Ten Reasons Why On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the Greatest Bond Film Ever Made

TLDR: a more human Bond, the best Bond Girl ever, the best theme ever written, the greatest scene in the franchise, the biggest risk ever taken, and five other wonderful little touches.

#1: THIS BOND

What is this?  Listing the obviously-inexperienced George Lazenby as a positive factor?  No, I’m not crazy.  Take off your blinders for a moment and look at the earnest-pup performance here.  As awesome as Connery is, he’d morphed into a boring (and bored) invincible comic-book superagent over the course of his films.  To be sure, the franchise would have died if Lazenby had stayed on without any change to the subsequent scripts, but this film’s tone gels wonderfully with his characterization. 

To elaborate: One of the most pivotal scenes in OHMSS sees Bond cornered at a skating rink by the evil henchwoman, only for Tracy to show up and save his ass.  Problem is, Connery!Bond had escaped from a similar situation (the Kiss Kiss Club in Thunderball) all on his lonesome.  The skating-rink scene wouldn’t have been as effective with a Bond we knew could just walk away with a terrible pun.  This scene is genuinely suspenseful; that one was run-of-the-mill.  The decision to make The New James Bond less awesome/larger-than-life was a bold one, but it paid dividends by making things properly dramatic again.

I have no doubt that Connery could have done this scene. I do doubt that the audience that saw Thunderball would believe it.

I said above that the franchise would have died had they kept him on without adjusting the films to fit his skill set, and I stand by that.  He is rather bad at the humor, and he doesn’t impress at Standing Around Being James Bond Acting.  In other words, he’s not Sean Connery, Roger Moore, or, to stretch a point, Pierce Brosnan.  (Dalton and Craig didn’t go in much for Standing Around Being James Bond Acting either, the former being a nervy le Carré immigrant – sarcasm – and the latter being Jason Bourne – also sarcasm – but one senses their decisions were more deliberate.)  Fortunately for him, OHMSS was written without a larger-than-life James Bond in mind, but after this film the franchise starts getting silly…

What he is good at, though, are the bits that actually move the film along.  Resigning from MI6.  Confronting Blofeld.  Confronting Draco.  All the hand-to-hand bits; that’s almost entirely him, the only James Bond with an advanced martial arts degree.  If he’s subdued in the final scene it’s the fault of the director, who insisted that James Bond is dead inside and can’t cry even if he wants to, but please, watch the proposal scene and tell me the man can’t act.

#2: THIS BOND GIRL

And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, please rise (heh) for the Best Bond Girl Ever, and the fact that she’s the one he married, the Lost Lenore who gets mentioned a whopping three times (none of which are in the next film after this one, criminally) after her heartbreaking slaying, is almost completely incidental to this.  Far more important is that she’s intelligently written (thank God) and perfectly cast (also thank God).  Tracy crosses half a continent to rescue Bond, does all the driving during the car-chase scene, and takes down the heavyweight minion in a hand-to-hand fight by herself (the only Bond Girl in the entire franchise to do so, by the way). And then there’s the “Thy dawn, O Master of the World” part, which gets its own section later on.  Forget “capable” on the Scale of Bond Girl Quality; Tracy just completely breaks the model. 

Methinks this scene exists to give Diana Rigg a proper fight scene.

And Diana Rigg is absolutely perfect.  It’s not just because the thought of the average cardboard-with-lipstick Bond Girl “actress” reading the poetry lines is enough to make one cringe, and it’s not just because Emma Peel can drag spy-fans to the cinemas for The First One Without Connery and/or is the obvious casting choice to play Mrs. Bond.  She nails every nuance of Tracy’s complex character – playful, suicidal, and everything in between.  She owns the role so thoroughly that it’s impossible to see anyone else in it – indeed, it’s impossible for me to see Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale as anything but a pale reflection.  The One Where Bond Gets Married is the only film where the casting of the Bond Girl is a more important decision than the casting of James Bond (so doing this one as The First One Without Connery was actually a brilliant move by the producers, no matter how much it pissed off Mr. Connery; it essentially allowed them a do-over on the Bond casting without this film becoming a write-off).  Casting the right Bond Girl is more important here than in any other film because in order for anything – the proposal, the marriage, her tearjerking-even-though-we-all-knew-it-was-inevitable slaying – to work, we have to believe that this woman is worthy of James Bond.  In short, we have to love her too. 

To the people who insist that this film would be better if it had been made earlier with Connery in it, let me point out that we would not have gotten Diana Rigg; she’d have been busy on The Avengers.  That would in turn have given rise to a far greater tragedy than the fact that Connery missed this one.

#3: THIS VILLAIN

They threw out the Dr. Evil inspiration and gave us Lex Luthor instead.  Not only is the new improved Blofeld more menacing than the comically-scarred short guy, but he gets in on the action and only makes one criminally stupid mistake (one that leads to a very nice and tense escape sequence, by the way).  That decision to hunch over slightly whenever he smokes makes him look more like a gangster, rather than a cartoonish nutball, and this is a good thing.

The entire tone of this film, “I have taught you to love chickens” and all, is much more realistic than the previous entry.  The producers can’t seem to manage such a tonal shift without recasting the lead role(s).  What I’m trying to say is that if it weren’t for Austin Powers mercilessly lampooning the oh-so-lampoonable You Only Live Twice Blofeld, this incarnation would be the more famous one.

#4: THIS SCORE

Let’s play “Internet” and assert an opinion as the unvarnished truth: The main theme to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, on paper, is the greatest title theme to any film, ever (and even with the cheesy synths it’s still only beaten by the Raiders march).  John Barry flips back and forth between major and minor scales like it’s no big deal, handing us a theme that can be energetic or brooding as the plot demands.  Perhaps its best use, of course, is in…

#5: THIS SCENE

The best scene in the entire Bond franchise doesn’t even have Bond in it, much.  Tracy, baiting Blofeld, (mis)quotes James Elroy Flecker ("Thy dawn, O Master of the World, thy dawn...") while the theme tune menacingly broods and helicopters come roaring through the dawn sky.  Remember, by this point, Bond has proposed; any genre-savvy viewer knows that Tracy isn’t walking out of this film alive.  She’s not distracting him, because he already dismissed the helicopters; she’s luring him to the fortress’s most vulnerable spot to make him an easier target, and if that puts her in the line of fire, so be it.  (Have I mentioned that Tracy is awesome?  This scene isn’t in the book and serves – I think – to set up a situation where Diana Rigg can have a fight scene, but it’s awesome all the same.)  All this combines with the fantastic score to create a level of suspense that the series has never bettered. 

#6: THIS OTHER SCENE

No ridiculously tiny gadgets for this 007.  No, he’s got to wait while his gigantic cumbersome machine cracks a safe number by number.  Good thing there’s a handy stash of Playboys nearby; Bond casually nicking one of them might just be the greatest wordless joke in the series (and this from a Bond whose biggest weakness is the humor, too).  And once again, John Barry gives us a fantastic score to go with it.

#7: THIS MONTAGE

OHMSS marks the first time a montage is used for anything other than a travel sequence, and by God it is awesome.  For those of us who insist on hating Lazenby, it also affords us three minutes of him advancing the story without saying a word.  As for the music, it’s Louis Freaking Armstrong, what more could you want?

#8: THIS FLASHBACK

This is the very first flashback ever done in a Bond film.  It’s very short and to the point and amazingly technically complex for 1969.  Director Peter Hunt set out to leave his mark on the series; I think this shot might be the most distinctive one in the film.

#9: THIS WEDDING

Pay attention, HBO.  This is how you do a pre-murder wedding (where the groom’s initials are J.B., the bride wears a floral pattern, and with Diana Rigg playing an important role, all in an adaptation of one of the best novels in a series, at that).  Miss Moneypenny cries.  M and Draco reminisce.  Bond tells Q that this time he’s got the gadgets and he knows how to use them. It's short and to the point (because the audience fully knows what's coming and the director wisely decides not to draw it out), but it hits every note perfectly.

#10: THIS ENDING

You knew it was coming and it still ripped your heart out.

Reminder: this is the first film without Connery, and they ended it like this.  Bold.  Risky.  Wonderful.