I really liked the thematic coincidences between Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party” and the Skyfall title credits. So I mashed ’em up.
Skyfall Remixed Opening w/ Oingo Boingo from James Patrick on Vimeo.
Category: Of [In]human Bond[age]
My collection of essays written for the Of [In]human Bond[age] James Bond project. The entirety of the project is kept on 007hertzrumble.tumblr.com.
Bond[age] #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Pleads the 4th
This is the seventh essay in a 23-part series about the James Bond cinemas co-produced by Sundog Lit. I encourage everyone to venture over to Sundog to read other essays, comment and join in what we hope to be an extended conversation about not only the films themselves, but cinematic trends, political and other external influences on the series’ tone and direction. The entire collection of essays, live tweet digests and other Bond nonsense is housed on the #Bond_age_ website.
Of [In]human Bond[age] #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Pleads the 4th
I originally embarked on this voyage to watch and discuss all 23 James Bond movies because I wanted to look more closely at the temporality of the Bond adventures. A theme inspired by a moment in Skyfall when Daniel Craig retrieves the Aston Martin DB5 from storage, a car with which his Bond has had no prior relationship. Having had six different actors play the role with eleven different directors behind the camera, how did the series adjust from one actor to the next? Natural shifts in style and substance brought upon by external market influences and cinematic trends? How did filmmaking decisions attempt to explain the continuity from film to film? Or, conversely, did the filmmakers try to explain it at all?
Part 1: Unveiling the First New Bond
After Sean Connery quit the role of James Bond, Saltzman and Broccoli offered the role to then 22-year-old Timothy Dalton. Dalton declined, considering himself too young for the role. Lazenby meanwhile had moved to London in 1963, the year Dr. No was released. He became a used car salesman and then a male model before landing a commercial spot. In the Bond documentary Everything or Nothing, Lazenby said “I had nothing on my mind, night and day, except getting that job.” He purchased a Savile Row suit and a Rolex identical to James Bond’s and got his hair cut by Connery’s barber. Some stories suggest Lazenby met Cubby Broccoli at the barbershop and Broccoli liked the cut of his jib. Others suggest he snuck past the EON Productions secretary and once through the door introduced himself by saying “I heard you’re looking for James Bond.” Either way he willed himself into contention and survived the four-month Bond search. The picture below shows the five finalists for the role. (Don’t you just feel damn sorry for the other four gentlemen? Also, how did they get that far??)
Broccoli and Saltzman were often slaves to public opinion, or at the very least, their perception of public opinion, often overcompensating to relative success or failure. Connery had been such a success in the Bond role that they intended to repeat that success by casting another relative unknown, a move they would certainly regret, both due to Lazenby’s off-screen personality and lackluster box office return. They never needed to express their regret publicly; Lazenby abandoned his seven-picture deal before the release of the film (he felt that the Bond series was a dinosaur that couldn’t survive the progressive 1970’s). The further course-correction undertaken after the relative “failure” of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, however, speaks volumes.
I’d circled On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on my calendar because this would be the first film in which I could really focus on how the series shifted from one actor to the next (and back again, but that’s a chat for next week). Before watching the film for the first time in twenty years I did a little research about how Lazenby had been marketed. At the end of his tenure, Connery had been synonymous with Bond. The posters for You Only Live Twice put the phrase “Sean Connery is Bond” as large as the title itself. Advance posters for OHMSS, on the other hand,completely obscured Bond’s face in a portrait surrounded by eight bikini-clad women. (When in doubt, go back to the staples: guns and girls.)
The primary theatrical poster returns to the Bond basics. It boasts “FAR UP! FAR OUT! FAR MORE! James Bond 007 is back!” (See poster above.) A tuxedo-clad Lazenby postures with a gun on skis. Diana Rigg’s cleavage on full display (also on skis). Telly Savalas fires upward at him from a bobsled (spoiler!). Helicopters. Explosions. Skiers with assault rifles. The style of the poster itself is standard hyperbolic artwork (exceptionally so considering Secret Service is a return to a more character- and narrative-driven Bond film) consistent with the last Connery posters for the spectacle films You Only Live Twice and Thunderball. Lazenby’s name appears small and at the bottom alongside Rigg and Savalas. Rigg would have been the biggest star in the film because of her role as Emma Peel on the Avengers. Other than the foreign film roles Lazenby had lied about on his resume, his only prior acting experience had been a Big Fry Chocolate commercial. On these new posters, as opposed to the You Only Live Twice Connery poster, the James Bond character is the only attraction, just as it was on the first Dr. No posters where Sean Connery’s name is barely visible and the movie is billed as “Ian Fleming’s Dr. No.”
But even after fans were lured back by the Bond name and whiz-bang marketing, they still had to be convinced that Lazenby could be the face of the franchise. The series had reached a critical point. How would the filmmakers approach On Her Majesty’s Secret Service knowing they not only had to make a great movie, but also set the table for Bond’s future with an actor not named Sean Connery?
The Formula Adopts a Variable
Self-awareness has been an expected and almost necessary part of the modern Bond formula. As I suggested in my introductory essay to the series, Skyfall is remarkable because it succeeds at being both a quality movie and at hauling the requisite Bond baggage from the 22-prior films (whether it is a great Bond movie is up for debate). Fans love to be rewarded for their loyalty with knowing winks. In order for the movie to succeed on its own merit, however, those knowing winks cannot interrupt or detract from the narrative itself lest they seem cloying or pandering. Director Sam Mendes included dozens of sly references to past Bond films in Skyfall but only one called attention to itself as nothing more than a nod to the past – that DB5 resurrection (apparently from carbon storage due to its pristine condition).
What screenwriter Richard Maibaum and director Peter R. Hunt depict in the pre-credit sequence of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service lays bare their concept for the series A.C. (after Connery). After Bond rescues a girl from the surf and fights off two would-be assailants, the girl drives away without a word leaving Bond stranded on the beach. Lazenby as James Bond then turns toward the camera and says, “This never happened to the other fellow.”
On one hand, the line is an easy joke, a quick one-liner in the wake of violence – a Bond series staple. On the other, the line is a profound statement of awareness. James Bond talked through the camera to the audience. He’s saying I know that you know I’m not Sean Connery and I want you to know that I know you know I’m not Sean Connery. It’s a brilliant filmmaking decision, one of the most daring in the entire 007 series. That said, as a cinematic tool, it wasn’t a new concept. The popular contemporary films Alfie (1966) and best picture-winner Tom Jones (1963) would have already established this filmmaking trick in the public consciousness, albeit in the comedy genre. Breaking the fourth wall has a long history in comedy, going back to Groucho Marx who regularly used asides and fourth wall tricks in the Marx Bros. comedies of the 1930s. While the Bond films use humor to palletize violence and sex, they cannot themselves be considered comedic. The moment is brief, but bold, and lingers for only a second before the film cuts to the traditional silhouettes of the Bond title sequence, which is, in itself, a montage of scenes from old Bond films without the appearance of James Bond himself.
Many fans take offense to this moment. They complain that it’s not a “Bond moment.” But I’m going to call this suggestion into question. It is absolutely a Bond moment. Because from this moment forward, Bond, to varying degrees, is linked to the self-referential awareness of itself as a series of films depicting events in the career of one 00-agent. If you, as the viewer, accept George Lazenby and Sean Connery as the same character then you are also a willing conspirator. The Roger Moore films stray temporarily from acknowledging the past before incorporating a number of references to the Sean Connery films (and a brief mention of his dead wife) in The Spy Who Loved Me. Like EON’s rebellion against the serious Bond film, against a James Bond with feelings, against James Bond movies too close to the source material, the temporary absence of self-awareness is also a knee-jerk reaction to the relative failure of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and an attempt to fully reboot the series. The modern James Bonds (Brosnan and Craig), however, bathe in self-awareness and in the tropes of Bond’s past. Audiences, for better or worse, crave this two-way communication. Do a simple Google search for “Skyfall Bond references” to find dozens of fan-made lists chronicling the self-referential moments contained within the film.
Furthermore, consider the scene in OHMSS that takes place when Bond resigns his post. As 007 cleans out his desk, he removes a number of items from his desk drawer, mementos of sorts: Honey Rider’s knife from Dr. No, the watch from From Russia With Love and the underwater breather from Thunderball. Even the janitor in the MI-6 offices is whistling the Goldfinger theme. Of course, these items aren’t mementos for James Bond – they belong to the audience (because Bond would consider such things frivolous). They’re tchotchkes we’ve collected and catalogued along our cinema travelogue. It’s an assault of references that are all again planted to remind everyone watching that George Lazenby isn’t Sean Connery, but he is James Bond. (He’s same character and he remembers the same things you do! Really. Honestly. We promise. Look. Here’s the stuff that belonged to the Sean Connery Bond that you, I mean, he, kept as souvenirs from his prior exploits!)
Part 2: Precocious Timelines
Not only does OHMSS introduce self-awareness into the Bond formula but the sixth Bond film also poses the first temporal anomaly in the series that suggests we cannot consider the Bond series to be linear. In You Only Live Twice Bond finally squares off against Ernst Stavro Blofeld face to face in what the Fleming books considered the climax of the Blofeld plot. Bond goes undercover as genealogist Sir Hilary Bray. Blofeld intends to lay claim to the title “Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp” – Bleuchamp being the French form of the Blofeld family name. Had Bond actually met Blofeld previously this undercover scheme would not have been possible. Had they met before they also wouldn’t have required a scene of formal introductions in OHMSS.
If the Bond franchise existed only on-screen, this kind of anomaly would be inexplicable. What we have, however, is a series that existed first on the page and was then translated to the screen in an order determined by budgetary constraints and perceived marketability. The curious thing about this is that the filmmakers in charge of OHMSS (Richard Maibaum and Peter Hunt being the most influential creative contributors) chose, on this one particular occasion to create a Bond movie that remained very true to the source material. So true, in fact, that they even chose not to alter the pre-existing on-screen relationship between Bond and Blofeld.
If I were prone to wild conjecture (perhaps just this once) I’d suggest that as the editor of the first three Bond films and second unit director for the subsequent two, Hunt had formed a few strong opinions about the direction the franchise should take. And he was determined to follow through when he was finally offered the directorial job on OHMSS, his directorial debut. That said, whatever his reasoning, it can’t be discounted. It boils down to this. Blofeld didn’t know Bond, and therefore, OHMSS must, logically, take place before You Only Live Twice in the Bond chronology.
Return for a second to the drawer Bond empties out in his office. He removed trinkets from Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Thunderball and the janitor whistles the theme from Goldfinger, but the movie recalls nothing from You Only Live Twice. This omission is either a convenient oversight or a deliberate choice. I suggest the latter, albeit with one caveat. In the opening credit sequence that I mentioned earlier – the one containing clips from the prior Bond movies flowing through an hourglass – contains fleeting moments from You Only Live Twice. I excuse this because the clips are played entirely for the viewer and likely weren’t a choice made by Maibaum or Hunt, but rather from above, from EON Productions and Saltzman and Broccoli. Since the typical opening sequence contains silhouettes of naked women writhing to a suggestive theme song (something that doesn’t really happen on screen), it shouldn’t be difficult to write this off as something outside and unrelated to the Bond spacetime.
When he turned to the camera and uttered that one little phrase at the beginning of his sixth adventure, James Bond turned the franchise upside down. No matter your opinion of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as a standalone film, it must be conceded that the film serves as a fascinating turning point in the series. Not only is it the first time the Bond role changes hands, but it is also a distinct departure in tone, style and substance from the movies that immediately preceded it. That many fans now consider it to be an upper-echelon Bond entry (meanwhile others wildly disagree) makes for a fascinating discussion about the value of hindsight and OHMSS’ lingering repercussions, both as a result of its perceived box office failure and the introduction of self awareness, a brand new variable to the tried and true formula. A strong case could be made that Daniel Craig’s Bond films have become a spiritual successor to Lazenby’s only outing. Consider the serious tone, the more personal look at the emotion and motivation behind 007’s actions. Also, lest we forget that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service introduced the tchotchkes that Bond must now carry around with him and scatter throughout his missions for our viewing edification. You can be quite sure that the contents of Daniel Craig’s Bond baggage fills far more than just a tiny little desk drawer.
This is the fourth essay in a 23-part series about the James Bond cinemas co-produced by Sundog Lit. I encourage everyone to venture over to Sundog to read other essays, comment and join in what we hope to be an extended conversation about not only the films themselves, but cinematic trends, political and other external influences on the series’ tone and direction, etc. The entire project will be collected on the #Bond_age_ website.
Of [In]human Bond[age] #4: Subtext and the Rape of Pussy Galore
The following essay intends to discuss the cinematic subtext and potential cultural factors that may have influenced the creation of the “barn scene” in Goldfinger. It is not meant to undermine the real horror that many women have had to overcome as a result of rape or sexual assault. I hope to treat the topic with sensitivity but still allow for a clinical but frank discussion about how or why the way we view this scene has changed in the nearly 50 years since its release.
James Bond confronts Pussy Galore (played by Honor Blackman) in a barn. His aim, of course, is to have a figurative and literal roll in the hay. She is reluctant. She flips him. He flips her. It is aggressive yet supposedly playful courting, punctuated by a Mickey-Moused score (just in case you didn’t grasp the supposed innocence of it all), the stubbornness of James Bond’s womanizing and Pussy Galore’s shield of chaste cynicism (a chastity we presume to be false), mano a femano. With both of them on the ground, he forces a kiss. She struggles beneath him before, inevitably, giving in and returning his embrace.
Taken outside of the context of the Bond oeuvre, particularly the 60’s-era Connery films, the scene leaves the viewer discomforted. Red flags go up, sirens go off, many triggered by our modern sensitivities on the topic of rape and sexual assault. It’s been a healthy number of years since I last wrote a paper concerning anything resembling feminism in cinema, but I’ll do my best to avoid blundering over specific turns of phrase that might prove offensive. And since this is a blog format and not a thesis, pardon the shorthand that is required to keep this under 15,000 words.
The first complication we must consider is historical perspective
…both inside the velvet walled of the cinema and out. Goldfinger was released in 1964, the doorstep of the sexual revolution. Sexuality had yet to become fully politicized, gay and lesbian liberation remained a few years away, but the “permissive” attitudes towards sex and the depiction of sexual activity had crossed over into popular culture, ushered in by film (the growing popularity of European cinema introduced more liberal depictions of sexuality), mass marketing and literature. Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, for example, purported that women should rebel against the role of nuclear housewife and that they should engage in and enjoy more frequent sexual relations. Considered one of the most influential books of the 20th century, Mystique sold more than three million copies and helped catalyze the second wave of feminism in the United States.
Using Feminine Mystique to inform the barn scene subtext, one could read that Pussy Galore’s struggle and subsequent acquiescence represents the housewife’s struggle to break free from domestic shackles (the employment by a criminal mastermind), to think independently (fall in love with the enemy), to seek fulfillment in sex (the roll in the hay) and interests outside of domestic responsibility (aiding Bond in foiling Goldfinger’s plot to destroy Fort Knox).
To intellectualize away the discomfort
The early 1960s were a muddy, confused time for sexual politics. Thus, it stands to reason that a scene as uncomfortable as this would arise from a time of great transition. Having just unlocked the rusted chastity belt of the 1950s, minds were ready to embrace Bond’s serial womanizing (the success of the Bond films surely indicates this) but the filmmakers may have struggled to find new ways to titillate after the first two films. They upped the ante by keeping Pussy Galore’s name true to Fleming’s novel (Director Guy Hamilton reportedly wooed American censors by claiming to be a devout Republican), but depicting a woman named Pussy Galore as something other than a one-dimensional harlot was necessary for creating an interesting adversary for James Bond.
By this point, movie audiences were conditioned to know that A) Bond gets the girl and B) The girl, whether she knows it or not, wants Bond. Consider it a contract signed between the film goer and the filmmaker. Any other outcome is a breach of contract. If each flirtation is another miniature narrative, there must be some conflict, or impediment to success to raise the stakes before our hero wins the day, or in this case, the girl. In Goldfinger, Bond meets three women: Jill and Tilly Masterson and Pussy Galore. It could be argued that James Bond’s repeated missteps in Goldfinger result first from his drive toward domesticity (Jill) and then the subsequent reaction against it (Pussy).
If you watch Goldfinger with Bond’s repeated fallibility in mind, you’ll notice how many times Bond needs a refresher course in remedial tactical espionage. It’s a fragile argument and one that needs to be established alongside the many times that Bond bobbles this particular mission. The most repercussive gaffe takes place at the beginning of the movie when Bond interferes with Goldfinger’s card game by forcing him to lose and then sleeping with his girl, Jill Masterson. Surely a spy of Bond’s caliber could project how the dominos might fall… or he fully understands the consequences and pursues Jill Masterson with disregard for the repercussions.
What would drive Bond to do something so frivolous? I suggest that Bond has fallen in love with Jill, Goldfinger’s girl. The movie suggests more than casual sex through the subtext of the post-coital scene. The camera lingers on her in bed, a fixed gaze rather than a rapid cut or transition to Bond knotting his tie. Rather than departing, Bond returns to her side in bed, under the guise of Dom Perignon maintenance. The post-coital scene offers an unprecedented measure of damning domesticity. Bond in the kitchen, making idle comments about music. (Sidenote: His statement “That’s as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs,” sounds bizarre to our ears, trained to consider the Beatles the I Ching of modern pop music. Consider, however, that the only two Beatles records released by this point were Please Please Me and With the Beatles. Not exactly timeless classics.) I say “damning” domesticity because the result of their temporary domestic stasis is that Bond winds up unconscious, clubbed by an unseen figure (presumably Oddjob). Jill winds up dead, the condemned housewife, painted entirely in gold. Thus begins the Goldfinger narrative proper. It’s not Goldfinger’s criminal plot that catalyzes the film; it’s a battle of hubris and revenge between Goldfinger and Bond.
But now, more about Pussy. (It may be a shock, but I’ve never been able to write that sentence before). She, on the other hand, represents an ultimate conquest. Not only a resistant target, but a resistant enemy target with the most alluring name of any woman James Bond has ever met. During their introduction Bond is unusually cautious. When Pussy tells him that she is Goldfinger’s “personal pilot,” Bond wants to know the specific nature of the relationship. He asks, “Just how personal is that?” Since when does Bond care about a woman’s ties to another man? Since Jill Masterson wound up painted gold. He’s been burned by Goldfinger before.
Once Bond has determined that Pussy Galore isn’t Goldfinger’s sexual property, he pursues her aggressively. Her resistance only fuels his desire. Not because he loves her, but because she claims to be off-limits and immune to his charms. This is anti-domesticity – the fling for the sake of the chase. Honor Blackman claims that she played the role with the understanding that Pussy Galore had been physically abused in her past, thus explaining Pussy’s initial reluctance. This explanation is complicated further by knowledge of Ian Fleming’s original text.
In the Fleming novel, Pussy Galore is a lesbian. In the movie, it’s not as clear, but it is suggested. I have to wonder how much the actors were aware of the novel’s discrepancies during filming. Pussy’s resistance (we are trained to understand that no heterosexual female can resist Bond) and her “Flying Circus” of fellow female pilots are two extraordinarily telling details. Again, consider where we are at this time in the 60’s: housewives have been given a green light to discuss their sexual activity, but gay and lesbian openness remains a few years away. It was open enough that Ian Fleming made Pussy’s lesbianism explicit in the novel, but the Goldfinger filmmakers shied away. Mainstream audiences weren’t likely to accept an openly gay character in a high-profile production like a James Bond film. With this now in our critical arsenal, the barn scene becomes, through the infinitely recursive powers of subtext, even more thrilling.
The reconciliation of theory with reality
These theories work very well to explain some of the marvelous subtextual components found throughout Goldfinger. There’s this sexual/domestic interplay and at least a few thousand words worth of Oedipal posturing between Bond and Goldfinger. Bring all of this knowledge into our viewing of the film. How does this, specifically, inform out understanding of the scene between James Bond and Pussy Galore in the barn? I am of the mind that we must respond from the basis of three different perspectives. Too much vigor in any one direction and we’re losing sight of the truth, delving too far into emotion or flaccid theorizing.
At the most basic level, we have the action depicted on screen. A man forcing himself on a resistant woman. This is sexual assault. We should feel uneasy. In Fleming’s novel “The Spy Who Loved Me,” the main character Vivienne Michel says, “All women secretly want to be raped.” This too should make us feel uneasy, because it is an oft-repeated line born of ignorance, but it informs the barn scene immensely.
From the perspective of film criticism, the scene is awkward, out of place and uncharacteristic. When has Bond ever physically forced himself on a woman? Since this was only the third Bond movie, the character has not yet been fully developed (at least in the way that we now understand the James Bond character). Still, the scene is strikingly unsexy. That the act of violence triggers acceptance feels like rushed narrative. Goldfinger is a packed film. To add yet another subplot where Bond gradually woos Pussy Galore just to get in bed with her would have caused bloating. (Not to mention that a drawn-out Victorian courtship would have been more out of character.) Though ridiculous, the instant conversion of Pussy Galore is convenient, but not comfortable. The comic score that punctuates the scene serves as the barrier between discomfort and revulsion. It’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Or in this case, the awkward and uncomfortable plot point.
Finally, the subtext. Subtext helps us understand what we can’t otherwise explain easily. Like religion. Like “the barn scene.” How many different ways can we pick this movie apart to look for explanations for the way Bond pursues Pussy Galore and Goldfinger (and, in turn, how Goldfinger toys with Bond)? Bond’s relationships with the women in Goldfinger provide fascinating fodder for conversation. The parallels between Bond’s girls and the real world sexual revolution of the 1960s allow us to wax theoretic, poetic and, lest we forget, critical. Placing these relationships in the context of the time in which they were filmed becomes a kind of sociological archaeology. The interplay between domestic and sexual. It’s all there, filling out a perfectly tailored suit.
If you analyze the plot of Goldfinger, it makes little sense. But because we are entertained, we go along for the ride, and the more we are entertained the fewer questions we ask. A film like Goldfinger becomes timeless because it thrills and there’s plenty of background noise to keep us discussing trivialities in long-winded blogs until the end of time. And these conversations feed our impulses to watch and rewatch, looking for the next great epiphany in a movie that many people wrongly consider mindless entertainment. Because it’s entered into the canon, overlooking moments like the “barn scene” becomes easy. As long as we can remember it’s always been there. We also inject our understanding of the Bond character. Of course he wouldn’t sexually assault anyone! He’s James Bond! It’s also reasonable to be offended, but scenes like this are more complicated. They were born in pop culture and vetted by censors and audiences for decades. That doesn’t mean they get a bye. They need to be discussed. And only by analyzing the film and the historical context can we obtain any real understanding of why nobody balked when Bond (allegedly) raped Pussy Galore.