He's clearly getting fed up. His accent, which started off as polished RP in DRNO and began to slide during Goldfinger, is now one notch from where it'll be in The Hunt for Red October. It's suggestive of an actor who is as much anxious about being subsumed as he is unwilling to make the effort.
But then, there's not much acting to be done in a movie where so much takes place underwater. And Connery could, perhaps, be forgiven for beginning to feel like merchandise: for most of the film he's almost naked, either draped in a tiny towel at the health spa or running around in tiny shorts in the Bahamas. Forget Daniel Craig, this is the third film out of four in which Connery's had his top off (three films, (co)incidentally all directed by Terence Young). No wonder he felt like a piece of meat.
Of course, as the male lead, the business of being consumed by the audience, by the films, is a gradual process and one that is only finally beginning to tell upon him. In the meantime, the series has been chewing up women at a much faster rate. We get three more here. Molly Peters plays Patricia Fearing, a nurse at Shrublands - we'll come back to her in Crimes Against Women. The female lead is Domino Derval, played by former Miss France Claudine Auger. She's certainly Bond's type: beautiful, demure, submissive and dull, with a tragic yet endearing vulnerability. In other words, she is almost a carbon copy of Honey and Tatiana. She's redubbed by the same voice actor too so the three of them even sound the same.
But if, to paraphrase Pussy Galore, we haven't yet met a real woman in the series, Thunderball does at last provide. Thank goodness for Fiona Volpe. Okay, perhaps real is the wrong word. The SPECTRE assassin and first 'evil' Bond woman is as much a ludicrous caricature as the good ones have been. The difference is that because she is 'bad', she can do and say and be things that would be beyond the pale for a 'good' woman according to the society of the time. You know, things like be funny. Or have desires. Or act independently. Against a backdrop of bikini-clad Stepford Wives, Volpe is breath of fresh air. A breath of smouldering, purring, murdering fresh air.
She's certainly the best thing in Thunderball. She has all the best lines for one thing. Early on, her pilot lover has to go to work. "I might not be in the mood later," he warns her. Volpe's nostrils flare. "D'you wanna bet?" she shoots back.
It's her scenes with Bond where she really offers something we haven't seen before. After having had her way with him (and for once it is that way round) she castigates him. "You made a shocking mess of my hair, you sadistic brute!" In a reverse of the situation with Ms Taro in DRNO, it turns out that she has been stalling 007 with sex. At last the tables are turned. When her thugs arrive, the charade is dropped and Bond and Volpe can have a frank exchange of views: "Vanity, Mr Bond? Something you know so much about," she snarks. The conversation in fact serves as some sort of antidote to a lot of the nonsense we've had to put up with before now.
"But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman, and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, and turns to the side of right and virtue... But not this one!"
It isn't an apology for the treatment of Pussy Galore, but there is an implicit criticism there, I think. At the very least, Volpe exists to subvert the audience's expectations and reduce 007 to more mortal dimensions. Never again will Bond's magic penis save the world, and it's all thanks to her.
Oh and somewhere behind her feather boa there is some story about nuclear weapons or something. I wasn't really concentrating. Suffice to say that there's another UK propaganda subtext to proceedings. The horrifying scenario is that NATO is being held to ransom by a ruthless gang who have stolen two atomic bombs. So we get a procession of unflappable British men with grey hair (a mixture of RAF officers, civil servants, M and the Foreign Secretary) whose upper lips never unstiffen, even when all seems lost. Keep Calm and Carry On, indeed, but there's more to it than that. These patrician gentlemen will quietly sort it out behind the scenes. There's no press, no public disclosure, nothing, in short, for us to worry our little heads about. It's a very old-fashioned, British take upon a nuclear crisis, set in sumptuous Whitehall chambers with geo-political maps hidden behind the tapestries.
Needless to say that Britain is very much supported by her junior ally, the United States of Somewhere or Other, who obligingly furnishes MI6 with those incidental niceties like troops, warships and so on. So welcome back Felix Leiter of the CIA, Baldrick to Bond's Blackadder, who hangs around being helpful and earnest, not so much second fiddle to 007 as a kazoo in Ray-Bans.
This is the problem with Leiter; he cannot ever be allowed equal billing lest the audience discover that the USA is actually a richer and more powerful nation than the UK. Fleming dealt with this by feeding him to the sharks in Live and Let Die so that afterwards he was hampered by a false leg and a hook for a hand (hence LTK), but in the films he's just varying degrees of useless. Although David Hedison did better than most (LALD, LTK), it's the current version, played by Jeffrey Wright in Casino Royale and QOS, that offers the most compelling interpretation of the relationship. He is the spy-bureaucrat, operating within the machinery of the CIA and, occasionally, able to try and throw 007 a line. It works nicely, with plenty of opportunity for murk. Having said all that, the best Bond/Leiter paring is, of course, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare. Oh yes it is.
The underwater sequences are impressive, but they do go on and totally dominate the last half hour. The climatic battle goes on forever, but presumably there was considerable pressure, after Goldfinger, to up the ante. What we end up with then is full of sex, sun, sharks and seawater, but the story is weak given the potential of the subject matter. If it is beginning to feel like Bond-by-numbers, don't be too surprised: this one was, literally, written by a committee.
* * *
Pre-Credits Sequence: It's no Goldfinger, but hidden away inside this dull grey PCS is a rather tasty fight. And a stupid jet-pack stunt that a) doesn't fit at all, jarring horribly with the grey French aesthetic, and b) looks stupid because the stuntman insisted on wearing a helmet. As we know, Connery can't wear hats without looking like an idiot. The helmet is so much worse.
Theme: It could have been, should have been Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang but we get Tom Jones belting out the improbable lyrics of Thunderball instead. Maurice Binder's back at the vision mixing desk so it's naked ladies and phallic spear-guns all the way.
Deaths: Tricky, thanks to another confusingly edited and protracted battle. It's about 49. Probably slightly higher considering there must be some people on the Disco Volante when it explodes.
Memorable Deaths: Vargas gets the point. Henchmen get thrown to the sharks. Fiona Volpe somehow gets a bullet in the back on the dance floor thanks to a 007 switcheroo. Most memorable is the SPECTRE agent that Blofeld electrocutes in his chair at the board meeting. Can you imagine Boardroom Bingo as a SPECTRE employee? Japanese fighting fish? Tick.. Electrocution? Tick.. White cat? Tick..
Licence to Kill: 16 (if you count Volpe, which I have). Most of these are during the big battle.
Exploding Helicopters: None. There is a helicopter but, inexplicably, it doesn't explode. A plane does crash though. Depressingly, this is what I wrote for Goldfinger as well.
Shags: 3. A new record. For the first time he hits the unholy trinity: early shag, evil shag, good shag. Presumably he did Paula and the French agent from the PCS too, knowing him...
Crimes Against Women: Plenty, not least of which is blackmailing nurse Patricia Fearing into having sex with him. After several unwanted advances and some general harassment (treated as fun and games by the film of course), she's worried he'll get her into trouble for something that he knows isn't her fault. "My silence could have a price," he suggests. "Oh no," she replies, but he moves in nonetheless. Surprisingly, the current Wikipedia entry for this character states that she "is not unwilling" which tells you a lot about the sort of people that edit these articles. Knowing her brother is dead, Bond shags Domino before telling her the news - of course, otherwise she might not have been in the mood, right? When he first meets her, 007 tries this charming chat up line: "Most girls just paddle about. You swim like a man."
Casual Racism: The vulnerable underbelly of NATO's nuclear weapons security is a corrupt Italian. All the baddies are foreign, apart from one SPECTRE board member.
Out of Time: Well the whole nuclear anxiety thing is very Sixties, but the thing that dates it most, sadly, for us is the disbelief that SPECTRE are happy to hold the world to ransom so discretely. Surely modern audiences would expect them to fly the first bomb straight into a major city and then start issuing demands?
Fashion Disasters: Largo, in double-breasted yachting blazer, bare chest and wet-suit leggings looks like he's about to star in a very strange Richard III. Bond's helmet we've mentioned, but there's yet another hat as well. Were they trying to save on wigs? Q's Hawaiian shirt is presumably intentionally horrible.
Eh?: Two major plot holes: why chase after Derval's sister? And how does she know Largo? Both reduce themselves to this: why should Largo bring the sister of the man he is murdering on his top secret mission? >> Why does Count Lippe's room at the spa have his name on a brass plaque on the door? >> Why does a traction machine need a lethal setting? >> Despite the global nuclear emergency Bond apparently has the time and inclination to change suits between the 00-Section briefing and his individual meeting with M. >> When Bond arrives in Nassau, he immediately locates Domino swimming in the sea. >> During the final grapple on the bridge of the Disco Volante, whilst the ship is out of control and careering improbably between rocks, one of Largo's men appears to bring a tray of champagne up the stairs. Is this mid-fight refreshment? >> Why do the SPECTRE agents all wear over-sized rings that establish their affiliation? >> Does the US Coast Guard normally operate in the Bahamas? >> Finally, one thing that isn't as weird as it looks: Bond and Domino are rescued at the end by an aeroplane that plucks them from a life-raft on a rope and pulls them into the sky. Stupidly, this is a real extraction technique.
Worst Line: Lots of very clunky dialogue, but Largo gets the worst of it. It seems as if the script is at pains to point out that lots of things are happening underwater. Presumably we might not notice the evidence of our own eyes. So Largo barks: "Open the underwater hatch!" and "Turn on the underwater lights!", the second one twice. Bond's quips are already groan-worthy. "Some people really burn you up on the roads these days."
Best Line: But his silent quips are lovely character touches - he mockingly throws lilies over the body of a dispatched enemy and, sneaking out of a suspect's hospital room, pops back to steal a grape from his fruit bowl. His response to news of a global terror alert: "Someone's probably lost a dog." Volpe pursues 007 to a club where she finds him hiding on the dance floor with a holidaymaker. Icily, she asks to cut in. "You should have told me your wife was here," the young tourist reproaches him mournfully. Best of all is the look between Volpe and Bond. It's an entire unspoken conversation, him cornered, trying to be disarmingly charming, to resist; her smouldering, victorious, hungry.
Worst Bond Moment: Small beer this time, but he does look like a wazzock with that helmet on.
Best Bond Moment: All the stuff with the sharks is pretty cool, to be honest. There's a nice moment of improvisation from Bond as he escapes from a car with a bottle of rum and a lighter. But the best moment is another bit of silent interplay between 007 and Volpe. She's hiding in his hotel room, having a bath, pretending that she thinks it is her room, and pretends to be affronted when he walks in on her. "Aren't you in the wrong room, Mr Bond?" she asks. "Not from where I'm standing," he dead-pans. Casually glancing down at her naked body, she changes tack. "Since you are here, would you mind giving me something to put on?" Bond, thoughtfully steps into the room, bends down and, without taking his eyes off her, picks up and offers her a pair of shoes.
Overall: It's the underwater one that isn't FYEO. Lots of sharks and diving masks and spear guns. It looks colossally expensive compared with the first four films, and it remains one of the highest grossing of all the Bond films. In fact, allowing for inflation, Thunderball would be on a par with a Harry Potter movie today. The producers have found themselves in charge of a runaway train full of money - but their star is restless and the public wants even more. How on Earth are they going to top this?
James Bond Will Return: Oooh, it doesn't say anything. Legend has it that the caption did read "James Bond will return in On Her Majesty's Secret Service" but that the credits were curtailed to remove this once the decision was made to make You Only Live Twice instead. Now you're imagining that, aren't you. Yeah, me too.
Interesting that in Thunderball, both Domino and Fiona knew the score with Bond. After Fiona's statement about Bond seducing women over to his side, Domino later cynically said "that is why you made love to me" when she realized that Bond had other motives.
ReplyDelete