Re: Universal Exports - The James Bond Thread

[Patrick]

This raises an interesting question: Johnstone, how old were you the first time you saw DAF? As I said in my review, I was 8, and watching a Bond movie on a Sunday night was always something of an event in the mid-70s. I think that's why I remember Kidd and Wint so vividly.

It's one thing to have a woman in a leather catsuit, astride a motorcycle, firing an RPG at another car. There's something impersonal about that. On the other hand, it's quite personal when two people distract a dentist and drop a scorpion down the back of someone's shirt, and then joke about it. "Dr. Tynan couldn't make it. Bitten by the bug." As an 8 year old, I think it kind of freaked me out.

[Johnstone McGuckian]

DAF was one of the last Bond films for me to see. I would guess I was 14/15 at the time. Perhaps even a bit later. Just never stayed with me really. There are far more iconic Bond moments for me.

[Patrick]

Having now finished with the first age of Bond, it’s time to do a little assessment and hand out some awards. I won’t be picking a best picture winner, because all seven films during this nine year period of time are different in theme and content. Forget comparing apples and oranges, it would be like finding a favorite among a basket of assorted fruits. What I can do, to start off with, is recap the ratings I gave each of the films within this first age of Bond:

Dr. No: 4 out of 5 (bottles of 1953 Dom Perignon)
From Russia With Love: 3 out of 5 (Lektor Decoders)
Goldfinger: 5 out of 5 (beheading bowler hats)
Thunderball: 2 out of 5 (flying jet packs)
You Only Live Twice: 1 out of 5 (piranha fish)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: 5 out of 5 (“prettily wrapped” purple Christmas presents)
Diamonds Are Forever: 3 out of 5 (cassette tapes of Marshall music)


So think of this review, before we launch the second age of Bond that will take us through the 70s and 80s, as a sort of 007 Oscars. We have categories, and they need awarding!

Best Bond Girl:
To be nominated in this category requires that the actress had a part where she was both an ally of Bond, and finished the movie with him. The nominees are: Ursula Andress as Honey Rider in Dr. No; Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love; Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger; Claudine Augur as Domino in Thunderball; Mie Hama as Kissy Suzuki in You Only Live Twice; Diana Rigg as Traci di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; Jill St. John as Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever.

You can do away with all the other nominees, for me this really comes down to a choice between only two. On the one hand, Honor Blackman was all woman with that figure, that tough shell for Bond to crack, and her physicality, exchanging judo flips with Bond. She was a fully qualified pilot who was training her own cadre of pilots, and she was a daunting foe until Bond finally won her over. And what a name for a character!

On the other hand, you have Diana Rigg as Traci. She might not have had the typical figure for a Bond girl, but that takes nothing away from a truly outstanding performance as a flawed, suicidally-damaged character who falls in love with Bond, and then rescues him. She holds the distinction of being the only woman Bond actually fell in love with, and married.

My call for best Bond girl in the first age of Bond is Diana Rigg as Traci, OHMSS. It should be noted that both Honor Blackman and Ms. Rigg came to their respective Bond films after successful stints in The Avengers, which would appear to indicate that British television series are excellent training grounds for up and coming performers.


Best Villain:
We exclude Blofeld from this, because with three actors having portrayed the character, he gets his own category. So, the nominees are: Joseph Wiseman as Dr. No; Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love; Gert Frobe as Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger; and Aldofo Celi as Emilio Largo in Thunderball.

This is an easy one to award. Auric Goldfinger wins, hands down. From his idiosyncratic, quirky performance that underlined a significantly flawed character, to the fact that his character flaw drove the events of Goldfinger, there is no villain who equals him on this list.


Best Ernst Stavro Blofeld:
Bond’s arch nemesis, seen only as a torso shot with a cat in From Russia With Love and Thunderball, we exclude those to look at the performances of the three actors who have actually portrayed him on the screen with a face. The nominees are Donald Pleasance in You Only Live Twice; Telly Savalas in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; and Charles Gray in Diamonds Are Forever.

I’m awarding this one to Telly Savalas. Although I think Gray’s performance may have been overall better realized, Savalas had a natural menace to his delivery of a line. And I like how he was at least as physical as Bond, not afraid to go skiing down a mountain at night, or handling a bob sled in a thrilling chase.


Best Henchman/Physical Villain:
The physical villain is the one who carries out the orders of the main villain, usually doing all the dirty work like killing someone. The nominees are: Robert Shaw as Grant in From Russia With Love; Harold Sakai as Oddjob in Goldfinger; Luciana Paluzzi as Fiona Volpe in Thunderball; Karin Dor as Helga Brandt in You Only Live Twice; Ilse Steppat as Frau Irma Bunt in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; and both Putter Smith and Bruce Glover as, respectively, Mr Kidd and Mr. Wint in Diamonds Are Forever.

This is a difficult one to call, because there are some true gems of villainy in that list. Oddjob, with his lethal bowler hat, for example. Or Frau Bunt as the one who’s shot found Traci. But for me, the best physical villain has to combine both their villainy with some great dialogue. And the ones who ran away with this category were Messrs. Kidd and Wint. They are so unusual and so iconic in the way they take such gleeful pride in their sadism that they edge out Oddjob.


Best Ally:
The Bond ally category awards that person who helps Bond, sometimes keeps him grounded, and ultimately knows he’s working for the good guys by teaming up with Bond. The nominees are Felix Leiter (played by four actors, and the fact that they’re all being lumped into one character ought to be a clue that this character didn’t win); Pedro Armendariz as Karim Bay in From Russia With Love, Tetsuro Tanba as Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice, and Gabriele Ferzetti as Marc-Ange Draco in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

My award may surprise you. I’m giving this to Tetsuro Tanba. I may not be the biggest fan in the world of YOLT, but Tiger Tanaka was a fascinating character who let Bond in fully to his world of Japanese secret service and ninja training.


Best Action Sequence:
For this category, think of all those big action set pieces where a huge fight takes place, chaos is the order of the day, and Bond is right at the center of it. The usually happen at the climax of the film, although this is not always true: Bond and Karim Bay arranging a bombing of the Russian embassy in order to steal the Lektor and depart with Tatiana is an example of such a big action sequence that didn’t happen at the conclusion of the film.

My nominees are:
- Goldfinger: Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus, the CIA and the US Army agreeing to play a game of pretend to get Auric Goldfinger to show his hand and plant the nuclear bomb at Ft. Knox, followed by the huge battle that takes place to prevent the bomb from detonating.
- You Only Live Twice: The ninjas storming Blofeld’s volcano lair to put an end to SPECTRE’s attempts to provoke a war between the US and the Soviet Union.
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Bond and Draco lead an assault team on Blofeld’s Alpine lair to prevent the women from the “allergy clinic” from being hypnotically ordered to release their virus Omega food sterilization weapons, and rescue Traci into the bargain.
- Diamonds Are Forever: While the US Marines attack Blofeld’s off-shore oil rig, Bond captures Blofeld in his boat and uses it as a battering ram to destroy the command center from which the laser satellite is controlled.

For this award, I wanted to give it to a fight scene that is both huge in scale, and visually memorable. And given those criteria, the choice becomes relatively easy: the image of a ninjas sliding down repelling ropes, fighting with swords and flying stars against the guns of SPECTRE, and all of it happening on a huge Ken Adams-designed set, is easily the most memorable, and certainly the biggest in scale.


Best Fight:
The name of the category speaks for itself, and for me there are only three great fights that merit nomination: the fight with Grant on the Orient Express (From Russia With Love); the fight with Osato’s sumo wrestler in Osato’s office (You Only Live Twice); and the fight with the ‘real’ Peter Franks in Tiffany Case’s elevator (Diamonds Are Forever.)

While all three have some great appeal, the fight with Grant in FRWL still strikes me as the best done, best presented fight in a Bond film for how claustrophobic it was, and how real it was due to the lack of a musical score played over it. It was tense and dramatic, and the perfect denouement to a great cold war spy story.


Best Spy Moment:
This category requires a bit of explanation. For me, a “spy moment” happens when Bond engages in some true espionage to obtain some vital bit of information. This moment may or may not include the use of a gadget, but it invariably gets both Bond and the audience an important clue about the plot, and it does so without a lot of expositive dialogue. More than that, it’s done in a way only a spy could do.

My nominees for this category are:
- Bond and Karim Bay observing the inside of the Russian embassy with a periscope, learning that Krelencu is back in Istanbul, and therefore the Bulgarians are now involved.
- Bond breaking into Goldfinger’s suite and discovering partner in crime Jill Masterson helping Goldfinger cheat at cards. This was Bond’s first clue as to what kind of person Goldfinger was.
- Bond playing “peek-a-boo” with his guard to effect his escape from his cell, and then overhearing Goldfinger tell the mobsters the details of Operation Grand Slam. Bond now has the details of the plan, but how to warn Felix Leiter?
- Bond breaking into the safe in Osato’s office, and then effecting a narrow escape through the streets of Tokyo. The information Bond retrieved advanced the investigation to focus on the ship Ning-Po.
- Bond coordinating with a colleague to have a combination safe cracking device and copy machine lifted up to him in Gumbolt’s office, and learning the location of Blofeld.
- Bond mountaineering around the Whyte House in an effort to learn what Williard Whyte is up to, and discovering that contrary to what he believed, Blofeld is alive and well.

This is a tough call, but I’m going to go with the scene from OHMSS. Being a spy obviously means you have resources at your disposal, but timing becomes critical. Bond only had an hour, while Gumbolt was at lunch, to finish this task, and he had to rely on split second timing with his fellow MI-6 agent to pull it off.


Best Death Scene:
Every villain’s death in a Bond movie is a moment of triumph for the good guys, but some movie deaths are more memorable than others. The nominees in this list are: Dr. No’s steel hands trying in vain to grab something as he sinks deeper into a radioactive coolant pool; Oddjob’s electrocution as he attempts to retrieve his lethal bowler hat; Goldfinger getting sucked out a jet window when it looses pressure because of the bullet he, himself, fired; Fiona Volpe getting shot in the back by her own henchman as she dances with Bond; Helga Brandt being dropped in a pool of piranhas; Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint’s last dinner service in Bond’s cruise ship suite.

I’m calling a personal favorite here, and going with Kidd and Wint’s death. In this scene, Bond’s sophistication trips them into revealing themselves, and Bond then has two adversaries to deal with. After setting Mr. Kidd on fire by breaking a bottle of brandy and throwing it at him, he then only has Mr. Wint to deal with. Tiffany’s timely discovery of the bomb in the Bombe Surprise gives Bond the edge to tie the bomb, and Mr. Wint’s hands, to the tails of his jacket and flip him overboard. A most satisfying pair of deaths, that.


Best Line:
Oddly, I’m not going to go with one of Bond’s lines of dark humor after dispatching someone. For me, the best death scene also provides the best line: “Mouton Rothschild IS a claret, and I’ve smelled that cologne before, and both times, I’ve smelled a rat.”

Best Script:
You already know from my reviews that I’ve eliminated Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever from the list of nominees. For me, the best scripted story is the one with the fewest plot holes, the one with the tightest plot, and the one which presents the best overall theme. Only two rise to the top of the list for me, and of those two, I have go with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.


Best Set Design:
Obviously, the best set designer in the series is Sir Ken Adams. What he can do to stretch a budget and create something which simply visually pops and gives a Bond film the iconic look of being out of this world cannot be praised enough, in my opinion. Choosing one of his sets as the best is therefore a tough call.

I’m going to go with a nostalgia angle on this award. For me, the scene that first established Sir Ken’s signature look was the tarantula room in Dr. No. Over the years, his sets got more complicated and more elaborate, but this was the first one to really make me sit up and go wow. A minimalist set, it was dominated by an angled ceiling with a huge circular window in the ceiling. And to further give it contrast, he created a grid within the window itself. This established the theme in Bond movies of circles representing evil, and made you realize immediately when you’ve entered the bad guy’s lair.


Best Score:
Of the seven theme songs to open a Bond movie, several have been memorable. Shirley Bassey, belting out the final notes of Goldfinger, or Tom Jones crooning about “he walks, while other people run.” But the musical composition that best fit the tone and theme of a Bond movie, for me, was John Barry’s score for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Yes, it’s an instrumental, but it as I wrote when I reviewed OHMSS, the composition has this relentless forward thrust to it, as though, like the movie, it’s marking the forward march of time, leading us to Bond and Tracy’s doomed amount of time together. I like it a lot.

Most “Iconic” Bond Film:
I said I wouldn’t compare one Bond film with next to determine a winner in best movie category. But I can choose the one I think is most iconic in terms of the Bond franchise. That selection is easy for me: Goldfinger is the movie that launched Bond-mania around the world. It had everything, including a highly implausible plot, but it was pulled together so well by a good script, tremendous performances, and great cinematography. In many ways, it set the standard by which all other Bond movies are measured.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Good stuff Patrick - not going to try and match your categories, but thought it would be interesting to compare ratings.


Dr. No: Both 4/5
From Russia With Love: Both 3/5
Goldfinger: Both 5/5
Thunderball: Both 2/5
You Only Live Twice: You 1/5, me 5/5
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: You 5/5, me 2/5
Diamonds Are Forever: You 3/5, me 3.5/5

So, effectively, we only differ in our views on 2 of the first 7 Bond movies. Although these differences are huge!

[Patrick]

Actually, it is rather odd to learn how similar we were on our ratings, given that the two we diverged on were so far apart.

As far as the catagories and awards, the whole reason I posted this was to generate some discussion and debate. Who disagrees with me, and why? Let's be hearing from you all.

Having said all that, I'm chomping at the bit to get on with my review of Live and Let Die. I have a feeling I'll suprise a lot of you with that.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Best Bond Girl: Pussy Galore - the seminal Bond girl.

Best Villain: Auric Goldfinger - if for no other reason than he has the best line for a villain in any Bond movie.

Best Ernst Stavro Blofeld: Donald Pleasance.

Best Henchman: Oddjob - again, thanks to his hat, a seminal character.

Best Ally: Tiger Tanaka.

Best Action Sequence: You Only Live Twice volcano. Without it we'd never had some of the great set pieces in later movies.

Best Fight: The fight with Grant on the Orient Express - because the immensity of the characters phsicality has been superbly built up throughout the film.

Best Spy Moment: By a country mile it has to be Bond playing “peek-a-boo” in Goldfinger.

Best Death Scene: Helga Brandt being dropped in a pool of piranhas.

Best Line: Goldfinger's already hinted at: "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die".

Best Script: Goldfinger.

Best Set Design: The volcano in You Only Live Twice.

Best Score: Goldfinger.

Most “Iconic” Bond Film: Goldfinger.


Goldfinger 8
You Only Live Twice 5
From Russia With Love 1

My, there's an awful lot of Au there!

[Patrick]

My, there's an awful lot of Au there!

The appropriate expression, from the old west panning for gold days, is "Eureka!"

Goldfinger 8
You Only Live Twice 5
From Russia With Love 1

Compare with my totals:

Dr. No 1
From Russia With Love 1
Goldfinger 2
You Only Live Twice 2
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 4
Diamonds Are Forever 3

Her Majesty would be pleased.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Your totals suggests some flaws in your ratings!

[Patrick]

I disagree. Simply because a film had a nice element to it doesn't automatically make it a great Bond film. My reviews are about taking a whole film, on balance. The awards about the individual elements.

[The Co=Ordinator]

I disagree.

Well you would, wouldn't you. Bad Patrick.

[Patrick]

Right, make of this what you will... I make no claims as to the accuracy or validity of this news. This is merely a bit of intriguing information about "Bond 23," and you can judge the reliability of the source BY CLICKING HERE.

First bit of news from the story:

"Jelena Mihailovic is a Serbian cellist and, apparently, she performed in front of Sam Mendes and some James Bond “producers” at Cannes. So “staggered” were they by what she was doing, they allegedly asked her to provide “the opening score” for Bond 23."

I presume this means there will be a cello used in the opening score. Otherwise, what would be the point?

Second bit of news: we apparently have a title other than "Bond 23" for the next movie.

"At one of the many concerts the musician held in France during the Cannes Film Festival, the producers and the director of the next Bond film were in the audience, who were staggered by what they had heard and on the spot offered Jelena a chance to write the opening score for the new James Bond film, entitled Carte Blanche."

Now, that's interesting because Carte Blanche is actually the title of a new James Bond novel by Jeffrey Deaver. Here's an excert from the book's plot summary on Wikipedia:

"[Bond] starts his assignment on the outskirts of Novi Sad in Serbia where an Irish sapper-turned-enforcer named Niall Dunne is planning to derail a train carrying three hundred kilograms of methyl isocyanate, dumping it into the Danube. Bond is able to prevent the catastrophe by derailing the train himself at a much safer place along the line. He is unable to detain Dunne, who kills Bond’s Serbian contacts in the course of his escape."

The website I provided the link to at the top of this post claims that meshes nicely with the rumors they've heard concerning the next movie containing a set piece on a train.

So, like I said, these could all be red herrings, or they could be true. I'm merely passing along what information reaches me. Normal service will resume this Friday with the posting of my review for Live And Let Die.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Thank you for the gossip Fast Liver. Looking forward to your analysis of Roger Moore's opener.

[Zoltar]

Normal service will resume this Friday with the posting of my review for Live And Let Die.

Looking forward to it.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Location filming for new Bond likely to take place in India.

[Patrick]

Note that the article you linked to, oh Cyber-one, mentions specifically that they'd spoken with a representative at Indian Railways. That would seem to be in agreement with the article I linked to yesterday about how there was planned to be a big set-piece on a train.

Besides, we can't go more than a couple of movies without a train in a Bond film.

[Patrick]

By 1973, the world had become a different place to the one that saw the introduction of James Bond in Dr. No, eleven years earlier. The cold war tensions of the 50s and 60s had given way to an era of “détente.” The world had dealt with the era of Vietnam, the babyboomer generation came into its own with the Woodstock concerts of 1969, and with the arrival of the 70s, we saw the emergence of an era of political scandal (Watergate), the rise of terrorism at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, energy crises, and inflation. And it was with this background, and the knowledge that a new actor needed to be found to play 007, the second age of Bond began. So the question is, could Bond survive the transition and find a way to appeal to this new paradigm?

The success of a small budget television show called Kung Fu led to a whole genre of martial arts films, and not wanting to show favoritism, Hollywood launched what came to be known as the “blaxploitation” genre. It was the success of films like Shaft that drove the creative decision to make Live And Let Die the next Bond entry. And what a strange, quirky movie it is. It’s a good thing I had the benefit of the audio commentary and the DVD extras to watch, or I might concluded that the production team set out to make a serious spy movie and ended up with self-parodying farce. As I have reviewed by the DVD extras and the audio commentary, I’m forced to conclude that every creative decision was therefore intentionally made, and it strikes me as a bizarre thing to do. But let’s deconstruct this movie and judge it on its own merits.

Live And Let Die
UK Release: July 6, 1973
US Release: June 27, 1973



“A secret agent?! On WHOSE side?!”
As is tradition, with any Bond movie, we start with 007, himself. Unlike the way we were introduced to Sean Connery’s Bond as a sequence of hand gestures playing cards and lighting a cigarette at the start of Dr. No, or given cheeky glimpses of George Lazenby in the pre-credits sequence to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in the pre-credits sequence of Live And Let Die, Bond isn’t seen at all. Roger Moore starts his seven film career as Bond following the credits, and he’s in bed with an Italian agent. Hardly the stuff of legend. Worse, it sets the tone right there: Bond is a playboy. And the subsequent early morning visit by M and Moneypenny, as James attempts to hide the Italian agent’s presence, plays more as comedy than as action-adventure.



Don’t misunderstand me: I like Roger Moore as an actor. He had done a wonderful job of playing Simon Templar on The Saint for years, and the fact that he was now going to play the world’s most famous gentleman spy certainly seemed like a natural choice. Although I think his performances improved in time, it seems that in this story, at least according to scriptwriter Tom Mankiewicz, there was a deliberate attempt to make Bond look like a complete twit. In so doing, it took not very long to undo all the impressions Connery had made with the character. Indeed, as Mankiewicz points out in the audio commentary to LALD, with Connery, you could have a scene where Bond sits down at a table with a woman, and he could either lean over and kiss her, or put a knife through her ribs. Only the former possibility was ever going to happen with Mr. Moore, because sticking a knife through a woman’s ribs would have made him look nasty.



That Bond could be fooled not once, but twice, at a Fillet of Sole restaurant beggars belief. What happened to the Connery-Bond’s omnipresent awareness of the situation? And that’s before we get to the point that in the New York of 1973, given the state of racial tensions at the time, a well dressed white man travelling alone into Harlem would have been just this side of suicidal.

What we have in the Bond of LALD is an upper-crust British sophisticate playboy, who apparently isn’t concerned with his own safety. He is not the ruthless fighter that Connery was. Even Mr. Moore’s fight sequences in this movie seem forced and delivered half-heartedly. When Connery delivered a throw away line of dark comedy, he actually threw the line of dialogue down, as though it were nothing more than an ironic note. Moore actually plays the line, as comedy, which only serves to drag the audience out of any sense that this is, in fact, a serious action-drama. And the fact that Bond has to be repeatedly bailed out of the bad situations he gets himself into by David Hedison’s Felix Leiter, and endure Leiter’s criticisms for his operational shortcomings, just lowers the MI-6 agent to the level of an idiot. Well, if the decision was to present 007 as a twit to make him endearing to audiences of the second age of Bond, all I can say is mission accomplished.

All of this, of course, comes down to a matter of taste. I like my spy movies to have an element of realism to them, and the persistent influx of purposely done comedy into LALD watered down my appreciation of Bond as a character here.




“Names is for tombstones, baby. Y’all take this honkey out and WASTE HIM!”
One of the elements to Bond films has always been its use of exotic locations to help sell the narrative. You Only Live Twice was perhaps the most audacious at this, setting the entire story in Japan and attempting to immerse Bond (and the audience) in Japanese culture. But with the creative decision to make a movie that was part spy movie, part Fawlty Towers, and part blaxploitation genre, the decision to ground this movie in the grim, urban reality of New York in the early 70s makes a certain amount of sense. To someone who gets their first viewing of LALD in 2011, the decision to have a Black villain, surrounded by Black henchmen with names like Whisper and Tee Hee, and set this villain up as well funded drug dealer seems a bit silly. Let’s remember that we, in 2011, are several ages of Bond removed from the contemporary audience of 1973, and those decisions at the time were actually rather bold, and fraught with risk for a successful film franchise.

Think about it for a second: the 007 franchise, arguably at the time, the most successful film franchise in cinema history, is hedging its bets and transitioning Bond into the undiscovered country of the 1970s by putting together a film dominated by Black actors, featuring period specific clothing and music, and featuring a plot about heroin smuggling. This is truly “Blaxploitation Bond,” to coin a phrase, and it could have gone wrong.



Now, having acknowledged all that, the problem is the plot holes that litter this story. At several points, the missed opportunities to kill Bond just make you wonder how bad could the bad guys actually be? Why drop a snake into Bond’s bathtub? Kanaga’s henchman, Whisper, delivers room service to Bond while Bond is in the bathroom. Why the subterfuge? If the goal is to kill Bond, why not just have Whisper shoot him while he’s in the bathroom? And then there’s Whisper, himself. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you are a super-villain and both MI-6 and the CIA have turned their interest towards you. You know you need to build a team of henchmen to do the dirty work. So, can one of you would be super-villains explain to me the usefulness of a morbidly obese henchman who can’t speak in a volume above a whisper?

Ah, but the plot holes don’t stop there. You kidnap Bond, take him out in the Louisiana swamps and show him your drug operation, leave him on a tiny island surrounded by crocodiles, and leave? I mean, if the goal is rid yourself of this troublesome secret agent, wouldn’t you want to stick around and watch the carnage? At least see the first crocodile bite?

This is what makes this movie so difficult to defend. How can you mount a defense in the face of the plot holes you continually come across, when it seems no one in the production actually cares enough do something about them? Fine, that leaves us with trying to watch it without focusing on anything relating to plot.

[Bond picks “The Fool” out of Solitaire’s deck of cards]
“You have found yourself.”
Right, let’s forget about plot, and focus on theme. At least with this, we have something, if you’ll pardon the expression, in spades. In order to do this, we have to again suspend what we know from our 2011 reactions to the movie, and look at this film as it was intended to be viewed by audiences in 1973.



I’ll start with this question: what was your reaction to seeing the very well dressed Bond in a Harlem alley strewn with debris and thick with urban grit? How about that for the first time in any Bond movie, Bond made no appearance at all in the pre-credit sequence of the film? For those used to the Bond formula, these sorts of incidents made the audience feel disoriented because they played contrary to expectations. And that gives us our theme: dislocation.

Again and again in LALD, Bond’s own expectations, based on his previous experiences, are confounded, and with them, those of the audience, too. We see Bond’s home for the first time since a brief glimpse of it in Dr. No, and his home is invaded at an extremely early hour by M, something Bond clearly didn’t anticipate. When he arrives in Harlem, he’s immediately out of his element. First, a booth located up against the wall flips around and delivers him to Mr. Big. On his next visit to the New Orleans Fillet of Sole, the floor opens up and swallows him. The image of a well dressed Brit in a Harlem alley is certainly disorienting. And then we come to the fact that first and only time in a Bond movie, the supernatural is introduced to the story line, and Bond is shocked to learn there’s actually something to this voodoo stuff.



When Bond seduces Solitaire, something that normally results in the collection of some vital information, it backfires on him! Solitaire actually does have the ability to see the future, and by seducing her, he’s robbed her of that power and made her vulnerable to Kanaga. And then there’s Kanaga, himself, masking himself up as Mr. Big for his trips stateside. Baron Samedi is not just a tourist attraction on the stage at Bond’s San Monique hotel, he’s actually a villain working for Kanaga. And at the graveyard, Samedi appears to rise from the grave before he’s revealed to be a statue. Smiling ministers on the streets of New Orleans are actually assassins, and the passing jazz funeral procession is marching with an empty coffin, waiting for the death of the watching British agent.



Bizarre imagery is all over the place in this film, as objects consistently are not what we think they are. Starting with the opening credits, we see the face of an attractive Black woman that explodes and reveals a skull, rather than the normal dancing, preening women we are used to seeing. Scarecrows contain cameras and poison darts. At the New Orleans airport, Bond’s plane never takes off, but drives around and around losing its wings. Bond walks on the backs of crocodiles. Speed boats go sailing through the air, fly along the ground, and end up in swimming pools and crashed into police cars.

I’ll give the producers credit for that- as a theme, it actually worked fairly well and gave Live and Let Die a pretty impressive look.

“I know who you are, what you are, and why you have come. You have made a mistake. You will not succeed.”
Regular readers of my reviews will recall that I thought very highly of Auric Goldfinger as a villain because he was such a great character with a great character flaw. In Live And Let Die, we have a fascinating relationship between Kanaga and Solitaire, and I want to draw your attention to it because it so rare that we get glimpses of the personal lives of Bond villains. There is a clear back-story to this tale that apparently involved Kanaga and Solitaire’s mother. We also learn, well before Bond does, there is a relationship between Solitaire’s gift of prophecy and her virginity. All that leads to a fascinating interplay between Kanaga and Solitaire- when Bond takes her gift away (“no sense going off half-cocked”,) Kanaga is not only angry, but clearly jealous and bitterly disappointed because of what Bond has done. His line, “I would have given you love in time!” is given as though Solitaire had delivered a blow worse than Bond could ever have done with her betrayal and loss of her power.



Yaphet Kotto as Kanaga/Mr. Big gives an explosive performance in this story, given that he gets to play two characters, which provides him a chance to inject nuance and menace in equal measure. He can be tender with Solitaire before venting his rage and disappoint with her. He can be loud as Mr. Big, and enjoy a good laugh after blowing up the sofa Whisper is sitting on. As villains go, he’s pretty darn good.



Solitaire was not quite a villain, just a bit naïve. Jane Seymour, who was credited with an “Introducing” tag in the opening credits, was only 21 years old at the time of the making of this movie, and if anything, she’s gotten even better looking over time as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Live And Let Die provided her with her first big break in acting, and she certainly played the part with an innocence and vulnerability which suited the character.

Julian Harris plays Tee Hee, the man with the hook hand. With his toothy grin, big brash suits, and that hook, he makes a well realized “physical villain” in the story, and in some ways, is a foreshadowing of characters like him who would follow, such as Jaws.



And then we come to the utterly brilliant Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi. My God, what inspired casting! It has to be said that acting is not the only thing Mr. Holder excels at- the dance scenes at the hotel when Bond first arrives in San Monique were choreographed by Mr. Holder. But as Baron Samedi, he exudes menace and a sort of supernatural charm that is both captivating and disturbing. He doesn’t actually do much, story-wise, here, but he seems to haunt this movie like a corporeal ghoul, and deliver that soul-freezing laugh. His appearance sitting on the front of the train engine at the end of the film is not only in keeping with the whole dislocation theme of the film, but apparently the producers loved his performance so much, they hoped to cast him again.



One final cast member of note: Clifton Jones, a native New Yorker, as Sheriff J.W. Pepper. In keeping with the desire to have a constant undercurrent of comedy in this film, Sheriff Pepper was clearly a big comedic element. I’ve already gone on about how I didn’t agree with the heavy injection of comedy in this story, but it has to be said that Jones played Sheriff Pepper with true gusto. The producers apparently thought so, because they brought him back for the next film, even though the setting was to be Southeast Asia.


“Just being disarming, darling.”


Live And Let Die did some things fairly well. They unintentionally set a speed boat jump world record during one of the stunts. And Paul McCartney’s song, over the opening credits, with its rapid tempo changes (again, the dislocation theme and playing to unsettle the audience’s expectations) is not only a staple of classic rock, but it’s used to great effect as a signature incidental musical cue during the film. Didn’t Sean Connery’s Bond comment in Goldfinger that the only way to listen to the Beatles was with ear muffs on? My, but we are in a new paradigm when one of the Beatles delivers the opening theme song to a Bond movie.



You have to give the producers credit for understanding the challenge they were up against with Live And Let Die. New Bond to introduce to a new age. They effectively re-booted the franchise, and they did this some thirty years before the word “re-boot” was part of the popular vernacular. For me, however, the obvious plot holes, the overdose of comedic elements, and the reduction of Bond to idiot status cause me to give this movie only two “stacked” decks of cards out of a possible five.

James Bond will return in “The Man With The Golden Gun.”

[The Co=Ordinator]

I very much agree with your disection Patrick.

Good things about LalD. The theme music. The speed boat chase. Sheriff J.W. Pepper.

Bad things about LalD. Just about everything else. Mr Big is probably the worst villain in the history of bond, Jane Seymour can't act her way out of a paper bag, and so on and so forth.

2/5 is probably being generous. But I'll stick with it!

[Patrick]

I'm waiting for Rich to post in. He's quite fond of LALD, and I suspect he'll want to challenge some of some of my points of criticism.

[Rich Flair]

Well, I'm only fond of it by default because it's the last one worth watching, before the series sinks into a travelogue with tedious one-liners. There's just enough going on in this to save it from this fate. Strip it of the comic elements and you've still got a blaxploitation film starring a posh English tosser, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Plot holes? It's merely following in a grand tradition of Bond films not making sense.

Good points regarding the lack of menace from Moore's Bond, which I hadn't considered before. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why, for me, Moore's Bond films after this aren't really worth watching.

[stanmore]

Patrick, I'm a bit surprised that you've only given this a (grudging) 2/5 - you seem to like over 50% of it! Or do the plot holes ruin everything?

I suspect over the next few reviews, my opinion won't be close to yours. Essentially, I've always seen Bond films as collections of set pieces, gadgets, girls and one-liners, a logical plot has always been a nice (if unnecessary) bonus. I remember it being quite a surprise when I first saw From Russia With Love and found it to be a very effective sensible spy thriller...

[Patrick]

Stanmore, I liked the theme and the filmography of LALD. I hated the plot holes. And I despise seeing James Bond, 007, reduced, intentionally by the film-makers, to the level of a clueless twit. That trumped everything else.

I mean, I can applaud Geoffrey Holder's performance, I can acknowledge that the relationship between Kanaga and Solitaire was fascinating to examine. But none of that gets beyond the the most important component of any film- THE SCRIPT! Tom Mankiewicz should have been left to live and let die himself for this stunningly bad writing effort.

As for finding things to appreciate- this is my all time favorite film franchise. I have been a huge fan of James Bond since I got my hands a paperback copy of the novel for The Spy Who Loved Me on a summer vacation to my grandparents' condo in Lake Tahoe in 1975. Regardless of how bad the movie is, I feel compelled to draw out some positives. Sadly, we have Moonraker in our near future, and finding positives in that will be a serious challenge.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Thankfully, we have Moonraker in our near future, the greatest Bond movie of them all.

Fixed that for you Fast Living One.

[Patrick]

Thankfully, we have Moonraker in our near future, the greatest Bond movie of them all.

Fixed that for you Fast Living One.

I'm afraid all the text doctoring in the world won't help you when I post my review.

Speaking of which, my review of The Man With The Golden Gun is scheduled for this Friday.

[The Co=Ordinator]

I'll be away so my response will not be immediate. I'm sure you're gutted!

[barnaby morbius]

i can't believe this madness- Live and let Die is fantastic!

not just one of the best bond films but one of i've never really noticed the "plot holes" but it's a bond film....bit like dr who the plotting isn't the most important part...

it's meant to entertain and does. and roger moore nails the part- smoking a cigar while handgliding, running over crocodiles or shagging loads of birds.

the only problem i have is that it's massively racist- but that's sadly true of most bond films...

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