{"id":110,"date":"2014-09-17T22:27:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T03:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/?p=110"},"modified":"2023-06-12T14:46:16","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T19:46:16","slug":"when-it-comes-to-bond-films-goldfinger-is-not-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/2014\/09\/17\/when-it-comes-to-bond-films-goldfinger-is-not-all\/","title":{"rendered":"When it comes to Bond films, ‘Goldfinger’ is not all that glitters"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today \u2014 Sept. 17, 2014 \u2014 marks the 50th anniversary of Goldfinger\u2019s<\/em> world premiere at London\u2019s Odeon Leicester Square cinema. The third film in the series debuted at the perfect moment, just as Bondmania hit a fevered pitch. Goldfinger<\/em> was an instant phenomenon, guaranteeing that Ian Fleming\u2019s 007 would star in movies for many more years.<\/p>\n

The 50th anniversary of Goldfinger<\/em> arrives with the usual round of the entertainment press hailing it the best James Bond movie ever, which always sets my teeth on edge. Star Trek<\/em> fans, imagine if the media kept telling you the best film in your series was Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country<\/em>. Star Wars<\/em> fans, imagine if the media kept telling you the best Star Wars<\/em> movie was Return of the Jedi<\/em>. That\u2019s what it\u2019s like for Bond fans. Goldfinger<\/em> is undoubtedly one of the best James Bond movies \u2014 it\u2019s in the top five \u2014 but it\u2019s not the<\/em> best. From Russia With Love<\/em><\/a>, On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service<\/em><\/a> and Casino Royale<\/em> are all superior Bond movies. And \u2014 yes, I\u2019ll say it \u2014 so is The Spy Who Loved Me<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

It would be more accurate to call Goldfinger<\/em> the most important James Bond movie. Its success set the template for the rest of the series. New director Guy Hamilton stepped in, favoring the fantastic and more obvious comedy over the sophisticated humor director Terence Young brought to From Russia With Love<\/em>. Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, who would bring broader jokes to the series in the early 1970s, once commented that Goldfinger<\/em> is the movie where the Bond films became \u201cDisney for adults.\u201d He pinpointed the moment that changed the series\u2019 direction as Bond pressing the button that activated the Aston Martin DB5\u2019s ejector seat. I would argue the moment comes earlier, right at the beginning of the movie as a scuba-diving Bond emerges from black water wearing a pigeon on his head. I imagine this was supposed to be a duck, but it looks like a pigeon.<\/p>\n

Goldfinger\u00a0<\/em>is the entry where the elements we still consider the traditional components of a Bond movie all came together in one glittering, irresistible package: the women, the villains, the exotic locations, the gadgets, Ken Adam\u2019s almost surrealistic sets and the sultry wah-wahs<\/em> of John Barry\u2019s music. Shirley Bassey\u2019s theme song remains so iconic that nearly every Bond theme since 1989 has imitated it (it took Adele\u2019s Skyfall<\/em> to finally pull off the proper homage).<\/p>\n

The silver, weapons-packed Aston Martin DB5 remains the height of Bond\u2019s gadgetry. Significantly, Goldfinger<\/em> markes the first time Desmond Llewelyn\u2019s character is identified as Q. Hamilton\u2019s instructions to Llewelyn would be among his most important contributions to the series. Llewelyn\u2019s instinct was to be deferential to 007, but Hamilton told Llewelyn to treat Bond as a hateful annoyance, the cavalier field agent who destroys Q\u2019s precious equipment.<\/p>\n

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One superlative I will gladly hand Goldfinger<\/em> is its rogues gallery. As the megalomaniac Auric Goldfinger, German actor Gert Frobe is still the best Bond villain after 50 years. He doesn\u2019t cackle or leer; he considers himself a businessman and conducts himself as such. His manservant Oddjob (played by professional wrestler Harold Sakata) is still the model of the sinister, invulnerable henchman. His smirk as he taunts Bond to get up and keep fighting during their battle in Fort Knox is chilling.<\/p>\n

So if I admire Goldfinger<\/em> for its historic impact on the Bond series, why don\u2019t I consider it the best film?<\/p>\n

The second half of the movie, basically.<\/p>\n

The first half is just about perfect, right up to that tense scene with the laser and the immortal exchange \u201cDo you expect me to talk?\u201d\/\u201dNo, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.\u201d The scene ends with Bond bluffing his way out of his castration and being knocked unconscious, which leads to the great problem with everything that follows: for the second half of the movie, Bond is Goldfinger\u2019s prisoner.<\/p>\n

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Screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Richard Dehn struggled with this when they adapted Ian Fleming\u2019s novel, which peters out in the third act. In many ways the screenwriters improve upon the book. Detonating an atomic bomb in Fort Knox is a far more original and fiendish scheme than robbing the place (in one of the movie\u2019s more amusing in-jokes, Bond details the improbability of robbing America\u2019s gold depository).<\/p>\n

The screenwriters also are more ruthless with supporting characters. Fleming allowed Tilly Masterson and the American gangsters to linger until the Fort Knox raid, but the screenwriters kill them off once they\u2019ve served their purposes (although this adds an absurdity to the film as Goldfinger elaborately explains his plot to the gangsters even though he plans to kill them as soon as he leaves the room).<\/p>\n

In the novel Fleming builds to a confrontation between Bond and Oddjob that never comes. The film adds that terrific brawl in the depths of Fort Knox that defined movie fight scenes for years to come and remains among the best in the 007 series.<\/p>\n

But the screenwriters knew that Bond\u2019s captivity in the second half of the film put them in a bind, and though they deal with the problem as well as anyone could have (certainly better than Fleming did) they didn\u2019t entirely lick it. Bond is a mostly passive character in the second half of the film, handcuffed while the action takes place. Only indirectly does he save the day, and he\u2019s not the one who disarms the ticking atom bomb. That honor goes to an American scientist who makes his first appearance only minutes earlier and doesn\u2019t even get a name.<\/p>\n

\"image\"Whenever I hear someone make the knee-jerk pronouncement that Goldfinger<\/em> is the best Bond movie, I wonder how recently they\u2019ve seen it. Several moments of the film haven\u2019t aged well. Some of it comes across as embarrassing 1960s kitsch, particularly the scene where Pussy Galore\u2019s female pilots climb out of their planes and prance across the airfield in their skin-tight catsuits, each woman seemingly held aloft by a gravity-defying bosom. The salacious brass notes that John Barry employs to score the moment would be at home in a burlesque house.<\/p>\n

Much more troubling is the scene in the barn where Bond \u201cseduces\u201d Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) after a few judo throws. Today it is difficult to consider this act as anything other than rape, even though Blackman relents just as the scene ends. I\u2019m not going to turn this into a condemnation of Bond films as misogynist, because this sort of male domination fantasy was common to all sorts of movies. A far more disturbing example can be found in another Connery film of the era, Marnie<\/em>, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. But watching it today, the barn scene in Goldfinger<\/em> is uncomfortable viewing to say the least, especially when Bond later reflects that forcing himself on Pussy somehow \u201cappealed to her maternal instincts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sequence that most hurts Goldfinger\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 and I sometimes wonder if it looked just as stupid in 1964 as it does today \u2014 comes at the beginning of the Fort Knox raid. The nerve gas\u2019 effectiveness is demonstrated by wave after wave of American soldiers falling down as if a puppeteer cut all their strings at once.<\/p>\n

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The soldiers in these scenes were actual U.S. servicemen acting as extras and instructed to fall down when Hamilton blew a whistle. They come across as a bunch of amateurs playing a children\u2019s game. We see it again and again, and it looks ridiculous every time, like something out of the Keystone Kops. Whenever I have watched Goldfinger<\/em> with an audience, people crack up at this point. It absolutely kills the mood of the climax.<\/p>\n

There must have been a better way to illustrate the nerve gas.\u00a0It would have been more effective, I think, to show the planes fly overhead and then slowly pan down to reveal a few people toppling to the ground while most soldiers have already fallen. They struggle to get up, then one by one give up and lose consciousness. The film requires something haunting like this instead of the unintended comedy that mars the ending. You may want to argue that the nerve gas was switched and the soldiers were in fact faking the loss of consciousness, but it still looks stupid.<\/p>\n

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Honestly, my biggest gripe about Goldfinger<\/em> is the soldiers falling down. This is an instance of terrible directorial judgment in an otherwise great film. And for all my carping over the last few paragraphs, I do regard Goldfinger<\/em> as a great film and one of my favorite Bonds. I have enjoyed watching it many times, and will enjoy watching it many more times to come. It deserves to be celebrated this year and every year. It just chafes me that so many people assume it\u2019s the best James Bond movie when it\u2019s not even Sean Connery\u2019s best. That would be From Russia With Love.\u00a0<\/em>Connery himself would tell you that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today \u2014 Sept. 17, 2014 \u2014 marks the 50th anniversary of Goldfinger\u2019s world premiere at London\u2019s Odeon Leicester Square cinema. The third film in the series debuted at the perfect moment, just as Bondmania hit a fevered pitch. Goldfinger was an instant phenomenon, guaranteeing that Ian Fleming\u2019s 007 would star in movies for many more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[335,334],"tags":[29,44,56,57,16,17,20],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bond-films","category-films","tag-29","tag-50th-anniversary","tag-goldfinger","tag-guy-hamilton","tag-james-bond-007","tag-james-bond-films","tag-sean-connery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5foza-1M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}