The Spy Who Loved Me

Isn't this the quintessential Bond movie? It seems to offer everything we've come to expect - excitement, fun, adventure, spectacle. In fact The Spy Who Loved Me is result of a deliberate attempt to hone the series' formula to perfection.

Legal disputes caused a three year hiatus after the somewhat poorly-received TMWTGG. The production team used the time well, though, aware that they needed to come up with something extra special for the next installment, something that could revitalise the series. Something sufficiently 'Bondian'.

This is the word that the production team used repeatedly, amongst themselves and in interviews, whilst scripting, filming and promoting TSWLM. They had a clear idea of what they meant by it and I think they successfully transferred their vision to the screen.

TSWLM is grander and more spectacular than anything since YOLT. In fact, it has a lot in common with that predecessor: there's east/west tension, stolen hardware, the threat of nuclear war and an epic scale. It also had the same director, Lewis Gilbert, and no Fleming plot to adhere to. But there is one big difference: this is brilliant, coherent, well made and not at all a gigantic, vacuous mess.

As it's the tenth in the series, here's ten things I like about TSWLM (anyone doubt I can find twenty things I hate about DAD?):

1) I love this car. Let's get this one out of the way: the Lotus Esprit S1 Turbo is the best Bond car. It's beautiful. Utterly original and recognisable, very British and also modern in a 1977, 'R'-reg kind of a way. Being very picky, I think the S2 Turbo is even more beautiful (see FYEO for that), but this one here is the best Bond car. Of course, the DB5 is exquisite, a classic. But it's also become a Bond cliché, dragged back in GoldenEye, TND and even Casino Royale, each time getting older and making 007 look more and more like Bergerac or Inspector Morse. And the Lotus is used so well! The DB5 may be part of the classic style of Goldfinger but, ejector-seat aside, it's poorly employed: Bond fails to run over an old woman and then drives into a wall, having played chicken with a reflection or something. It's one of the worst Bond car chases. You can't say that of the Lotus in TSWLM. The chase here lasts just a few minutes, but it's stomach-troublingly fast, providing a real visceral thrill as the Lotus growls and powers around the Sardinian hairpins, dispatching baddies and dodging bullets. And then - kadumsssh! - Bond drives into the sea! Even after many repeated viewings, I still experience a lurch as that happens, a ghostly echo of whenever it was I saw it for the first time. It is brilliant. It is always brilliant. The frenetic pace dissipates as the car transforms, and we get to admire it all over again, sleek and white against the water, like a cruising shark. Just marvellous.

2) The Pre-Credit Sequence. Thirteen years after the explosive beginning to Goldfinger, a crucial element of the Bond formula finally slots permanently into place. From now on every Bond film will start with a spectacular stunt or set-piece sequence. This one sets the tone for the whole movie, puts Bond back on skis, lets him shoot a Russian and then - gasp! - makes him zoom over the edge of a precipice. You can keep your flashy CGI; we are watching a man fall to his death. We know it's a stunt. We know it's not real. We know (now) that he's got a parachute. But he carries on falling and we are holding our breath, waiting and waiting and waiting... It takes ages before, finally, woomph, there it goes, and even then it seems to unfold in slow motion. Worth waiting for though. And what a parachute.

3) Jaws. I know he becomes a buffoon in Moonraker but don't let that count against the character here. Jaws, played by 7ft 1.5 in Richard Kiel, is a truly chilling monster in TSWLM - the murders of Fekkesh and (particularly) Max Kalba are terrifying, almost supernatural, as the silent giant tenderly bends the neck of his victim and reaches down with his glinting metal teeth. As a small kid, this scared me witless. Jaws also presents a, ha, sizeable challenge to Bond. Unable to physically overpower him, 007 is forced to improvise and to outsmart Jaws. He does this three times during the film, and each time it is different, spontaneous and satisfying. Excellent stuff.

4) Major Anya Amasova. Apart from a last-reel regression into damsel-hood, Agent XXX is the much-vaunted, long-awaited 'equal' Bond woman. As the KGB's top agent she's definitely a match for 007, repeatedly out-smarting him, even if she doesn't seem able or willing to duff him up. It's only 1977 so there's still a far way to go, but this is tremendous progress on, say, Thunderball's Domino, let alone TMWTGG's Goodnight. It's telling, perhaps, that she's a compelling and motivated character given that she is the first of the Bond women not to have been invented by Fleming. And she leads nicely in to..

5) The Spy-Rom (as opposed to a Rom-Com). I know we are spoiled, in the days of Craig, by having characters intelligently interact with each other, but look again at the Egyptian sequence in the TSWLM. Bond and Amasova have their own little story here - maybe it's lightly sketched, but it is there. They meet as enemy agents, competing for the same prize. But, like in a good rom-com, they move through the gears, from antipathy to distrust to cautious flirting, even whilst they are double-crossing each other. It's good stuff for a Bond film, for a Moore Bond film it is amazing. Amasova even mentions his dead wife and you know how often that gets referenced! (Yes you do. It's 3 times, 4 if you count OHMSS itself.) Throughout the film it's clear that they realise they have, as spies, a shared experience that draws them together, even whilst their political affiliations force them apart. The sub-plot, that Bond has killed Amasova's lover on a previous mission, looks like it is sending the movie into fascinating and uncharted emotional waters... right up until the champagne cork pops and she forgets all about it. Never mind! Damn good try, TSWLM, damn good try.

6) Music. I still don't really know who Marvin Hamlisch is other than that he is the man what done the music for this. It's very of its time, but I think that's a real strength: there's a disco sensibility throughout and it makes the movie feel fresh and contemporary - at least compared with the last nine films. The theme, 'Nobody Does it Better', sung by Carly Simon, is sublime. Easily one of the very best Bond songs, it could serve as a theme for the entire series.

7) Pinewood and the Big Battle. A big set-piece set-to had become a staple of the series with FRWL, but recent films from DAF onwards had left them out. TSWLM redresses all that with a massive battle between an army of henchmen and a combined force of British, Soviet and American submariners. It's colossal and achieves this grand scale because it's shot on the new 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios. Purpose built to accommodate Ken Adam's vast set-design, opened by Harold Wilson in 1976 and twice rebuilt after burning down (1984 and 2008), it is still the biggest stage in Europe and is the Bond films' permanent legacy to the British film industry.

8) Keeping the British End Up. We've had Bond in post-colonial denial, and Britain punching above her weight. Now we get a more relaxed, Eurovision-style of patriotism - plenty of flag-waving but with tongue firmly wedged in cheek. Whether it's the Union Jack parachute, POLARIS, Bond in his Royal Navy uniform or the Lotus Esprit, there's plenty of Britishness on display (although Bond's line in the PCS is that 'England' needs him, rather than the union - go figure). But none of this is taken very seriously - Britain's pre-eminent global prestige is presented rather like Stromberg's undersea base: a preposterous, pleasing notion that exists only within the reality of the movie. This allows us (the British audience) to glory in our pretend amazingness even whilst we laugh at how silly and rubbish we really are. Perfect! And that last line is pure Carry On, another enduring British film series...

9) This is Moore at his best. There's plenty to say about Roger Moore and I think I'll leave most of it until after AVTAK and do it all in one go. But this is his best film as Bond. In LALD and TMWTGG, he's still a little uptight and the comedy is, perhaps, overplayed - here's he's relaxed a lot more and the humour is (relatively) subtle. The balance suits him. Other factors help too. The naval uniform he wears for most the end of the film lends him credibility for the action sequences. Never really convincing in fights, he doesn't need to be here as the mismatch with Jaws pushes the emphasis on Bond's ingenuity rather than his physical strength. And the relationship with Amasova is more convincing than many of the others we see during the Moore years, if only because he is not yet so obviously elderly. Having said that, Moore was 50 when TSWLM came out, nearly ten years older than Connery had been in DAF: I think it's fair to say that the man was incredibly well-preserved and in very good shape. After this he becomes distinctly pudgy for Moonraker and is visibly superannuated by the time of his final outing in AVTAK - but here, in TSWLM, we have Moore in his prime.

10) It's entirely fabricated. Fleming's novel is a rather tawdry melodrama set almost entirely in an up-state New York motel. It was poorly received and Fleming more or less disavowed it and, although happy to sell the film rights to Saltzman and Broccoli, he did so under the proviso that they could only use the title - none of the book's contents should make it to the screen. Probably good news for the production team that had to meet international expectations with a spectacular Bond film - but of course, the last time they had to come up with a story from scratch they had spewed out the undisciplined mess of YOLT. As I mentioned above, TSWLM has almost an identical plot, but it works: the story flows and makes sense. The film is pretty much a greatest hits package for Bond - in fact, let's count them off shall we? PCS stunt, sharks, gadget-car, car chase, ski chase, fight on a train, henchmen, Moneypenny, M, Q, Royal Navy, submarines, Americans, Russians, a big battle, bomb defusal, nuclear war averted, a villainous lair (with monorail), exotic locations, underwater fight - they all turn up here... I make it only 'torture scene' and 'Bond beats baddy at game of skill/chance' that don't feature. Once again the producers had proven that the franchise was sustainable beyond the finite resource of Fleming's novels. Increasingly, they would need to elaborate heavily on the books in order to make the movies.

And the one novel of Fleming's that could only be ruined by such treatment was Moonraker.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: I think I probably covered this adequately above. Hell, here it is. Knock yourself out.

Theme: Excellent Bond-ballad 'Nobody Does It Better' tinkles away over images - well, what's Maurice Binder got for us this time? Tramopolines! He actually seems to have put some effort in and the result is the freshest opening titles since YOLT. Some Soviet iconography (furry hats/boots), some phallic gun barrels and lots of naked women doing bouncing, jumping, marching and gymnastics though. There is a point where it looks like it's about to turn into the opening titles of The Good Life. See if you can spot it. Incidentally, I saw Binder interviewed on a Saturday morning kids' show when I was little and he swore blind that the models weren't naked. What a liar.    

Deaths: Hang on now a minute. The whole death thing goes a bit screwy with TSWLM. The battle aboard the Liparus is the most chaotic yet with bodies flying hither and thither and wide shots showing countless corpses strewn everywhere. Then there are the two submarines that get hit by nuclear missiles, killing an unspecified number of crew members. There is no way to be sure what the death toll is for this film. But it is a lot. Counting normally (men on fire, guards falling over and not getting up again and so forth) I make it 82. Assuming Stromberg only uses skeleton crews for those subs (say, 30 men each?) and that maybe 25 are killed when Bond blasts open the control room then we get a whopping 167.   

Memorable Deaths: Everyone that Jaws bites down on. Stromberg's secretary is fed to the sharks via a trick elevator. Bond callously drops Shandor off a roof and empties his Walther into Stromberg in cold blood, seemingly for no other reason than so he can have run out of bullets in time to meet Jaws.   

Licence to Kill: Remember in TMWTGG when Bond killed just one person? Forget that. His tally is shockingly high here, positively off the scale. The average kills per film before TSWLM was about 7.8. In this film alone it's at least 37. If you say that Bond's personally responsible for destroying the two subs too (it was his idea and, hey, he is the hero with all the buck-stopping that implies), then the figure rises (based on my assumptions above) to an emetic 107! It may not surprise you to learn this is a record so far. Major Amasova offs two herself as well.

Exploding Helicopters: 2! A solid score. They're clearly models but, hey.

Shags: 3. Given some of the excesses of TSWLM it's surprising this figure isn't higher. Agent XXX can only muster 2.

Crimes Against Women: Back in the old days, with Connery, both men and women accepted the patriarchy. There was no need to mention it, or to say sexist things. That's just the way it was and everyone behaved as if it was normal. Now, in the late 70s, when "womens' lib" is a thing, the film series has to respond. So we get Major Amasova, agent XXX - a different kind of Bond woman. And we also get Bond being really patronising to her. It's as if the films acknowledge the challenge of sexism whilst simultaneously feeling obliged to belittle it. The classic scene is where Amasova is trying to drive the van away from Jaws. Bond sits in the passenger seat being very smug and unhelpful. "Why not try reverse?" he chirrups. "Can you play any other tune?" he snarks as she crunches gears. It's a set up because she immediately does something impressive and cool - but it's only a momentary flash of skill whilst 007's stereotypical 'women drivers' schtick lingers in the mind. Anyway, it doesn't really matter because she ends up half-naked, tied-up and helpless at the end of the movie anyway. Ultimately, there's only room for one sexy super spy in a Bond movie and that's the fifty year old white dude.

Casual Racism: Egypt gets a rough deal out of this does it not? We see the pyramids, a muddy river bank and the desert. Where's Cairo? Where's the modern urban spaces? And the 'Egyptian builders!' joke of course. Then there's all that faux-Bedouin nonsense, with a pair of Oxbridge gadabouts playing at being Lawrence playing at being sheikhs. However, I do enjoy Amasova's devotion to Mother Russia. The stuff about her knowing that the Karl Marx is the largest oil tanker in the world is nicely played and subtly done.

Out of Time: There are two 1977's on show here. One is ultra-modern - POLARIS, the Lotus Esprit, the Wetbike, the disco influence on the new version of the Bond theme ("Bond '77"). The other has a slight retro-sophistication. It's that fragrance of the 1940s that you get in some films and fashion from the late Seventies. The Mujaba Club could have Sydney Greenstreet sat in a corner. 

Fashion Disasters: Bond's bright yellow ski-suit. His Bedouin garb. Other than that he's quite the natty dresser here.

Eh?: Apparently Bond is on first-name terms with the Minister of Defence ('Freddie', since you ask), but only here, so apparently there's a falling out of some sort. Amazingly, Sir Frederick Gray (bit odd to be knighted whilst in office isn't it?) will keep his ministerial brief (despite reshuffles and, er, changes of government) all the way through to TLD. >> We've seen it before (YOLT, TMWTGG) but it never jarred like it does here: why does MI6 need intricate bases all around the world, especially inside an ancient Egyptian temple? How on Earth is M able to justify waltzing about the world (Hong Kong - twice - and now Egypt) to brief 007? And Moneypenny tags along and Q gets to duplicate his R&D department. Astonishing. >> If Amasova saw the plans for the Lotus Sub two years ago, why does she gasp in astonishment when Bond drives into the sea? (Maybe she never expected the British bourgeois capitalist lap-dogs to be able to build it properly?) >> The subs are sent off to nuke New York and Moscow, then receive new orders telling them to wang the missiles into the Atlantic - and nobody thinks to double-check with HQ? >> Stromberg has a gun hidden under his dining room table and the muzzle runs the full length of it so he can shoot people at the far end. Fair enough. But once he's tried to dispatch Bond with it, 007 retaliates by firing his Walther up the pipe, through the gun and into Stromberg's stomach. Which is surprising enough as a one-off, but Bond manages to pull off the same trick shot from thirty yards away during the infamous 'magic bullet' gun-barrel sequence of DAD.      

Worst Line: Abandoned girl: "But I need you!" Bond: "So does England!" Really? England? It's bad enough Connery supporting Scottish independence, we don't need you chipping in too, Roger. Is it an attempt to 'simplify' things for 'Americans'? Or did they feel the urgent need to evoke Nelson before the opening titles? It won't be the last time that the series erroneously refers to England instead of Britain and the sin is compounded here by Bond heading straight for the Faslane naval base in, er, Scotland...  

Best Line: Kalba's clipped response to 007's "I'm Bond, James Bond.": "What of it?" He tells Amasova that she has just saved his life and she replies "We all make mistakes, Mr Bond." 

Worst Bond Moment: The Lawrence of Arabia homage. The smarmy patronising lines. Killing Shandor - and Stromberg for that matter - in cold blood. Is there no capacity for MI6 to take prisoners?

Best Bond Moment: Many. The parachute jump has become a quintessential visual signature for 007, as has the Lotus submarine. The most satisfying is Bond's repeated and ingenious improvisations to get rid of Jaws.    

Overall: There are Bonds that are better acted or that have better scripts. There are Bonds that are more exciting or better directed, or that are more dramatic. But TSWLM is surely one of the best overall, a general all-rounder that still manages to excel in one or two departments.

James Bond Will Return: ... in For Your Eyes Only, apparently. For some strange and mysterious reason Broccoli changed his mind, convinced that the franchise needed to go into space. So next up it's actually Moonraker.