|
Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Goldfinger (1964)
I love the Sean Connery Bond films, particularly Goldfinger and Thunderball, as they represent the point where the Bond series was still in the twilight zone between Ian Fleming’s idealized exploits of a British intelligence agent and a knowing self-parody of its own milieu. The Connery Bonds, after all, are the best secret agent parodies ever made, despite what all you Austin Powers fans say. (Can you please stop doing those Dr. Evil impressions now? Thank you.) Unfortunately, the Bond series gradually began to draw more and more on the parody, and by the time Roger Moore was doing hideous Bonds like Octopussy, any traces of Fleming were completely gone, and the series had long since worn out its welcome. But the Connery Bonds take the character just seriously enough to enable the satiric wit that was the series’ trademark to shine through. If there is any aspect of the Bonds that dates them, it is not Bond’s often commented on male chauvinism — on the contrary, Bond, in these days of rampant misogyny, seems almost a gentleman — it’s the wit. The Beatles had the same kind of irreverent sarcasm, but it’s atavistic in a way that doesn’t translate to a contemporary audience: it’s simply too dry for an audience weaned on (what it thinks is) irony. Nineteen sixty-four's Goldfinger finds Bond recuperating from his last adventure in Miami, where his ever present C.I.A. connection Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) points out international gold maven Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) cheating the locals out of thousands playing gin. Bond interferes, but when Goldfinger finds his sexy assistant Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) in 007’s bed, he has her painted gold. Brit intelligence, it turns out, is keeping an eye on Goldfinger, and after Q (the late Desmond Llewelyn) outfits Bond with a fully armed Aston Martin DB5 — perhaps the most famous car in film history — he sets out to tail Goldfinger. He follows him to Switzerland, where a mysterious young woman named Tully (Tania Malet) turns out to be Jill’s sister, looking to execute personal revenge. Tully, unfortunately, is felled by the lethal bowler of Goldfinger’s silent, but deadly henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata), and just as Goldfinger is about to emasculate 007 with an industrial laser beam, Bond tells Goldfinger he knows about "Operation Grand Slam" (which he overheard), and is therefor emore valuable alive than dead. Goldinfinger had Bond flown to his private stud farm in Kentucky via his private pilot Pussy Galore (former Avenger Honor Blackman), whose name wins the "how did they get that by the censors" award (beating out Dr. No’s "Sylvia Trench"). "Operation Grand Slam" it turns out, is a fiendishly ingenious plot to nuke the gold in the Fort Knox reserve, thereby increasing the demand and value of his own reserve. How to stop Goldfinger, save Fort Knox and the gold, dispose of Oddjob and win the heart of the possibly lesbian bad girl? He does it with 007 seconds on the clock to spare. Thunderball sends 007 to the Bahamas after eye-patched SPECTRE madman Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), who has hijacked a British Vulcan bomber equipped with two nuclear bombs, which he threatens to use on a major city unless NATO pays his ransom. He gets to Largo through his gorgeous young mistress, Domino (Claudine Auger), the sister of the slain Vulcan pilots. Largo, being no fool, dispatches red-headed bad girl Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) to take care of Bond, but she is no match, and Bond soon has Largo and his minions fighting a spectacular underwater battle before Bond — and Domino — help save the world from evil in the nick of time. Both films are, of course, deliriously fun to watch, and it is great to see Thunderball, the first of the anamorphic widescreen Bonds, shown in its proper 2.35:1 ratio at last. And even if there were no supplemental material on these discs, they’d be fun. But, both are loaded with generous amounts of goodies. Both have running audio commentaries (Goldfinger’s by director Guy Hamilton, Thunderball’s by Terence Young) as well as two mini-documentaries, each loaded with all sorts of fascinating ephemera. There are trailers, television spots and on camera interviews from all the major (and now aged) players. (The Goldfinger disc even has Harold "Oddjob" Sakata’s Vicks Formula 44 commercial from the 60’s!) I did have two favorite bits of trivia though. On Goldfinger, I was delighted to learn that most of what that Aston Martin DB5 did on screen it did in real life. On the Thunderball disc, I was impressed by the original song John Barry composed for the credits, the Dionne Warwick-performed "Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" — infinitely better than the Tom Jones nonsense that made the final cut and accessible here to play in its place. If you want to show your pals what your DVD player can do, get these. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Want Pif to review your book? Nick Burton lives in Newport Beach, California. His fiction has appeared in many small press and web publications, including: Chronicles Of Fiction, Pauper, and of course Pif. |
|||||||
