Click the Cover Picture or Title to
purchase this item from Amazon.com -- a new browser
window will open.
|
|
Whenever
i talk about Bond films, i try to remember to
mention that this film is an exception to
almost any rule you might think of about the
Bond series -- for one thing, it's a very
faithful adaptation of the book. Bond actually
falls in love. There are very few gadgets (the
automatic safecracking machine is sort of
cool, but it's huge -- such a gadget in a Bond
film today would fit in a pocket). Bond
contacts an "outside contractor" when M won't
approve a mission to take out Blofeld and
rescue the woman he loves.
It's the only Bond film that breaks the fourth
wall.
And it has Diana Rigg. At the time, that was
enough for almost any young male (such as
myself) who had watched The Avengers
to watch the film, setting aside that the Bond
franchise was Very Popular at the time.
And, of course, it has George Lazenby rather
than Connery or Moore.
Let's get this out of the way early -- while
this wasn't the most successful Bond, it
wasn't, by any means, a flop at initial
release, the way that popular memory has it.
However, because of a popular conception that
Lazenby wasn't very good as Bond and that the
film itself was inferior (neither opinion
being justified by the facts) OHMSS
didn't get the re-releases and continuing
popularity that other Bond films did.
Lazenby is, actually, rather closer to the way
in which Fleming had described Bond than any
of the other actors who have played him; he
moves well and reads the lines which he
actually reads convincingly enough (his voice
is dubbed for the sequence in which he
infiltrates Blofeld's school because he
couldn't handle the Public School accent of
the character; on the other hand, Gabrielle
Ferzetti's entire performance as Draco is
dubbed by another actor, also), and he's
competent in the action scenes. I really
believe that if he hadn't taken apallingly bad
advice and had continued in the series he
would be much better thought of today as Bond
-- and we might well have been spared some of
the more horrific moments of the Roger Moore
years.
Diana Rigg is, of course, lovely (she would
find it hard to not be), and her Tracey is
believable as the sort of woman Bond would
fall hard for.
The ski sequences are spectacular for their
day (though the Bond franchise itself has
topped them in For Your Eyes Only,
which, incidentally, was listed at the time in
a Playboy article/pictorial about OHMSS
as the next film in the series -- from what I
hear, they realised that that would make two
"ski" films in a row and hurriedly developed Diamonds
are Forever, which may explain its
...for want of a better word... script),
though I read somewhere that for Ms Rigg's
skiing she was doubled by a slim young man.
And, say what you will of Lazenby, his playing
of the final scene is convincing and genuinely
emotional, which is rare for the Bond Series.
(Lazenby was to portray Bond again [sort of]
in the rather weak Man from UNCLE TV
movie, The Fifteen Years Later Affair
-- coyly unnamed, driving a gadget-equipped
car with plates reading "JB", intervening
[with a quip about "shaken, not stirred"] by
chance and helping Solo during a car chase
sequence.)
(Incidentally, this film features TWO regulars
from the Avengers teevee series -- not
only Diana Rigg, but also Joanna Lumley, who
was to play Purdie on The New Avengers
some years later.) |
|
