Diamonds Are Forever
Dovy
Posts: 206MI6 Agent
Does anyone know whether the books by Ian Fleming followed a chronological order, i.e. did each story about James Bond have continuity or did it exist in its own universe as a stand alone, as reflected some of the issues I mention below.
In Diamonds are Forever we see that Bond expresses nothing about Tracey when he encounters Blofeld. He mentions nothing about Blofeld's surprising survival of the bobsled accident. Nor of course do we hear anything about Blofeld's constantly changing appearance.
In addition there is nothing to explain how Blofeld managed to build up the enormously sophisticated facilities so quickly after his vulcano facility was destroyed. Did the producers and writers of the films simply not care about any continuity in the films that would explain these issues? Of course the issue pops up like a sore thumb after Thunderball and You Only Live Twice when Blofeld did not even recognize Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
If SPECTRE was so powerful under the leadership of Blofeld how could the storyline not maintain continuity of people and events?
I have to admit that in watching Diamonds are Forever I was feeling pretty bored of the time spent on chase scenes even with all the terrific graphics and realistic scenes in the water and air. I am also feeling like "here we go again" when Bond's female heroines assists him in their swimsuit routine. At times the film reminds me of Magnum PI with Tom Selleck.
Comments
@Dovy Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think that the key answer to your questions about discontinuities between classic Bond films is that the films adhere only to loose continuity and that there was little interest in concoting bridging fictions between them - and no real reason to do that. In matters to do with Blofeld and SPECTRE there were real-life rights issues related to and constraining their use during particular periods.
And yes, the novels do follow a continuity.
DAF is not supposed to be related to OHMSS. The movie was not written that way and the fact it opens with a japanese set is possibly a means to remind the audience about Connery's last appearance, not forgetting Bond mentioning his holidays in Sir Donald's office.
Anyway I did get bored with the same chase formats in the films, including the appearance of the Louisiana sheriff who I thought was Edgar Buchanan at first
welcome @Dovy to ajb007!
please come tell us all about yourself and your Bond Journey in the Welcome & Comings & Goings thread
we also have a thread for exactly the sort of questions you're asking called the Little Niggles thread, maybe better than starting a new thread for each question.
also we have the Last Bond movie you watched thread, for more general discussion about the films as you watch them
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some good questions though. I'm wondering if this is the first time you've watched Bond films, and if you're watching them in release order?
From Russia with Love, the second film, is actually a direct sequel to Dr No. Both these films came out while Fleming was still alive, that might have something to do with it.
Its Thunderball where they start to ignore things that happened in earlier films (suddenly nobody in SPECTRE knows who James Bond is). Then they made You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty's Secret Service out of order and some big continuity problems began there, specifically with Blofeld. and Diamonds are Forever ignored the events of OHMSS.
I think, in general, in those days filmmakers did not worry about such a thing as film-to-film continuity. Think of the way folks viewed them at the cinema: viewers probably didn't even remember any specifics of the previous film. Even once they were broadcast on teevee in the 70s, they were usually a month apart and out of order.
Expecting viewers to remember what happened in previous films is really more of an innovation once people starting collecting films on home media, and increasingly moreso with streaming and binge-watching culture. The Marvel films for example really take advantage of the fact many viewers have all previous films in their collections, and exploits that to tell a larger story.
I think at the time these classic Bond films were made, even the filmmakers themselves had short memories, chose to ignore experiments that didn't work (OHMSS) and were further limited by actor availability or change in writers or directors. Easier to assume each film happens in its own selfcontained universe, with only occasional reference to previous events.
The term for that sort of storytelling is "episodic". Everything returns to the status quo at the end of an episode, and the events of the story are never referred to again.
It does start to change slightly in the Moore era: That southern sheriff you don't like for example returns on the next film, Then in the later Moore films, there are some other recurring characters (Jaws, General Gogol, the Minister of Defense) and a very loose continuity begins to emerge. Though consistency is probably the better word.
it isn't til the Craig films that youre expected to remember the plots of the earlier films, and even they're a bit sloppy, especially compared to Marvel or Star Wars..
Hello Caractacus Potts. I am in my 60s and didn't pay close attention to the couple of Bond films I watched as a teenager, mostly with Sean Connery. In my newly found older years I decided to have fun and watch the whole bunch of all Bond films with all the actors. But I guess we could say that the confusion about continuity and assorted contradictions goes along with what seems to be recooking the same theme, i.e. in DAF and TMWTGG. We see the same formula and how it ends - the destruction of the great laboratory and the death of the mad scientist mastermind. Bond with his half-naked girl, car chases and water chases. The survival of some character such as Samedi or Nick Nack. Speaking of Nick Nack, given his precarious position in life, one can only imagine what NN thought he would accomplish by killing Bond on the Chinese Junk as opposed to surrendering and cooperating. He wasn't exactly King Kong or even in a perpetual world of others like himself as was Samedi. Not to mention the comedy routines provided by people like the Louisiana sheriff. I am hoping that future films become somewhat more creative and dispense with simply redoing the same variations.
Welcome @Dovy Good to have you here🍻
Just on Nick Nack, I believe his motive for killing Bond was just out of being majorly ****** off with him. He was set to inherit all of Scaramanga's wealth and trappings, this would have been the case if Bond had just killed him, but of course, Bond and Goodnight destroyed the whole island and wiped out his 'fantasy island'. But you certainly have a point, managing to sail and navigate the Junk on his own, wouldn't have been easy.
Some of the recent films have tried to change the formula slightly and mix things up a bit, but the key is not to stray too far or make it too far removed from being what the majority love. A 'James Bond' film.
So how did Caramanga run that whole operation with only Nick Nack and Kra?
I’m watching DAF with my wife as I type and she’s constantly asking me where the diamonds are now and why this or why that, so I basically told her about the clarity issues that plagued the movie, etc., etc. She’s now asking why the astronauts are moving slow like they’re really on the moon, lol!
The Fleming books definitely have a chronological order. Bond even went through a "character arc" long before the term became trendy.
As for the film of DAF, the brutal pre-credits sequence is intentionally ambiguous about whether Bond is out to revenge Tracy or just eager to corral Blofeld after his escape in YOLT. Connery's acting in the scene is similarly open to interpretation--either he's being coolly brutal and taunting for the hell of it, or he's enjoying a dish best served cold. And the plastic surgery subplot seems like the filmmakers' way of acknowledging Blofeld's ever-changing appearance.
Some exceedingly interesting information on the script history of Diamonds Are Forever...
A fellow named Tom Mason managed to read Richard Maibaum's early treatments of the film and has discussed them on the Licence to Queer podcast. For the benefit of those who digest information faster by reading than listening, here's the interesting stuff:
All three Maibaum treatments open with Bond depressed and reeling from the death of Tracy. In the first treatment we're even told that Bond has been to a psychiatrist. The first two treatments open with Bond walking his dog on a desolate moor, possibly Scotland or Suffolk. He's described as living like a hermit and has a framed photo of Tracy in his house, which we see as melancholic instrumental of "We Have All the Time in the World" plays. While Bond is out walking a voluptuous skydiver drops from the heavens and reveals herself as Tiffany Case.
The pre-title sequences of all three treatments feature an attack by Irma Bundt. In the first treatment there's a long chase sequence with Bond on a motorcycle being chased by someone in a land rover. It crashes and Bond discovers the driver is Irma Bundt, disguised as a man and with diamonds on her person. The third treatment forgoes the moor setting and features a chase on the London Underground.
The third treatment shows a girl named Sandra breaking into Bond's house and hints that Bond is not able to "perform" as he usually does. All three treatments hint that Bond is so depressed he's less interested in sex; he doesn't flirt with Moneypenny in the first treatment, though he sleeps with Tiffany a few pages later.
The treatments were likely written with Lazenby in mind. Only one has a date--October '69, a few months before the premiere of OHMSS. Locations differ in each treatment; the second treatment has a sequence in Barcelona, with a chase through Parc Güell, but most of the action is set in Bangkok. There's also protracted sequence in Bond's home, described as a mews house in Chelsea, where Bond and Tiffany are attacked by several goons. The third treatment is partially set in India and features an Oxford-educated field agent described as a "brown-skinned day David McCallum." None of the treatments is set in Las Vegas!
In an echo from the Fleming novel Rufus B. Saye runs a diamond shop, though he's now a Spectre agent and appears in a six-person group meeting. The third treatment has M sending Moneypenny on a mission in the field, and there's an uncharacteristic scene of her being prudish around erotic carvings. Later on M is captured and held hostage by Blofeld in a hippie colony!
Q also goes into the field. In the first two treatments Bond takes the diamonds found on Bundt to Q for verification and sourcing. Afterwards Q is seen carrying a briefcase full of diamonds while Bond carries a similar one for paperwork. Bond swaps the briefcases and steals the diamonds.
In the second treatment M believes Bond has gone insane and sends 006 and 008 to capture him. When they find out Bond is on the level they team up with him for the final assault on Spectre. In the third treatment Bond joins Spectre, which accepts him after 006 and 008 make an attempt on his life. Bond and another Spectre agent then join forces to overthrow Blofeld.
Marc-Ange Draco returns in all three treatments. He has retired from the Union Corse and is living in an estate with Che Che, Toussaint, and Rafael as his butlers and valets. They've grown sick of civilian life, so when Bond reappears they're eager to help him. In the first two treatments Draco is dramatically revealed at the end of the first act; in the third he's randomly on the phone with Bond in the pre-titles. Draco is killed by an elephant stampede in the third treatment.
Wint & Kidd appear and are referred to in the treatments as "two American f*gs"; Wint is described as looking like Terence Stamp. There is less affection between them than in the film, though in the third treatment Wint comforts Kidd, who is afraid of flying.
The third treatment includes Tiffany's gang rape backstory from the novel, but "amped up" and somehow dramatized. The second treatment also has a sequence, after the diamonds have been evaluated, where Bond follows Tiffany to a restaurant and sits down with her. They have a conversation where he implies he knows what she's doing and fakes being drunk.
Maibaum was "utterly obsessed" with Blofeld being in a neck brace in all of the treatments. In all of them Blofeld tears the brace off "like a wild animal" before engaging Bond in a fist fight. In the second treatment Blofeld is killed by a tiger, which Maibaum calls poetic irony since Ernst likes cats. In the third treatment Blofeld is killed by six white kittens that Bond has somehow learned to command. And in a later script (not a treatment) Bond and Tiffany find themselves in an escape pod with Wint, Kidd and Blofeld; they eject the bad guys, who are eaten by sharks.
All of the treatments have a shipboard sequence where Wint and Kidd come in as waiters and tell Bond he has a phone call. After he leaves they try to kill Tiffany with boiling oil. As in the novel, Bond abseils the outside of the ship and enters through the porthole.
Wow! These were all interesting, thanks for this @Revelator
I think these early treatments were much better than we've got which was a parodied version of Bond.
I don't know about an official explanation -- the story and script for Diamonds are Forever went through many ideas and revisions -- but the film as we know it can be viewed one of two ways: 1) The opening in Japan is meant to take place relatively soon after You Only Live Twice, with Bond after Blofeld once again as a matter of duty, as he is both globe trotting and seems outfitted with at least some Q gadgets; 2) The entire teaser sequence is about Bond after Blofeld for the death of Tracy as a matter of personal revenge -- that, I think, is meant to be echoed in Blofeld's particularly brutal death and Bond's final line.
In either case, the producers were signaling to the audience -- with a wink that the experiment with the other fellow was over and things were returning to their original position with Connery and further evolution to expensive, high octane adventures. That they went campy, in much the same way the Helm and Flint films had already prepared audiences for, was a further attempt to distance themselves from the prior more dramatic and bittersweet film.
But you can still view this as rough continuity. There is a thread of such that runs through the Connery/Lazenby era and that turns up now and again afterward. Keep in mind audiences in the 1960s were not going to films in the hopes of seeing serialized stories dragged out over years. If they wanted that, they could watch soap operas for free on TV. Yes, there were film series and sequels and such, but these were the exception and not the rule.
So, bottom line, the producers set Diamonds are Forever up so it didn't really matter. The audience could watch the movie as though On Her Majesty's Secret Service had never happened. Or they could watch it as though Connery -- smoother and more in control than Lazenby -- was back, and his Bond got sweet but short-lived justice for the murder of his wife, though in reality he would have to wait a little longer for it to be final. (The fact that we never literally see Blofeld killed in the film also suggested the possibility for his return.) It was a rather clever use of ambiguity to get back to the escapism.
Those scripts @Revelator sound just dire. How can you not set DAF in Las Vegas ? It is always fun to see the recycling of ideas ditched from previous movies or new ones reused in later ones. I do though like the idea of the continuing story arc. It isn't something I enjoyed much with Craig, but OHMSS seems to cry out for a proper 'sequel'. The lack of Lazenby caused a big shift in how the film's narrative took shape. I'd be interested to know what adjustments were made for John Gavin to star before Connery came on board. Also the producer's decision to film DAF in the US was a cost saving initiative at the time and obviously impacted on those ideas to fly Bond off to Bangkok, India etc.
always fascinating to see these unused Bond adventures, and a Diamonds are Forever that actually is sequel to On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one I think we've all wondered about.
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the second treatment has a sequence in Barcelona, with a chase through Parc Güell
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this I'd particularly like to see, love that Gaudi architecture
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an Oxford-educated field agent described as a "brown-skinned day David McCallum."
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the real David McCallum in brownface? or an Indian actor who channels David McCallum?
McCallum was Ilya Kuryakin in The Man from UNCLE. He coulda had a cameo in a BondFilm twelve years before Lazenby had a cameo in an UNCLE film!
Agree these alternative treatments sound ruddy awful and you have to wonder if Richard Maibaum was actually being paid for this stuff. And maybe he was and that's the point - it's possible it's that form of elite socialism where there's money in the pot to go around - if you're lucky enough to be sat at the top table. Paul Haggis with his draft of QoS - unused but I think he got a cool million for it. Can they spare the money? Yep. Could he do with the money? Yep. Who suffers then - except we do because of script delays segueing in to the writer's strike and so on.
I don't think any of this DAF info has been covered, not in the excellent 1981 book about the Bond movies that escapes my memory, nor the Some Kind of Hero book which took us up to Spectre.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That's new to me and very interesting. Thank you for sharing!
"The James Bond Films", by Steven Jay Rubin
I'd reserve judgment on the treatments until we get the chance to actually read them. There's a difference between reading these details in the form of a narrative and encountering them in a disconnected list, which is what I had to provide. That said, I don't find the material any more "dire" or crazy than what we actually got in the Mankiewicz era, which I regard as a low point in the series' history.
And why wouldn't Maibaum get "paid for this stuff"? It makes sense to hire the man who scripted five of the previous six films in a very successful series. Moreover, I assume the two successive treatments reflect the input and reactions of the producers. A treatment is also the most experimental part of the scripting process, where one explores various avenues the story could go. Some of the treatments for OHMSS featured elements like aquatic cars and Blofeld getting killed by a falling statue.
The DAF treatments explore various ideas that might have made a bolder, more interesting, and dramatic film than the one we got: M being kidnapped, Moneypenny in the field, Bond in depression over Tracy's death, a Tiffany Case presumably closer to the literary one, far eastern locations more interesting than Vegas, Bond infiltrating Spectre, Bond being targeted by other double Os, the return of Marc-Ange Draco, and a final confrontation between Bond and Blofeld. How they would have translated into a final screenplay will remain uncertain--these were treatments, not scripts--but they offer an interesting glimpse of what could have been.
Lazenby's departure left the producers unsure what sort of film they wanted to make. In a memo addressed to Broccoli and Saltzman and dated Feb. 10, 1970, Maibaum wrote "I'd like for us to make some joint decisions...Do we use Blofeld as our mastermind again? If so, we can't avoid emphasizing the revenge aspect. The audience expects Bond to settle his account with him for murdering Tracy."
Maibaum later produced screenplay drafts that included scenes onboard a Victorian locomotive (as in the novel) and a climactic battle with Blofeld in a hydroelectric plant. Broccoli considered the story "a little too tame, too much like any spy thriller," so Maibaum then produced a draft featuring Goldfinger's twin brother as the villain, climaxing with an exotic boat chase across Lake Mead. Guy Hamilton "found boats boring" and scrapped the finale. Eventually Mankiewicz came onboard and the script went through further changes...
I suppose having Connery back meant they could go for a more jocular approach, nothing to frighten the horses, but then I like the film anyway. I just find it hard to believe even Maibaum thought this stuff would work out. Anyway, it's late and there's still so much to do...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Agreed 💯👍
revelator said;
Guy Hamilton "found boats boring"
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he managed to make boats interesting in his next two BondFilms!
Perhaps because he also found car chases boring! I'd have preferred the Lake Mead boat chase over the oil rig finale, but the film's reduced budget would have ruled it out anyway.
A very interesting read thanks for that
As described, some of these Maibaum treatments sound fascinating. I'm reminded of the style of the continuity-laden Craig era by the treatments which would have presented the Bond of DAF as a depressed, bereaved hermit, drawn into a re-match with Irma Bunt as well as Blofeld, and with Draco in the mix too...
I'm happy with the DAF we have in hand.