my favourite moment in Bond movie history.
Even though this film is from 1977 is still feels modern for me, contextually. Roger is at his peak. Jaws is a revelation and still fascinates kids seeing him for the first time. The locations don't look dated, as they're timeless anyway (the scene at Faslane is great and could have been filmed yesterday). The Esprit was years ahead of its time and still looks awesome. The Bell Jet Ranger has stayed (pretty much) the same since its launch.
I remember as a child the Bond films on TV in the late seventies, early eighties, were often Connery's, which for me felt a little bit dated and of an era I didn't associate with, so whenever one of Roger's films came on, they just felt modern, new and exciting. TSWLM, MR and FYEO are all just such fun and take me back to a wonderful time.
Barbara Bach is just out of this world, and I do get your 'soft porn star' point. It might be the nice 70's hairstyle and her revealing clothing throughout the film, I love both btw😍
I have never once thought about the scientists being Jewish. Not sure if I should, or think too much into that?
The film does draw from other films and genres in places, obviously the similarities with YOLT have been discussed at length, but I don't mind that. It's done in a different way and works.
I only have two negatives with TSWLM, one is Stromberg, as generally agreed, the character doesn't have enough depth. Second is the piece whilst they're trying to break into Stromberg's control centre. I just find it drags a bit.
All in all, a truly great Bond film and if I could watch one more before meeting my maker, this would be it.
This man really did have the best job in the whole world..😊;
excellent work Napoleon! lotsa discussion points in there to keep us busy!
Jaws too scary for a Bond film? a character named Agent XXX too sexy? as this was my first Bondfilm ever, they are exactly scary and sexy as a henchman or Bondgirl oughta be. After starting with this film none of the others were scary or sexy enough.
There were a lot of antisemitic stereotypes in the In the spy novels of the prewar era, The 39 Steps, Bulldog Drummond, early Saint novels. Jewish financiers who secretly ran the world and were ultimately responsible for the buildup to war. Tintin also, Herge rewrote at least two of his Tintin books in later years to remove those stereotypes. That's one of the more embarrassing aspects of early spy fiction, especially since they got the villains 180 degrees wrong. I think after the war, and acknowledgement of the Holocaust, the creators of a popular spyfilm series may have tried to be distance themselves from the most offensive of prewar spystory stereotypes, but maybe to the extent that Jewish people were not represented at all. (overemotional Latin types were fair game, but the filmmaker was named Broccoli after all so he's allowed)
napster said:
Hmm, only some of my meticulously sourced photos are coming up! What's going on there - they were there last night.
I think in some cases, the display of images is dependent on cookies. Meaning if you open another website, its cookies are in your browser memory. and when you imagelink to that other site from ajb007, you can see the image in your post because you still have those cookies. The rest of us can't see it because we don't have the cookies from the other website in our browser memory. Just a hypothesis.
I test for this problem by opening the ajb007 page in a second browser. The second browser wont have the cookies in memory, If the images don't appear there, I know nobody else can see them either and I need to find another source.
In this new forum software we can paste our own images in directly from our harddrive, which we couldnt do before. When I want to include an image, instead of imagelinking, I save it to a temporary folder on my harddrive and then drag or paste it into my post. Or sometimes I can just copy and paste directly from another website into my post. That's much more reliable, and we don't have to worry about some other site going down in the future. (but we may one day have to worry about ajb007 getting overloaded with big image files)
@Napoleon Plural 🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸
Five martinis for that review !
Cheers back!
The photos were on my desktop - however I promptly put them in the bin and deleted them, so that may the reason some don't exist. I'll try to reinstate them.
Kudos to @caractacus potts for referring to my comments on the socio-cultural presence of Jews in Bond films without somehow insinuating I have an attic full of Nazi memorabilia including a flag I drape myself in where I down vodka shots and sing songs to the Motherland every night...
Actually, there is a fascinating element to it - Ken Adam was a Jewish German emigre who fought in the Battle of Britain and who's to say his mock volcano in You Only Live Twice doesn't carry elements of those V2 rocket bases one sees in films like The Guns of Naverone and that one with George Peppard, name escapes me. It even is redolent of Ian Fleming's voiced fear in Thrilling Cities two decades after the war that the Germans may still want to launch such an attack; this was the premise of the novel Moonraker of course. Just about all those early villains could have been in those World War II movies, they have that sort of grand evil going on, it's on another scale, ends with Max Zorin I guess. (Yaphet Kotto appears the exception though he does turn up as a good guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn't he, as the submarine captain?) You can't imagine Dalton or Brosnan's villains being in a World War II thriller, it's relative humdrum stuff. Hitler no longer cast his shadow.
Perhaps it's more that those later villains just don't seem to be part of any larger network, not really. They are individual rogues. Otherwise, tbf, Pryce's Carver would make an excellent Nazi officer really but in Tomorrow Never Dies the evil he represents is just his own, kill him and it's over.
But my main thing with my review was - for over an hour we've no idea what the submarine captain saw in the pre-credits! And The Spy Who Loved Me plays with the overall plot and the underlying theme very nicely, better than most other films.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Don't worry NP, I also read your thoughts and commentary as intended👍️
Nazi, Anti-semitism and Fascist views and history have been referenced in all genres of cinema for years. Some more obvious than others of course, the biggest probably being Star Wars. It's impossible for creators of fiction not to be hugely influenced from the world's darkest hours and the lowest ebb of human history. It is the ultimate good v evil narrative. Sadly, I think Hitler's and other genocidal maniac's shadow is still there..
Just listen to Bond's line in NTTD; "History isn't kind to men who play God".
I'm sure Ian Fleming and Ken Adam must have been influenced by the V2 bases. Before 1944, was there any known or pictorial reference of a rocket base..?
btw It wasn't Yaphet Kotto in Raiders btw, it was George Harris. A fine actor.
Watched Licence To Kill on ITV4 yesterday…it started around 6pm and was SO heavily cut it ended by about 6:30pm 😡
I do like it when Bond films are on TV mid week as it just feels so relaxed and guilt free, but the cuts and quantity of advert breaks are annoying😤
@Napoleon Plural
What made you think the two scientists were Jewish ? I assumed they were German [Bechmann and Markowitz] I agree they certainly could be Jewish, but are they? Is this something Christopher Wood put in the novel ?
No, it's not in the novel.
Hi @chrisno1 I don't know, I was reaching around for examples. I mean, I don't know if the two financiers in Spy are Jewish, they sort of look it thought that observation might seem a bit off., I'm just referring to sort of a stereotype. Or is it? I'm kind of talking about an image here. I mean, someone told me in reference to this thread, well Jane Seymour's Jewish. Is she? I don't know, but like Jill St John, she doesn't present that way, it's an image thing. It's nebulous.
The sort of self-depecrating thing... I think actually Harrison Ford does do it a bit as Indy... Other than that, I dunno, I suppose I could make that that Airplane! joke about the passenger requesting a little light reading when it comes to action heroes. I think the image thing might have been referenced in that Tarantino film Ingloroius Basterds...
You could say also that the white working classes are unrepresented in the films... but that's not quite true on reflection as they tend to turn up as military personnel, such as the grotty lads in the submarine playing chess, or getting chained to the ATAK in For Your Eyes Only. Or in Q's workshop - or even as Q, in NSNA. Other than that though it's not a world they're encouraged to inhabit.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
GE easily the best Brosnan Bond film for me, the other films he did jut get considerably weaker over time for me.
There is something in this... I can criticise the film all day. But watching a bit of it on telly, it is one of the few Bonds that seems to create its own universe, look, atmosphere. Just the cinematography itself has a particular sheen, a metallic look. It is pleasing.
I suppose I'm not praising it when I see it works best as a harder, cooler Bond than The Man With The Golden Gun; the scene of Bond and Natalya flying over 006's Cuban island - is that were it is - reminds me of Bond's approach to Scaramanga's island and I don't find GE quite credible enough to find it shades many other films. I'd enjoy it as a companion piece, in fact why not a Golden trilogy with Goldfinger first?
The Boris character seems a nod of sorts to the black boffin or computer wizz kid in Die Hard, the relationship between Alec and him resembles that of Gruber and said computer nerd: 'You can do the job....?' 'You didn't bring me along for my sparkling personality' - one of many great lines in Die Hard. There's that bit of tension between them, and it is an example of one of the points I made about The Spy Who Loved Me and GoldenEye - that with Bond being off the screen for so long, they had to inject a few scenes reminiscent of other box office hits to make it seem relevant.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
A VIEW TO A KILL
...on the big screen. Sadly the last in this season. It wasn't a great print either, but I of course enjoyed it. I've never thought of this one as being a Bond that benefitted especially from the cinema experience (YOLT, TSWLM, MR leaping to mind) but it certainly does- the PTS, the Eiffel Tower, even the firetruck chase all were so much more enjoyable and the mine scenes were tense and thrilling.
Oddly enough, the frequent replacement of Sir Roger with stunt doubles seemed less obvious than on TV, I can't explain why.
Barry's score sounded magnificent, Walken and Jones filled the screen. My friend, who's not as dedicated a Bond fan as me (big surprise there) thought it a much more grim and serious film than he'd been expecting which I don't think is its usual reputation.
On the way out I asked the staff for the poster, but they said that wasn't possible. Pity.
On a recent rewatch of GE it did occur to me GE has its own unique look and feel for large parts of the film, you can't say that for many of the Bond films.
Admittedly it borrows a lot from films around at the time, Die Hard 2 immediately springs to mind. In fact I shook my head in disapproval when watching GE in the cinema at the Tiger Helicopter ejector seat escape. Time has been kind to GE.
Good shout regarding Boris resembling the typical 90's techno geek from Die Hard. Boris is one aspect of the film I ignore not a fan of the character. The passwords that Boris chose did not age well at all 😂
A Golden Trilogy works, some of the cinematography in GE and TMWTGG is quite similar in the scenes you mentioned.
SPECTRE. Fourth viewing; it's my favourite Craig Bond.
From Russia With Love on the telly.
The police siren you hear before Bond and Tanya get on the train sounds awfully similar to the one we hear from the Italian police car before it ends up in the drink in The Italian Job some years later.
Red Grant is silent but deadly up to the point where he turns garrulous to Bond, as if making up for lost time. Gets a bit chatty.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
GF and TWINE; both today.
I've always found GF to be average after each viewing; I guess if I had been born much earlier and was among those who saw it in 1964, at the start of Bondmania, I MIGHT have loved it more, but that's something we'll never know.
TWINE was not bad; what I picked up the most this time was everybody treated the material more seriously than the usual Bond movie. I thought Pierce Brosnan puts in his best performance as Bond in this movie.
The supremely enjoyable Goldfinger, on telly today.
The way they pick lots of nubile bikinied women for the scene around Miami Beach Hotel...! About 10 in one shot, made to walk past as Leiter is briefing Bond.
Not terribly competitive fight in the pre-credits - is the guy a foot shorter than Bond? Ditto the pre-credits of Thunderball where he seems to be fighting Jack Lemmon - not inappropriate given he was in drag. 'Nobody's perfect!'
The thing about GF is much as I enjoy it, there's some dodgy stuff in it. Not just the 'assault' on Pussy Galore. It's the way the film could end earlier is Bond had let Tilly take her shot rather than expose her, thus getting her killed, as he sort of did her sister. He's not a good luck charm, is he?
Then the whole nonsense of the military coming to life again... if they'd been tipped off by Pussy Galore then just WTF were they doing letting Goldfinger near Fort Knox to plant the bomb anyway? Oh, we know what they're up to, just let them stroll in. Like saying, yeah, we know these Saudis will hijack the planes on 9/11, just let them do that and try to shoot the planes down as they near the WTC.
If Galore betrayed Goldfinger why is he letting he pilot the plane out of there? There must be better ways of making an escape than trying to hijack the very plane your cunning adversary is on having been booked by the FBI, piloted by the very person who's betrayed you.... Admittedly the film is enjoyable enough you just go with it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
To pay tribute to Honour Blackman on what would've been her 96th birthday, i watched Goldfinger.
Fantastic Bond film. Think it's the film Sean feels more comfortable in the role as Bond.
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
The World Is Not Enough, shown on telly last night, is my fave Pierce Brosnan film.
For all that, I probably prefer dipping into any of his other films.
Visually, it's a bit dark without being noir-ish. Despite the title it doesn't really traverse the world or make it seem all ecompassing - no Moscow, New York, Dubai. There is something also a bit low key about it. This is a pre-9/11 Bond so the 'threat' is not really there, it's like they're reaching for it a bit. Of course, after 9/11 the threat was all too obvious but they couldn't make Al Quaida the villains for obvious reasons, it would be asking for trouble. Dare I say the sheer visual power of those attacks shook everything up even if we then subsequently had the brash, noisy and obvious Die Another Day. Anyway, I found Brosnan playing it broad in this but tbf it's that kind of film. A comedy thriller. Some great lines in it but also some real clunkers.
Now watching Thunderball. It's a very talky film aside from when it's underwater. It's like being stuck with a needy date. Bond doesn't shut up - I don't know if there's a talkier Bond film. This despite the plot being very simple and hardly needs explaining.
Roger Moore 1927-2017