1967-1969: Out With the Old, In With the Australian
Logic has rarely ever factored in to the James Bond films, and things got, let’s say unusually absurd, with the fifth film You Only Live Twice. By this point the series had become a cultural fixture, as Thunderball made unheard of amounts of money, and as such the budgets ballooned as well. You Only Live Twice would introduce the world to what would become a trademark of the series: the illogically gigantic headquarters where the villain resides.
In the case of You Only Live Twice, supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld conducts his business inside a volcano in Japan. Let’s consider the process. Blofeld would have had to come to Japan, choose a volcano, hire an insane amount of workers to completely gut this volcano, build a complex headquarters inside which can house a spacecraft, hundreds of his workers, and include his lush living quarters. This is a project that would be impossible at every step, but for some reason when one watches You Only Live Twice they don’t much care. Let’s face it, the James Bond series has spent nearly fifty years making viewers suspend their disbelief.
You Only Live Twice also gives us a plot which would be recycled endless times as the series went on: Evil mastermind tries to start World War III. Here, Blofeld keeps sending his spacecraft up into the final frontier, alternately kidnapping astronauts from the United States and the Soviet Union… while in mid-orbit. Again, nothing illogical going on here. It’s up to our good friend James Bond to rise up and… ah, you know the rest.
Despite nothing making any freaking sense You Only Live Twice is still able to generate a sizable sense of escapist fun. It’s everything most people would come to expect from Bond, and in a way it provides a preview of what was to come in the Roger Moore era. Most of the Sean Connery era was more focused on the character of Bond himself, but when Moore would come along the series would seem to be about anything but him. You Only Live Twice begins that pattern, mostly due to the fact it was directed by Lewis Gilbert, who after directing this film would not return until The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Also, fun trivia: the screenplay was written by Roald Dahl, author of countless children’s classics such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach.
If there is one major flaw to You Only Live Twice, it’s that for the first time Sean Connery is just not very good. He certainly isn’t awful, he can fit into the James Bond role more effortlessly than anybody, but it’s still noticeable when he attempts to do it effortlessly. Connery comes off as sick of the entire ordeal, and it’s understandable that he quit the role once You Only Live Twice was complete. At that point in his career he was concerned that he would be haunted by the ghost of 007 the rest of his life. He decided the best way to distance himself from the series would be to do it physically.
It was then the filmmakers were left without a James Bond, but they decided to soldier on. You Only Live Twice was a piece of brainless fun, but with the departure of Connery the team decided to go in a different direction. The next film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, would not be a comparable film. In fact, director Peter Hunt, an editor of previous films, decided to make it more of a drama which happened to feature a secret agent by the name of James Bond. This was done by adapting Ian Fleming's novel as faithfully as possible, and thus a great spy film was born.
The big question remained: who would play the lead? Many names of actual actors entered the equation, including future 007 Timothy Dalton. However, the actor finally chosen was hardly an actor at all, but instead an Australian model whose only real acting experience was in commercials. This man was George Lazenby. This choice could have resulted in disaster, but Lazenby turned out to be just convincing enough, particularly in the physical sense, to let the film work its magic.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a near-great film that, with a few minor tweaks, could have been the best in the series. The James Bond here is not a superman as he is in previous films, and for the first time you completely buy that he could legitimately fall in love with one of the women he meets. In the Connery era Bond slept with women because they were simply there. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he develops an attraction to Diana Rigg’s Tracy Di Vicenzo that ends in James Bond’s one and only marriage in the series. While the marriage does not last long, it marks a pivotal moment in the series. There have been many women in Bond’s life. There would be only one Tracy.
I, like many, find On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to be an incredibly moving film, comparable in tone to 2006’s Casino Royale. While the latter is a slightly superior film, both attempt to redefine the series due to a major casting change. Secret Service is not a reboot, per se, as it does not provide an origin story for the character. Emotionally and tonally, however, it is brave enough to take risks and blow up the formula so many had come to expect after the Connery era. Telly Savalas does not play Blofeld in the way audiences had become accustomed to, but instead makes him a more human and less cartoonish figure. His villainous plot may remain outlandish (send a large group of gorgeous women all over the world to sterilize the food supply!) but he provides a nice companion character to Lazenby’s equally human Bond.
Despite the movie being awesome, audiences and critics were less than enthused about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Though time has been incredibly kind to it, many were a little too shell-shocked by the sudden change in the series’ tone. Too many wanted more gutted out volcano lairs, and as such On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, while still a financial success, did not blow anyone’s mind at the box office. Thus, as a reaction, the filmmakers decided to abandon the direction that Hunt’s Bond was going. Lazenby left the series for no real reason whatsoever, and thus everyone involved decided the series should regress as much as possible.
Next Week: Connery’s curtain call, and Roger Moore checks in.
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