ACTORS AND CHARACTERS
Sean Connery's performance brings the film a cut above the other Bonds made in the seventies. Connery has that certain presence and charisma which one associates with Bond. His performance in Diamonds is much more sincere than that of You Only Live Twice. It's obvious that Connery had a good time while filming the movie. He seems to be enjoying himself in the role, and thus, gives the most relaxed and confident performance as Bond since Goldfinger. He looks quite a bit older than when we last saw him—he's at least twenty pounds heavier, and he's beginning to grey at the temples. Some fans complained that he looked horrible, but in many ways, he looks that much more worldly. Connery also adds a touch of self-parody to the character that works well in the context of the lighter direction the film takes. After the fight with Peter Franks in the elevator, Bond switches wallets with the man before Tiffany can examine him. She looks at Franks' wallet and exclaims, "You've just killed James Bond!" Wide-eyed, but with a hint of mischievousness, Connery delivers the line, "Is that who it was? Well, it just goes to show you that no one's indestructible!"
Jill St John gives what may be the performance of her career as Tiffany Case. This character bears little resemblance to Fleming's original. The literary Tiffany is very neurotic, and has eccentricities that made her a much more interesting person than the cocky, self-confident Tiffany of the film. But Miss St. John turns in a masterful portrayal of the character as rewritten. She's one of the sexiest Bond heroines ever, and dressed in costumes by Donfeld, she creates an alluring foil for 007. Miss St. John has been typecast in similar roles throughout her career, but none of them have displayed her strengths as well.
Charles Gray is miscast as Blofeld, the third infuriating time the character has been misrepresented. Gray is a fine actor with a polished delivery, but Blofeld should never be British. It's also strange that the filmmakers would cast someone with hair this time, since the two previous Blofelds were bald. The main problem with Gray's Blofeld is that he is not at all menacing. He's much too charming and poised. This is a serious flaw in the film. The white cat is used in an interesting way, for once. When Bond discovers two different Blofelds in Willard Whyte's penthouse, he decides to gamble. When the white cat enters the room, Bond kicks it. Bond then quickly shoots the Blofeld whose arms the cat jumps into. But immediately after doing this, another white cat enters the room (this one wears a diamond collar) and strolls to the real Blofeld. "Right idea, 007," muses Blofeld. "But wrong pussy," laments Bond.
The death of Blofeld is also unsatisfying, if indeed it is a death. Bond's archenemy is attempting to escape his oil rig headquarters at Baja in a one-man submarine which is being hoisted to the water by a crane. Bond gains control of the crane, and begins toying with the sub as if it were a yo-yo. Bond finally evacuates the area and the entire rig explodes. We never learn whether Blofeld escapes from the sub or is destroyed in the explosion. Since he doesn't return in subsequent films (except for a confusing appearance in For Your Eyes Only ten years later), we must presume he is dead. But it seems that a James Bond intent on revenge would have made sure of this fact
Lana Wood (Natalie's younger sister) plays Plenty O'Toole, an extra Bond-girl created for the film. Plenty's presence is gratuitous, especially since most of her scenes were cut from the final print She is the film's Obligatory Sacrificial Lamb, but her death hardly makes sense. She is found floating in Tiffany's swimming pool at her house near Las Vegas. Just why she happened to be at Tiffany's is unexplained. Apparently, the excised scenes told a more complete story. After she is rudely evicted from Bond's hotel suite by Slumber Inc.'s hoods (they throw her out the window into a swimming pool), she supposedly returns, dripping wet. There, she overhears Bond and Tiffany in his bedroom. Plenty then rifles Tiffany's purse, finds her keys and address, and decides to go there. And that's where Wint and Kidd catch up with her, thinking that she is Tiffany. (Why she wants to go to Tiffany's house is beyond me.)
Felix Leiter is miscast for the fourth time. Norman Burton, a middle-aged American actor, emphasizes the joviality of the character, but he doesn't look the part at all. Burton is overweight and too old for the role. And again, there is no indication of Leiter's handicaps. Leiter serves basic plot functions here, but no more.
Jimmy Dean gives an admirable performance as Willard Whyte, the billionaire kidnapped by Blofeld. His country twang is comical, and he provides a good deal of the film's humor in the latter third. There's one terrific moment when he is shot at by his employee, Burt Saxby. One of Leiter's men takes aim and kills Saxby on the spot. They tell Whyte it was Saxby who shot at him. "Saxby?" he exclaims. "Tell him he's fired!"
Wint and Kidd are played by Bruce Glover and Putter Smith, respectively. They are a bizarre-looking couple, but they lose their menacing qualities immediately when they are seen holding hands and walking into the distance. From then on, their characters are jokes and they are never again able to produce a threatening effect
Acrobats Donna Garratt and Trina Parks portray Bambi and Thumper, two SPECTRE martial arts experts guarding Willard Whyte. Bond has a fairly well-staged fight with these two, but after battling the likes of Red Grant, Oddjob, and a Sumo wrestler, Bond hardly seems endangered. They gain the upper hand at first, but it's hard to believe. Bond finally calms them down by dunking them into a swimming pool and holding their heads underwater. Too easy.
The obligatory M/Moneypenny/Q scenes all occur separately this time. Bond shares the usual banter with M at the beginning of the film; the scene is played with mutual contempt. Apparently, the filmmakers intend the conflict between Bond and M to be funny, but it rarely works. They never poke fun at each other in the novels as they do in this scene. Moneypenny appears where she never should—impersonating a customs official near Holland. And Q is seen briefly at Q Branch, where in the background we see a lot of rockets loaded into the front end of Bond's Aston Marlin. This visual joke is humorous if you're lucky enough to notice it. Q later appears on location in Las Vegas, experimenting with a gadget that automatically wins jackpots when it's attached to a slot machine. The attempts at humor at the expense of these three characters are becoming ludicrous.
OTHER ASPECTS
Ken Adam is back as production designer, but after the tour de force of You Only Live Twice,the sets do not seem as impressive. In fact, they're beginning to resemble each other by now. Blofeld's penthouse (actually Willard Whyte's) looks very much like the suite used in You Only Live Twice. The operating room/lab in the pre-credits sequence is a rehash of Dr. No's surroundings. But all the sets seem to glitter, a quality tying in very well with the diamond theme. Ted Moore is back as cinematographer after a two-film absence, and he gives the picture a very professional, glitzy look. Coupled with Adam's designs, the visual properties of the film, though they have a déjà vu quality, are chic.
The editing work is by Bert Bates and John W. Holmes, and they created a tight, speedy action film. The trouble is that too many explanatory scenes were edited from the picture. But their work on the car chase, the moon buggy chase, and especially the fight scene in the elevator between Bond and Peter Franks is impressive.
Bob Simmons is back choreographing the fight scenes, with the help of Paul Baxley. Though Diamonds doesn't feature many action sequences, the one in the elevator is exciting. With such a small, cramped space to work with, one wouldn't think that an interesting fight could be choreographed. But Simmons and his assistant come up with a tense and tough minute or two that is reminiscent of the old Bond battles.
John Barry's score for the film is disappointing. He uses sounds and themes similar to those heard in previous films, and the entire score is ultimately very predictable. The "007" theme is heard again at the film's climactic battle on the oil rig—something we've seen and heard too many times before. The main title theme, once again featuring Shirley Bassey, is particularly disappointing due once more to Don Black's expendable lyrics. The song comes off as corny. Even Maurice Binder's title design is beginni
ng to look like the same old palette of silhouetted nudes, emphasizing the fact that the filmmakers are running out of fresh ideas.
Diamonds Are Forever, then, is a very mixed bag. Connery's return as Bond, of course, is the best thing the film has going for it. The picture has a witty script by Maibaum and Mankiewicz, but everything is played for laughs now. The missing element of authentic suspense is the picture's main flaw, and as one will see, this is not corrected in subsequent films. The matter is only made worse.
LIVE AND LET DIE (1973)
PRODUCTION
The huge financial success of Diamonds Are Forever assured Eon Productions that there would be another James Bond film, with or without Sean Connery. The producers began yet another talent search to cast James Bond for their next project, Live and Let Die. Again Burt Reynolds was considered, but Cubby Broccoli insisted Bond must be played by an Englishman. Their final choice was the man who was reportedly second on the list when they were casting Dr. No: Roger Moore.
Moore seemed to be a good choice—he had sophistication, experience, good looks, and would not be an unknown face outside of England. Audiences accepted him in the role of James Bond, although he plays it quite differently from his predecessors.
Moore arrived on the scene just as the direction in the Bond films began veering towards comedy. Since Moore's forte is light comedy, he fit right in. From Live and Let Die on, the scriptwriters tailored the screenplays to fit Roger Moore's personality. As a result, James Bond lost much of the machismo image which was so prominent in the sixties. It seems Bond never gets hurt in any of the subsequent films—the Roger Moore Bond uses his wits rather than fists to escape dangerous situations. One-liners are geared to Moore's brand of delivery (such as adding "darling" when he's speaking to a woman). The Roger Moore Bond sails effortlessly through his adventures—which reflects the work of the scriptwriters and directors more than the actor.
Once Roger Moore was cast, United Artists immediately launched a heavy publicity campaign to sell him as Bond. The producers told the press that Roger Moore was closer to Ian Fleming's original conception of Bond than Sean Connery—straight British, old Etonian dropout, etc. This is, in fact, untrue. Fleming certainly never conceived Bond as an old Etonian dropout (he was kicked out)—if anything, Bond looks back on his school years with a great deal of cynicism. And Fleming's Bond is Scottish. Nevertheless, by the time Live and Let Die was released in the summer of 1973, the public had been well conditioned to accept Roger Moore as the new James Bond.
The second decade of James Bond films is certainly a different batch from the first. The trend toward comedy initiated in Diamonds progressed until the Bond films became something of a mixture of Smokey and the Bandit and Star Wars. They were all successful, but 007 was lost on the screen. None of the seventies' scripts resemble Fleming's stories, and the standard Bond formula became embarrassingly repetitious. Inevitably, the Bond films attracted a younger and younger audience.
Live and Let Die contains moments of spectacle, as does every Bond film, but the "bumps" formula weakens the narrative. When a script is written around a series of locations already chosen for the film, one can't expect a plot to make a whole lot of sense. The first Roger Moore vehicle is admirable in a few ways: it's attractive to look at, there are some funny bits, the locations are interesting, and the cast is fairly good. What mars the film are its digressions into the absurd.
One ingredient critics attacked when the film was released was its all-black villainous organization. The film happened to be released during the peak of the black film boom of 1972 and 1973. Sounder had been nominated for Academy Awards that spring, as had Lady Sings the Blues. Shaft was becoming a cult hero. Eon Productions was accused of exploiting blacks just because there was a current boom in black films. These attacks were unwarranted, for Fleming's original novel also features an all-black villainous organization. If anything, the filmmakers created a much more sophisticated group than Fleming had.
Location shooting took place in New Orleans, Jamaica, and New York; interiors were shot, as usual, at Pinewood Studios in England. Guy Hamilton was in charge of his third Bond film, and the future of James Bond fell into the hands of Roger Moore.
SCREENPLAY
For the second time in the series, Richard Maibaum's name is missing from the screenplay credit Tom Mankiewicz is the sole author.
Mankiewicz told Bondage magazine that he had written the script before he knew Roger Moore was going to play Bond. He had been told by the producers and United Artists president David Picker that the new film must be an entertaining, action-packed film, no matter who was going to play Bond. Therefore, Mankiewicz injected the set-piece formula into the script in such a way that the film basically jumps from stunt to stunt.
As usual, Fleming's original story was thrown out. Because it was felt that the novel's treatment of blacks was patronizing, the filmmakers decided to create a high-class criminal organization as opposed to Fleming's group of second-rate crooks. The result was a SPECTRE-like organization operating from the Caribbean island of San Monique. The prime minister of the island, Dr. Kananga, is attempting to smuggle heroin into the states via a chain of restaurants in New Orleans and New York. While in New York, Dr. Kananya masquerades as Mr. Big in order to instill fear in his underlings. Gone is Bloody Morgan's pirate hoard, as well as the fascinating character of Mr. Big himself. Kananga's Mr. Big is inconsequential.
Mankiewicz does retain some of the original elements and characters: Solitaire, the Bond-girl with telepathic powers; Felix Leiter; Tee-Hee, one of the black hoods; and Baron Samedi, the Prince of Darkness. The voodoo motifs are also used in the film, as well as a deck of tarot cards which becomes the design metaphor for the picture. Several new characters are created: Rosie Carver, a black CIA agent helping Bond in the Caribbean; J. W. Pepper, comic relief in the form of a redneck Southern sheriff; and other assorted black hoodlums. Samedi is made an actual character who also serves as a visual metaphor in the film.
The Live and Let Die script is witty and entertaining, but not very original. When compared to the novel, it is second-rate. Fleming's story is one of his best, and it is preposterous that the filmmakers discarded the superior plot of the book. Several of Fleming's scenes would have translated wonderfully to the screen: Bond and Leiter's barhopping in Harlem; Bond and Solitaire's train ride to Florida (this location was changed to New Orleans in the film); the loss of Leiter's hand and leg; the fight in the fish warehouse; Bond's swim through Shark Bay; and several others. Granted, changing the villains' operation to smuggling heroin is more timely, but that would have worked in the context of the original story. As it is, Live and Let Die operated on a totally visual level—full of stunts, exotic locales, and a hell of a lot of destruction of public property. As a story, though, the film is limp.
The pre-credits sequence does not even feature James Bond. Usually, this traditional device tells a complete story in itself, whether it is related to the main plot or not. In Live and Let Die, we see three British men murdered by blacks—one at the United Nations, one on a New Orleans street corner, and one on the island of San Monique. The scenes do not grab the audience, and this pre-credits sequence is therefore the weakest of the series.
The opening scene of the film proper takes place at James Bond's flat. We see him in bed with a girl, where he is rudely awakened by none other than M at his front door. The scene provides a few laughs, especially when Miss Moneypenny catches the semi-clad girl attempting to hide in Bond's closet. But in the past, Bond has always been summoned to the office in a matter of emergency. Why would M and/or Miss Moneypenny bother to travel to Bond's house so early in the morning? The idea is ridiculous. But if one forgets this, the scene is one of the more enjoyable in the film.
Roger Moore as Bond rescues Solitaire (Jane Seymour) from a voodoo ritual in Live and Let Die. (UPI Photo.)
None of the characters is particularly well-written. Most disappointing is the development of Solitaire, who co
uld have been used to much greater advantage. The Kananga/Mr. Big confusion doesn't work, and the Rosie Carver business is just another variation on the female villain ploy. Moore is provided with some funny lines, but isn't given ample opportunity to show any depth of character. Live and Let Die is a situation comedy with several outdoor action scenes.
DIRECTION
Guy Hamilton is in charge again, and lends his usual fast-paced, light touch to the proceedings. But this time there is no bite to the film.
Hamilton's tarot card motif does give the film visual unity. Throughout the picture, especially when Bond is traveling from one country to another, Solitaire's voice is dubbed over the action. We see her hands turning over tarot cards superimposed on the screen, as she explains what the future will bring. Additionally, Hamilton and Mankiewicz gave several characters representative tarot cards: Solitaire is "The High Priestess," Rosie Carver is "The Queen of Cups," and Bond himself is "The Fool." The image of Baron Samedi in appearances throughout the film also gives the story a symbolic continuity. Samedi represents death, and he appears several times in bizarre costume and makeup. One particularly striking image is the shot of Samedi, in rags, sitting by a tombstone in a cemetery playing a wooden flute. The final image of the film is that of Samedi, riding on the back of the train carrying Bond and Solitaire to New York. With his demonic laugh filling the theater, the image reminds us that death will always be following close behind wherever we go.
The James Bond Bedside Companion Page 43