Bond number six is the George Lazenby Bond. When star Sean Connery opted to not re-up for this picture, the producers turned to a 29 year old Australian model who had never acted before. The opening credits this time are instrumental, no theme song (because how are you going to a write sexy song with "In her majesty's secret service" in the lyrics), and contains a montage of previous villains and Bond girls in an effort to reinforce continuity with the previous films in the series. I saw this as a bad sign, but I actually really liked Lazenby in this, he really should have made more Bond films, and he admits that in the special features on the DVD. In hind sight one of the reasons that Lazenby works so well is that unlike other actors who have played the part, you likely don't know Lazenby from anything else, he didn't have much of a career after this film and thus works as a kind of 'generic James Bond', the likes of which you might imagine if you'd never seen any of the movies and just read the books.
The foreign locations in this film are the Mediterranean and Switzerland, this is the Bond film with Blofeld's Alpine layer. I liked Telly Savala's seemingly younger, more charming and Lex Luther like Blofeld. Diana Rigg is the chief Bond girl in this, she comes with spy experience from three years on TV's The Avengers. **Spoilers** Bond actually marries her at the end of this film, though she is of course ill fated. I thought this plot crinkle worked however, and added a new dimension from what I'd seen before. This is already one of my favorite James Bond movies. ****
Ranking the Bond movies in order thus far:
From Russia with Love
Her Majesty's Secret Service
Goldfinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment