Post-Craig review: Goldfinger

Goldfinger is the Donald Trump of Bond Films, and I'm not talking about the titular character being a fat swindler with a penchant for golf.

Have I got your attention? Have I annoyed you? Oh, good.

It's "big and bold and brassy" they say. It's a gilded parody of a Bond film, I say. Casino Royale 1967 may have been/will be a delusional psychedelic mess, but this is a film where Bond wins by shagging a lesbian straight.

You might say that I'm being unfair. I would say that this is my review and I can do what I want, so there.

There are a lot of people who love Goldfinger, just as there are a lot of people who hate Quantum of Solace moreso than the rest of the Craig dreck. There are plenty of reviews out there if you want something to reaffirm your prior convictions. I'm not here to do that; I'm here to give you my opinion point out Doctor Who guest stars and the occasional visible nipple.

My problem is that Goldfinger is the first Bond Film that I owned on any home video format, and was thus the Bond Film that I've watched the most. Familiarity breeds contempt; I am intimately familiar with its flaws. And, although I realize this isn't fair in the slightest, I also judge it on the stupidity that followed in its wake. While Doctor No is a flawed prototype, From Russia is quite possibly the greatest spy film ever made. Further refinements unnecessary, and it's telling that of these next three "glit inflation" films, my favorite of the bunch is the one directed by the same guy who did From Russia.

But the purpose of these reviews is to watch the film all the way through with a fresh set of eyes. Last time I came away with a much more forgiving view of Daniela Bianchi's performance. Let's see if something similar happens here.

Before I begin, things I like about Goldfinger, prior to this re-watch:

• The Aston Martin. Yes, Bond totals it when he gets head-faked by a mirror, and that's stupid and antithetical to the character of James Bond as presented elsewhere in the franchise but particularly in this film, but it's the Aston Martin.
• Q's lab. It's the first time we're seeing it, so contra what I said a few paragraphs back, I won't hold it against them for overdoing it in the Moorera.
• Q's characterization. It might be the only lasting positive contribution Guy Hamilton made to the franchise (now I'm being mean).
• They've nailed down the Bond/M relationship, which will last through four Bonds and two Ms. Brosnan/Dench tries to recreate it, but by the time Craig rolls around, the writers are forced to admit that changing M's gender did in fact change the relationship. Mommy.
• The theme tune, which is easily the best Villain Song in a live-action* film. And also "Dawn Raid on Fort Knox."
• The trivia bit about how the film (in which a German actor plays a character who gasses some people to death) was banned in Israel until it came to light that Gert Frobe had used his Nazi Party credentials to save several would-be Holocaust victims.
• The outstanding location doubling (in spite of some spite I'm about to hurl its way) - Connery never set foot in the USA for this one, which you wouldn't know unless I told you. Which I just did.
• The laser scene, obviously.
• The best moment in a Bond title sequence.

* Obvious qualification is obvious. Also, yes, "Thunderball" is a better song, but the case could be made that that song's about Bond, not Largo.

Another observation before we begin:

Dr. No (October 1962): Missiles and a tropical island

From Russia (October 1963): Sex scandal (ask a British friend about that one) and a sniper

Will Goldfinger avoid accidentally borrowing from the headlines around the time of its release? Let's find out. 

Goldfinger (1964)

We see Bob Anderson in the gunbarrel for the last time and open on something that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film's plot*, which despite being a well-remembered element of BondFilm, only happens twice more in the franchise (and one of those** is at least thematically linked to the rest of the film).

*"Now wait a minute, James, the only reason Bond's in Miami at the start of this film is because he was on a layover from this totally-not-Cuban operation" shut up shut up shut up

**For Your Eyes Only. The other is Octopussy. (Thunderball doesn't count because the guy Bond killed gets mentioned at the SPECTRE meeting in the movie proper.)

In this case, we find Bond blowing up a building full of "heroin-flavored bananas." Theoretically the Bond films have very limited continuity - M, Moneypenny, Q, and, early on, Blofeld drift from film to film in Bond's wake (later on Blofeld is replaced by the dead wife), and, yes, Bond both has and has not been to Japan prior to You Only Live Twice depending on which film you ask, but nobody ever wonders "hey, whatever did happen to Tania"* in Goldfinger, for example - but here we have the first shots of the Bond vs. the Druglords war that will rage on in Live and Let Die and Licence to Kill. 

*Answer: Sylvia Trench killed her in a fit of jealousy when she showed up in London as Bond's husband. That's why Sylvia isn't in any of the subsequent films either.

This all begins with a duck that turns out to be a fake duck on top of a helmet that Bond is wearing for some reason, which he then discards, for some reason, as the film is being sped up, for some reason. Also I'm not convinced that was Connery in the surfacing shot; certainly looked like he had some grey hair under the helmet. Oh, right, now I know why he had the helmet; to keep the toupee in place.

By the way, the answer to each of the questions implied by each instance of "for some reason" in the previous paragraph is "because this film has a different tone." True. The previous film opened with James Bond getting murdered (OR SO YOU THINK!) This one opens with a duck hat. The previous film ends with the girl shooting a lesbian. This film ends with the girl deciding she's not a lesbian after getting some first-hand Bondage. This broadening of tone is good, ultimately: the franchise eventually needs to be broad enough to encompass both Moonraker and Quantum of Solace, so it's good to start changing the tone before you change Bonds. Could you imagine the Moorera with the tone of Dr. No? See the lackluster reception to Dalton.

Bond knocks a guy out and then runs off, which might be the last time we see Connery truly run. The flab sets in with this film, in more ways than one.

Now check out the shot-to-shot continuity here. We don't actually see Bond unwinding the entire cord of C4 or whatever it is. We don't see him opening the end of it. We have two brief shots of him putting it on two barrels, even though there are three. We don't even see him set the explosive timer down - there's just a sound effect at the end of the shot of him plugging a wire into the C4. This sort of time-cutting is subtle now, but just wait till we get to You Only Live Twice.

Bond clambers back over what are very obviously studio rocks. Then the camera cuts to Bond wearing a much looser wetsuit with a tuxedo underneath it. Plainly Sean did not have that on just a second ago. Still a fun gag, though.

We say hello to Nadja Regin again - Kerim's mistress in the previous film, a cabaret dancer named Bonita here. Bond is the only one not phased by the explosions, which is probably a clue that he did it. By the way, check the mirror behind Bond on the "heroin-flavored bananas" line - and for that matter also check out the master shot of Bond coming down the stairs. You can see all manner of continuity errors relating to what Bonita's doing. Let's go through it shot by shot.

First we have the explosions, then a reaction shot of Bond with his cig. Then the wide master shot of Bond coming down the stairs while everyone else panics and flees. You can see Bonita in the bottom-right corner of this shot, kneeling, with nobody in her immediate vicinity.

Then the very next shot is a shot of Bonita, only now there's a man in a white suit right next to her, even though there's no place he could have come from as demonstrated by the previous shot. 

Two shots later, Bond is talking about heroin-flavored bananas, and Bonita is talking to the musicians, visible in the mirror behind him. (We see her get up at the beginning of this shot, so her standing here is not itself a continuity error...)

And then, before Bond is done finishing that line, the camera cuts to her storming off.

My conclusion is that either Director Guy Hamilton was a hack, or Editor Peter Hunt cut this scene down a tad to fit the film's targeted runtime. Could go either way, really. (To be frank, shot-to-shot continuity is not exactly Hunt's strong suit. He will cut a scene to emphasize tight pacing over making sure Bond's scuba mask remains the same color, and frankly that's okay. Take a gander at the casino restaurant or Ruby's bedroom in OHMSS (watch the ladies' hands in both scenes) for some examples of what I mean - or for that matter, pay close attention to the climax of this very movie.)

Anyway next she's in the bath, a convenient sponge preserving the film's rating. Bond throws her a towel and they start the smoochies. In a voice that sounds suspiciously similar to Honey Ryder's, she asks why Bond always wears his gun. A slight inferiority complex, apparently. The camera, incidentally, shows just about as much of her back as they could possibly have gotten away with... but if you go frame-by-frame through the shot where he spins her around as Capugno comes out to attack, you can definitely see she's wearing something over her bottom. Allegedly. I don't know anyone perverted enough to do that.

This fight scene is far more energetic and cartoonish than the one between Bond and Grant in the previous film. It's a step towards what I'll call the "hyperkinetic" style of OHMSS, what a less kind person might call "ridiculous proto-Bourne jittercam." It's also worth comparing, if only because both fights end with the actor playing baddie getting accidentally rather burned, this to the Oddjob fight at the end of the film, which is a bit more traditionally shot and edited. 

Closeup on the gun in the holster just in case it wasn't clear what Capugno was going for. Bond flings a fan at him, "shocking," iconic.

Look, despite the snark, I do think that the Goldfinger pre-title is Bondfilm writ small: absurd sight gag, unnecessary use of Bond theme, stuff blows up, Bond is ridiculously classy, love 'em and leave 'em, kiss kiss bang bang.* Now read that sentence again and think about how many of those things apply to the Craig films. Barbara, what have you done?

*I would add "slightly-overtight editing" to that list, but Quantum of Solace actually did do that. Just without the "slightly" part.

So then we get the titles, and it's the first Bond Title Song by Shirley Bassey (Dame Shirley Bassey to you Royal subjects) and also for whatever reason one of only two times that Broccoli comes before Saltzman before that partnership gets dissolved. It's always sounded to me like there was a single note off somewhere in those crashing opening chords, but I could never place it.

I have to say, it's a little bit disturbing giving us this beautiful golden half-naked woman and then projecting Oddjob's face directly on top of hers.

And they're rhyming "Goldfinger" with "cold finger." In case you were wondering why On Her Majesty's Secret Service got an instrumental. Somehow Thunderball will get away with it.

It is a rather nasty song, though. A jolly song about a truly awful human being. Shades of "Mack the Knife" (yes I know Thunderball's the shark one, roll with it) but it's not Miss Lotte Lenya who's got to look out this time (she died in the previous film, don'tcha know). "Pretty girl, beware of his heart of gold/his heart is cold." Next time we'll have to debate whether the song is about Bond or Largo; this time, I want to know who the song's being sung to. Jill Masterson? She's in two scenes. Three, if you count her corpse. Tilly? Nah, she has no romantic interest in Goldfinger... but then neither does Pussy (yes, really) Galore. On reflection, once Jill is disposed of, Goldfinger surrounds himself with apparent lesbians. I have a bit of a tangent later on about Fleming villains and sexuality, so I'll leave that thought there for now. Just seems like this song would work better if it was about someone who surrounded themself with a harem. Like Octopussy.

Always a bit puzzled by the credit for "Continuity Girl," which a) seems a bit sexist and b) when Peter Hunt is editing for pacing rather than continuity, I'm not sure you'd want your name on the picture as the person in charge of continuity. Although another possibility presents itself; I will mention it in the Miami section.

On the second refrain of "golden words he will pour in your ear," we get Bond strolling through Q's lab, which is a shot that otherwise isn't in the film. Arguably our first indication that this film was being edited down to literally the last minute (it was). 

The shot after that is from the helicopter sequence in the previous film (and there's a shot of Dr. No's lair exploding coming up). I should remember this when I make the inevitable joke about OHMSS reusing a bunch of footage from previous films in its title sequence. For whatever reason, Robert Brownjohn put his "titles by" credit over this shot instead of the next one (to be fair, it goes by so quickly there's not actually time for a credit on it)...

Okay, I promised (I think) to mention The Greatest Moment in Bond Titles Ever when it rolled around, and here it is: they painted Margaret Nolan (link sfw) gold and projected a shot of a golf putt on her chest such that the ball plops right into her cleavage. Maurice Binder gets some patently naked girls into the credits later on, but Robert Brownjohn takes the cake right here.

The point of me mentioning this is, for once, not to appeal to the puerile interest, but to demonstrate that these films were never meant to be all that serious, Daniel. They're having fun. Margaret Nolan was no stranger to getting naked for the camera* (hence the disclaimer about the link in the previous paragraph), but there's no need to be quite so blatant here. Be (pun) cheeky. Have fun with it.

*Oh, the strenuous and soul-scarring research I engage in on your behalf for the sake of these reviews, dear reader. A couple films from now I'll be tracking down a specific Playboy cover to disprove the date on a gravestone, and if you know what I'm talking about, congratulations and get a life.

The shot after that is a closeup of Goldfinger firing his golden pistol, which I don't think is in the finished film either.

Obligatory: the orchestra played too fast when Shirley Bassey was recording the song, which is why they all have to hold that last note for so long. And yet this isn't the Bond title track where the singer allegedly fainted! (That's Thunderball.)

I: Happenstance

So now we're in what alternates back and forth between Miami and a set convincingly pretending to be Miami and some horrific rear-projection utterly failing to convince anyone that it's Miami. This may in fact be the single worst example of location doubling in the series (outside of the same terrible green-screening they'll try to get away with in Switzerland later on in this movie). Best I can tell, only Cec Linder (Felix) actually came on vacation to the States here; Connery, Frobe, and Margaret Nolan (Dink; also the golden girl in the title sequence; also the first of two Hard Day's Night alums to pop up in this film) only show up in the studio. (Speaking of the Beatles, the Miami location shoot, which was the first thing shot for Goldfinger, preceded the Fab Four's first US visit by only a couple of weeks.)

And since we're in Miami, we can have girls in bikinis. Gotta have that. Just isn't a Bond Film without them. Forget what I said last time about the film's series of endings that makes The Return of the King's look brief; From Russia's real flaw was their utter failure to stuff Daniela Bianchi into a bikini. (They'll overcorrect again in Thunderball and YOLT.)*

*If you don't count Barbara Bach's proto-Slave-Leia getup in The Spy Who Loved Me, there's a terrible drought of leading ladies in bikinis between The Man With the Golden Gun (film number 9) and GoldenEye (film number 17). (I grant you "leading ladies" and "bikinis" are both doing some work there, as Magda wears a bikini in Octopussy and Pam wears a one-piece swimsuit at one point in Licence to Kill.) And as I'll mention a little later on, the Golden Gun and Spy Who Loved Me examples were forced on them by their captors, whereas the 60s girls - with the possible/probable exception of Domino in Thunderball - are all wearing them of their own volition.

Cec Linder is absolutely too old to be playing Bond's best friend, which would be a problem if this was Licence to Kill or a more honest adaptation of Live and Let Die than the one we got. It's not, so we're okay.* Anyway, he meanders around the place until he comes across Bond and Dink, having just done the slip'n'slide (one presumes). I cannot fathom what "Dink" could be the diminuative of. Perhaps it's just her name. Wouldn't be the most ridiculous one in this film, so I guess it's good that they're laying the groundwork for Pussy (yes, really) Galore early.

*Alas, Live and Let Die and Licence to Kill are the only two pre-Craig films to use the same actor as Felix Leiter, and in the latter David Hedison runs into the same problem Cec Linder does here.

Also, I have to complain a bit about the location coverage, because you clearly flew Cec Linder out to Florida for some of these location shots, so there's really no excuse for crappy rear-projection shots involving him.

Cec Linder in Florida. Note the low angle so that they don't have to worry about matching the background extras in the rear-projection shot.

Cec Linder in the studio. At least his clothes match- OH! Is that what Continuity Girl's job is?

Dink is dismissed with a firm slap on the bum, because it's time for "man talk." Leiter says that Bond is slipping, letting the opposition get so close to him - and casually dropping Bond's code number in public, come on, man. Bond says that the opposition got a lot closer to Leiter in Jamaica. I... don't think that's true, actually. Certainly we never actually see Leiter with a woman, aside from his ill-fated nuptials in  Licence to Kill. (Naturally; he's not James Bond, and James Bond is the only secret agent who's allowed to f*ck.) 

Indignation is heaped upon indignation: not only does Felix not have a girl, but his job right now is to relay a message from M to Bond. Dear Britain: we stopped being your errand boy in 1776. Sincerely, America. (Sidebar: Leiter's role in this film has to track with his role in the book, which is a bit difficult as the Leiter/shark interface happened in the second book but not until the sixteenth film; his literary counterpart isn't with the CIA anymore.) Hold up just a second.

Sidebar: American Characters in Bond Films: A Study

I'm going to skip nonentities like Plenty O'Toole (of the fourteen tropes assigned to her on her TV Tropes page, only two are actually character tropes; the rest are about her appearance or things that happen to her), the Daylights and Licence to Kill Felix Leiters, Ed Killifer, etc.

Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) - Dr No: acts all sinister at the beginning, then relegated to bringing the cavalry (late). Great suit and attitude, though.

Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) - Goldfinger: Acts far more polished this time, even if he is a glorified errand boy. Brings the cavalry (on time).

Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter) - Thunderball: Less polished than Linder's incarnation, though not as rough-edged as Lord's. Gets punched by Bond, then drives him around a lot. Brings the cavalry on time.

Felix Leiter (Norman Burton) - Diamonds Are Forever: This guy's the dimmest Leit of the bunch. Brings the cavalry late, then brings the cavalry on time.

Tiffany Case - Diamonds Are Forever: She gets stupider as the film goes on, but that's more a consequence of the script than her nature as a godless colonial.

Willard Whyte - Diamonds Are Forever: Howard Hughes

Klaus Hergeshiemer - Diamonds Are Forever: From G Section

Felix Leiter (David Henderson) - Live and Let Die and Licence to Kill: Well, as already stated, in LTK he's less of a character and more of a plot device. In Live and Let Die he doesn't do much and his role probably could have been taken over by (God help us)...

J. W. Pepper - Live and Let Die and Golden Gun: a caricature in a film full of them. This also, unfortunately, is true of Golden Gun, where I find him far less welcome. (Am I allowed to point out that a Southern redneck who wanders around Bangkok(?) screaming that all the locals are "pointy-heads" would absolutely have used the n-word in the previous film? I think that sums up why I like him in LALD and hate him in Golden Gun: he's a caricature in the first film, and a caricature of a caricature in the second.)

The various American characters in A View to a Kill are kinda stupid, but no more so than anyone else who's required to be kinda dim in a Moorera film. So again, not a product of their nationality.

Brad Whittaker - The Living Daylights: A kind of pompous buffoon who really likes military stuff despite never having served himself? I take it back; Auric Goldfinger isn't the most obvious Trump clone in the series. By the way, is Whittaker the first American villain in the Bond series? Can that be right?

Jack Wade - GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies: Felix Leiter this guy is not, but to be honest, Sean Connery Pierce Brosnan is not, so it kind of works.

Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) - The Craig films: Whoa, an actual character whose a useful ally and whom Bond only outlives by an hour or so of screentime.

Gregg Beam - Quantum of Solace: Gets in bed with snakes to knock over leftist regimes, because apparently we learned nothing since the 1980s. 

My conclusion, to the extent that one is required, is that American characters who show up in multiple films played by the same actors have more characterization than those that don't, but (especially in the case of JW Pepper) I don't know whether the chicken or the egg came first.

End Sidebar

Goldfinger is "British, but he doesn't sound like it," which is an interesting concession to make, given that Gert Frobe was dubbed - could have just gone with a British accent, but they chose not to. (I've read that not all of Frobe's dialogue was dubbed; if so, then the dubbing artist needed to match his voice.)

"He's clean as far as CIA's concerned" - okay, why is M having Bond shadow him?

At any rate, somebody vaguely resembling Gert Frobe, if you squint*, walks down a staircase in Miami, and then there's a closeup of Frobe on the stairs in the studio. Also can't help but notice that the sky is horribly overcast on location but considerably bluer in the studio (and then overcast again in the rear-projection shots).

*This is far more noticeable in 4k, but it was already pretty obvious on the DVD.

These are definitely frames of the same man in the same place at the same time.

Goldfinger needs his usual spot because of his suntan (in the book the excuse was agoraphobia). Bond cottons on pretty quickly and charms a maid into letting him into Goldfinger's suite. This is a problem, because this is not something we'd expect to see from the Bond of the previous two films. I don't honestly know how much influence Bond directors had on the scripts, but it is telling that in Guy Hamilton's first directorial outing in the franchise, Bond suddenly behaves a lot more like how he does in the early Roger Moore era, which was also directed by Hamilton (Bond even does this "trick the staff into letting him into the hotel room" trick again in Golden Gun, except this time it's a male staffer).

As I said earlier, continuity is not something Peter Hunt really concerned himself with, and I don't think it's ever more apparent than it is here: Bond opens the door to Goldfinger's balcony and is treated to a lovely shot of Jill Masterson's backside, only in the very next shot, she's lying on her back.

This is probably not an appropriate time to mention that Guy Hamilton is nowhere near as visually interesting a director as Terence Young.

The other possibility is that she grew a pair of breasts out of her back between shots, but James Bond isn't a horror franchise. At least, not until the end credits of No Time To Die promise that "James Bond Will Return." 

Jill informs Bond that Goldfinger pays her to be seen in public with him. But only seen. Hold up.

• Dr. No: no indication of sexual interest, despite his rather incredible number of henchwomen*; in fact, I do believe he's the only villain in the franchise to forcibly change the Bond Girl into a less revealing outfit**
• Rosa Klebb: "subtly" homosexual
• Goldfinger: apparently not interested in women (although he does try to put his hand on Pussy (yes, really) Galore's leg later on, so ?***) (and speaking of Pussy (yes, really) Galore, she's allegedly a lesbian until she turns to the side of good)

In contrast, Our Hero is merrily plowing his way through two or three members of the opposite sex per film. You know, I think there might be some subtle commentary on sexuality at play here. (Next up is Thunderball, the sexiest Bond film of all time, in which the female villain has as large a carnal appetite as Bond's. Just an observation. And also cf. Skyfall.)

*Observation: while the job breakdowns are hardly equal (the women are spies or secretaries while the men are guards or scientists), Dr. No might have the most gender parity among his employees of any Bond villain ever. Huh.

**Despite being (in)famous enough to warrant an Austin Powers pastiche, I can only think of three examples of Bond Girls forced into skimpy outfits by their captors: Tiffany Case, Mary Goodnight, and Anya Amasova. That this happens in three out of four consecutive films is interesting. (Should I count Solitaire's sacrificial gown? It does feature quite a lot of cleavage... oh, what the hell, sure. Four in a row.) (I suppose one could make the argument that every outfit Domino wears in the entirety of Thunderball was forced on her by Largo, though.)

***I'm choosing to read that as him exerting his male authority over a (professed) lesbian, rather than anything innately sexual on his part. You can decide how convincing a reading that is.

One final note: all of this psychosexual subtext is heavily downplayed from the Fleming novel, where Pussy (yes, really) Galore is only a lesbian because she'd been raped, Tilly becomes completely useless the moment she develops a crush on Ms. Galore, and Goldfinger is said to have sex with hypnotized gold-painted women. There's a reason the franchise occasionally tries to go "back to Fleming" (that reason is they had nowhere else to go after the extravaganzas of You Only Live Twice, Moonraker, Die Another Day, and, yes, Spectre - and note that those are all their respective actors' fourth or fifth films), but there's also a reason the franchise never actually goes "back to Fleming." 

Watch Connery right after the "Nod your head if you agree" line. Sure looks like either some frames are missing or they stapled two takes together. 

Speaking of technical ploys, I admire their confidence (or is it luck?), passing off shoddy rear-projection as just the background being out of focus.

Okay, so to recap the story so far: Bond has met Felix in Miami and Felix has told Bond that M wants Bond to keep an eye on Goldfinger, because Felix's job description is now "foreign country's errand boy." (You think this is bad, get a load of the David Harbour character in Quantum.) Bond watches Goldfinger play cards for a minute before deducing that Goldfinger is cheating, figures out offscreen which floor and room Goldfinger's accomplice is working out of (what sharp little eyes he's got), happens to come across a maid whom he "charms" into letting him into the room, seduces Goldfinger's woman, and stops him cheating at cards. He then goes off and has a dalliance with said woman.

I must remind you at this point that Bond's job is to keep an eye on Goldfinger, which he cannot do if he is instead in his hotel room delivering a lecture about the proper temperature of Dom Perignon to a woman who appears to be allergic to pants. I am an avid fan of the Bond films and am struggling to think of an incident where Bond deliberately fouls up his mission as badly as he does here. The Living Daylights is the obvious example, with him practically begging to be fired after refusing to kill the enemy sniper during a defection, but a) the degree of his screwup is still significantly smaller - the defector lives - and b) it turns out he had a good reason for doing what he did, and not just "the last girl was getting stale." Other than that, he screws up from time to time and gets called on the carpet for it - For Your Eyes Only and Casino Royale containing prime examples* - but in those instances he is at least trying to do the job that M has assigned him to do.

*Die Another Day theoretically contains a third, but I remain convinced that Bond getting captured and spending 14 months in a North Korean prison, which has absolutely no impact on the plot other than giving the villain time for some magic plastic surgery, was contrived as a somewhat poor-taste explanation for what Bond was doing during 9/11.

Now, I'm not going to do this every time the film deviates from the book (for starters, that would make the You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me reviews about as long as The Lord of the Rings), but I am going to talk about how this differs from the book here because what they have done is harm the characters of both Bond and Felix by inserting Felix into the story early in the manner in which they have chosen. In Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, Bond bumps into not Felix Leiter, but instead one of the other card players from his legendary game of baccarat against Le Chiffre back in Casino Royale. This card player informs him that Goldfinger has been cleaning him out and asks Bond for help in figuring out how Goldfinger is cheating. Goldfinger has agoraphobia and therefore always plays cards outdoors (just roll with it) facing the hotel. From here Bond is able to work out the binocular/radio scheme and foil it. His "mission" done, he has dinner and presumably sex with Jill Masterson, leaves, and only later receives a) an assignment from M pertaining to Goldfinger and b) the news that Goldfinger has had Jill murdered.

Obviously the filmmakers could not use this setup because they had not made Casino Royale yet. Nor could they make Casino Royale yet because they did not have the rights to it. I assume that they also felt the need to insert Felix Leiter into the story early on, because he does show up later in both the film and the book. But in inserting Felix Leiter here, they have not only reduced him to M's errand boy, and not only introduced the problem of Bond blowing off work to get laid, but they have introduced a new problem that will plague the series up until they write Felix out in Licence to Kill.

In the novels, Felix is a CIA agent for only the first two novels. He disagrees with something that eats him midway through Live and Let Die (novel #2) but survives, albeit with grievous injuries. When he returns in Diamonds Are Forever (novel #4), he is no longer with the agency and has joined the Pinkertons. The filmmakers have the rights to Live and Let Die but have not yet made it as of 1964. In the films, Leiter appears in Dr. No, Goldfinger, Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Living Daylights, and Licence to Kill. The problem is that the CIA is not allowed to operate on American soil, but in four of his seven appearances, Felix is presented as a CIA agent operating on American soil. (It is worth pointing out that the times where he's not are Dr. No - the second best Leiter - Thunderball - the best Leiter - and The Living Daylights - by far the most inconsequential Leiter.)

There is no reason for Felix Leiter to be here beyond "Hi I'm Felix Leiter and I'm now played by a different actor than I was in Dr. No. Remember me for later." Never mind that Q/Boothroyd was played by a different actor in Dr. No and the filmmakers did not choose to belabor the point when they recast him. They compound the problem by having Felix relay Bond orders from M, orders which Bond then ignores. Bond's failure to keep an eye on Goldfinger leads to a woman's murder - I'll come back to this in a minute - and should lead to him being at the very least reassigned. 008 can replace him indeed.

Anyway between that and Bond's hilariously ill-timed crack about the Beatles (which I guess is this film's historical whoopsie akin to Dr. No and the Cuban Missile Crisis, referenced above), it's hard for me to sympathize too much with Bond when Oddjob gives him a whack on the back of the neck and... let's not think too hard about the fact that Jill was at least wearing a shirt when Bond left her.

Look, it's Goldfinger, I'm contractually obligated to include this shot.

Sidebar: An Analysis of Bond Films Through the Medium of Female Corpses

Dr No: Strangways' secretary has a ridiculous bra and clearly fake blood. The film is a pulpy adventure.

From Russia With Love: Rosa Klebb is a repulsive character (even her lesbianism is played for revulsion rather than titillation - this is not what would have happened in the Moorera) who dies an ugly death.

Goldfinger: Jill Masterson dies the most fantastic(ally improbable) death in the series, but her sister just gets a broken neck. Weird dichotomy.

Thunderball: Ally Paula Caplan's body is left practically out of focus, while the villainous Fiona Volpe's corpse is played for a joke about how "she's just dead."

You Only Live Twice: Is Aki's death by poison the most protracted, terrifying female death in the series? Might be. (Helga Brandt in the same film might also qualify, but she doesn't leave behind a corpse.)

OHMSS: Back to only one female death, but it's a big one and played absolutely seriously.

Diamonds Are Forever: Plenty O'Toole is drowned for no apparent reason, which is as sensible as anything else that happens in that film.

Live and Let Die: Rosie Carver gets killed by the baddies approximately 30 seconds after Bond confirms she's working for them.

Golden Gun: Bond is so utterly disinterested in Andrea Anders that it takes him several minutes to notice that she's dead. This is the same scene where Christopher Lee starts yammering and stops being an interesting character, but I can't say the two are necessarily related.

The Spy Who Loved Me: Caroline Munro gets blown up (no corpse) and Stromberg's mistress just leaves a hand behind, so the only real look at a female corpse in this rather lighthearted film about averting nuclear Armageddon is a quick shot of Bond dumping Fekkesh's mistress on a bed after he's just used her as a human shield, Fiona-style.

Moonraker: Corrine Dufour gets the other notably grisly female death in the series (cf. YOLT), but it happens just offscreen and we never see her body. Appropriately disjointed for a Star Wars pastiche in which Bond stops a eugenicist from gassing the human race to death.

For Your Eyes Only: I don't think Melina's mum counts as a character as opposed to a plot device.

Octopussy: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are zero female deaths in this film.

A View to a Kill: Jenny Flex (are you out of names?) drowns offscreen - we do see her body afterwards - and May Day explodes, leaving nothing behind. I think this reflects this film's violent-yet-unserious tone pretty well.

The Living Daylights: Again, no female deaths.

Licence to Kill: Della Leiter does a serviceable Tracy Bond impression.

GoldenEye: Xenia Onatopp always did love a good squeeze. A horrible death matched by a horrible pun.

Tomorrow Never Dies: Paris Carver's demise is meant to be a callback to either Jill Masterson or Tracy Bond, or both. Which is a welcome reprieve from the rest of the film ripping off YOLT/TSWLM.

The World is Not Enough: Yet another dead woman in a bed, only Bond put her there himself.

Die Another Day: Does the camera ever focus on Miranda Frost's corpse after she falls dead? Don't recall.

Casino Royale: Solange and Vesper are both offed rather disturbingly, and we see their bodies afterwards.

Quantum of Solace: The Goldfinger reference is, shall we say, misplaced.

Skyfall: Severine gets William Tell'd to death, which makes about as much sense as the rest of her character. Oh, and M dies.

Spectre: No female deaths.

No Time To Die: No female deaths. (Okay, some of the Spectre goons who get killed by the "nanobots" are women, but they have absolutely no characterization and therefore don't count.)

I believe, based on this quick survey, that the treatment of female corpses does in fact generally reflect the tone of the film. Yay for consistency.

End Sidebar

Now, if this was a serious study of the character of James Bond and the ghosts that haunt him, Barbara, this scene would not end here. We would stay in the hotel room with a visibly shaken Bond who cannot believe that a woman he'd slept with had just been murdered. This is after all the first time in the franchise that such a thing has happened. But, interestingly, we are not in for ninety minutes of shakycam and water-gouging, but rather cut to London, where M chews out Bond for having a dead woman in his hotel room when he should have been following Goldfinger. 

Since M brings up Leiter as one of the reasons Bond is not currently rotting in a Miami jail, I will amend my previous complaints about Leiter's presence in the film thus far. The filmmakers obviously wanted us to witness Jill's gilded corpse firsthand, rather than just hearing about it from Tilly a la in the books. This means that Bond needs to be in the room when it happens, and by extension means that he needs to disentangle himself from the legal problems that would obviously ensue. Or alternatively they could just not have mentioned it, because the Masterson sisters are obviously British and Bond does have a license to kill. 

I'll say it again later, but Connery never looks sharper than he does in this film.

Anyway, for screwing up so royally, Bond is invited to a black-tie dinner with some representative from the Bank of England. First there's a bit of flirting with Miss Moneypenny - angel cake yes, trust no. 

Fun fact: Colonel Smithers (really?) is played by Richard Vernon, another refugee from A Hard Day's Night, and given Bond's crack about the Beatles earlier in the film, I'm sure that's the last time anyone associated with the Fab Four contributes to a Bond film (well, I'm half-right: Mr. McCartney, Mr. Martin, and the then-future Mrs. Starr don't make their contributions until after Connery leaves). In the first sentence of his infodump, Smithers mentions Fort Knox. Gee, I wonder if that'll be important later. Bond mocks M's taste in brandy - the Hamilton-directed Bond really is a dick -  and we learn that Goldfinger is smuggling gold out of the country, somehow. It's Bond's job to find out how.

So next we have the first scene a) in Q's lab and b) in which Q is an actual character. Previously the role has been credited as "Boothroyd," defined as "guy who shows up and gives Bond his stuff." This is distinct from "guy who shows up and grumpily gives Bond his stuff," but at least they're trying. Although Desmond Llwellyn does hold the hopefully-never-to-be-broken record for Bondfilm appearances, one must wonder whether he's playing the same character all the way through. The difference between Boothroyd and Q already (thinly) explored (but no less thinly than Boothroyd's characterization), contemplate how Q treats Connery here and contrast that with how he treats Lazenby in OHMSS or Dalton in Licence to Kill. Here their relationship is frictious (not a word, apparently, but I don't care). Q would prefer that Bond stop breaking his stuff, whereas Bond treats Q's toys an awful like like he treats women: as disposable. (Interesting, then, that the only MI6 regular Bond gets along with is Moneypenny.) With the younger actors mentioned above, he adopts a more avuncular persona. He's basically back to his Goldfinger characterization by the time Brosnan rolls around (GoldenEye being a Greatest Hits cover album, this is unsurprising), and he appears to hate Moore (understandable, since Moore is both a) by far the most childish when it comes to breaking his toys and b) the closest thing to an obnoxious know-it-all the series has aside from Q himself).

Anyway we get to see an extra get shot, but it's okay because he's wearing a bulletproof vest. We're a long way away from Cubby Broccoli financing Dr. No reshoots out of his own pocket, aren't we? The Aston Martin has a revolving license plate to make it harder to track. 22 films later, Bond has yet to actually use this feature. There are also a pair of tracking devices, one of which we're told is magnetic. But the two stick together anyway, suggesting they're both magnetic. Clearly there was a disconnect between the script and the director. Perhaps Guy Hamilton did not understand the concept of magnetism, which is interesting given that each of his next two Bondfilms have a gag about it.

II: Coincidence

The line from Tania shooting Rosa Klebb so as to avoid spending the entire movie doing nothing but look pretty to Wei Lin trying to hijack Bond's film out from under him is, like Messrs Kidd and Wint, hardly straight (the Moorera in general is a coin-flip as to whether any given Bond Girl is anything more than an ambulatory bikini*). Consider the character of Tilly Masterson. She's the first Bond Girl to be actually proactive - traveling halfway across Europe to take potshots at Goldfinger is impressive, even if the shots themselves are not. One wonders exactly how she knew when Goldfinger would be arriving in Switzerland, though. Did she just loiter around the airport nearest his metallurgical facility of never-explained providence or legitimate purpose? (No, wait, That Guy From The Beatles Film said he was a legitimate jeweler.) She must not have a job. Ah, right: 60s. One wonders how she paid for that car, then. The mind boggles.

*Yes, I know I've discussed how very few of the Moorera Bond Girls actually wear bikinis, but it's a nicer phrase than "obligatory sex doll."

"Now hold on, you've just skipped the entire golf game!" This is true. That's because it's golf, and therefore dull. (Which means, of course, that the filmmakers actually have to put effort into it. Imagine if this, and not the goddamn gadget-car, had become a staple of the series. It'd probably still be watchable.)

But seriously, we already sat through a scene of "The Bad Foreign Man Cheats At A Game. Bond Finds Out And One-Ups Him." These films evidently had a minimum runtime to meet. At least Thunderball threw fish at us; this one can't go ten minutes without recycling its own script. And yes I know It Was In The Book, but that's not an excuse, otherwise Moonraker would look quite different. 

If you insist on me discussing the golf game, the bit where Bond throws his gold bar on the ground next to Goldfinger's ball, and then Goldfinger putts the ball and it curves off-course towards the bar is great. There, I've discussed the golf game.

I suppose we should be thankful. If this was a Roger Moore film, Oddjob would try to run Bond over with a golf cart mid-game. (If it was a Brosnan film, the cart would be equipped with rocket launchers.) If it was a Craig film, Blond would lose so the villain could get in several "cutting remarks" about his psyche or whatever. (Neither Dalton nor Lazenby would have the patience for golf; fond though I am of Dalton's Bond, it's hard for me to watch him grit his teeth through his card game in Licence to Kill.)

There is actually a point here that should be discussed. In Dr. No, we saw Bond play a game of luck. In From Russia, we saw one of the villains play a game of intelligence. Now both Bond and the villain are seen, together, playing the same game, one that might even be considered a "sport." What are we to make of this? Surely not that the series' most portly villain represents some sort of physical threat to Bond. (He doesn't; their brief tussle at the end of the film is quite obviously edited - note the sudden appearance of another body, a third man, if you will - because if it had gone on much longer, the suspension of disbelief wouldn't have been so much unsuspended as obliterated. Compare and contrast - and this contrast will have to be made over and over again in the Broccoli B era - Mission Impossible III, which also features the hero getting into a tussle with an overweight baddie, but this time the script brings along a nice handicap for the hero.) Goldfinger cheats, the first villain to do so - and since Moonraker deviates not insubstantially from the novel, he might be the only one other than Kamal Khan to do so. Must remember to check. Bond wins by switching out the golf balls, which might be foreshadowing Pussy (yes, really) Galore switching out the gas in the canisters later on.

But if there is a point, there is also a problem here, or at least the seeds of one. In Dr. No, the bad doctor captured Bond and then had dinner with him, supposedly trying to tempt him to join SPECTRE. In From Russia, Bond never meets two of the three main villains (Blofeld and Kronsteen - remember, Red Grant is just the muscle) and never has a conversation with the third (Klebb) because the only time they interact is at the end when she's trying to kill him. From Goldfinger on, Bond will pay social visits to the villain of his own volition, for increasingly silly reasons. To some extent this is the books' fault - after all, the plot of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale is centered entirely around the social occasion known as "high stakes baccarat." And it's okay for Bond to meet Goldfinger socially here, I suppose, because he does need an opportunity to plant the tracker on him. (Observation: the entire plot of the film would be completely derailed if Goldfinger had taken a cab to the golf course.) But there's a line to be drawn between this and Tomorrow Never Dies, where Bond crashes Carver's party for no reason whatsoever except to get Mrs. Carver killed.

I like to think that Goldfinger and/or Oddjob knew that Bond had planted the tracker in the car and were just waiting for him to fall into their clutches. Although it is a bit curious that the tracker never gets mentioned again, given that Goldfinger dismantled his car at his Switzerland facility. You'd think he would have found it. One also has to wonder why Goldfinger decided to stop in for a round of golf if he had a flight to catch - and note that, unlike later in the film, this apparently isn't a private plane. Anyway Bond's allowed to park on the tarmac while Goldfinger's plane takes off. Whether that's because he's a government agent or because 9/11 hasn't happened yet, I don't know. 

Anyway, despite Goldfinger's head start, Bond is able to catch up to him in Switzerland, only to get shot at by Tilly because she is a woman and therefore a horrible sniper. Cf. The Living Daylights. Only, the setup makes no sense. Tilly gets ahead of Bond, but then they and Goldfinger end up on a mountain road that winds back and forth down a hill... only Tilly's at the top, then Bond, then Goldfinger's at the bottom. Sorry, does the road start midway up the hill, then go up, then come back down on the same side? Why?

In the course of hunting screenshots for this blog post, I've discovered that this film's aspect ratio has not been consistently preserved across all releases.

Anyway, Bond's had enough female interference for now and shreds her tires. Ben Hur predates the series by three years and this film by five, but I'm still assuming that was the inspiration. She says her name is Tilly Soames, but her case says T.M. Just about possible she didn't change the engraving after getting married or divorced, I guess, so Bond doesn't immediately follow up on it. Instead he just leaves her at a gas station. Weird man.

Part III: Enemy Action

Bond is then able to reacquire Goldfinger at his factory. Dunno why he didn't just assume Goldfinger would go there and wait for him to show up, but I guess The Improbable Geography Of Swiss Roads, much like The Saintly Sport Oof Golf, was just a topic that this film couldn't bear to skip. Anyway, Bond snoops on Goldfinger saying that "smuggling is an art, and art requires-" No, I would like to know what art requires, film! Do not drown out that line with the sound of melting gold!

I'm pretty sure Goldfinger's lips aren't moving during some of this exposition, incidentally. Goldfinger is explaining how he smuggles the gold, because that was what Bond was originally here for, so the movie's over, now, right?

Goldfinger drops the phrase "Operation Grand Slam," which is very convenient otherwise the movie would end in about five minutes. (Oh, that was Blond's mistake in No Time To Die, he didn't lurk around waiting for the villain to say three words that, when repeated back to him, caused him to want to keep Blond alive.)

Come to think of it, admitting that From Russia With Love remains the least subtle example of Bond and the villain being "NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I" until at least Golden Gun and arguably Licence to Kill or even GoldenEye, note that both Bond and Goldfinger get themselves into trouble in this film because the other hears them speak. Come on, like Goldfinger wouldn't immediately recognize Bond's voice the second he opened his mouth at the golf club as "that guy what nicked my missus back in Florida."

Anyway, after gleaning that piece of intel, Bond decides to just lurk around the facility for a while, probably because he knows the script requires him to be there, just a few feet away from a tripwire, when Tilly comes around for another lousy shot. Anyway, they pop the tripwire, there's a brief chase, Tilly dies - she has to, it's 1964 and you can't have her develop feelings for Pussy (yes, really) Galore the way she did in the book - then there's another brief chase, and Bond wrecks his car. Outsmarted by a mirror. Hang on! Wait just a minute; remember in the pre-title when Bond spotted the bad guy creeping up behind him reflected in the girl's eye? Oh my goodness, the hero and villain are NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I!

I guess I need to talk more about The First Real Car Chase In A Bond Film. 

Okay so the first thing to point out is the pizza-slice-style display in Goldfinger's security room (which I bet is just the laser set we'll see in a few minutes). I know a little dot lights up too, but that just seems like poor visual interface.

Some of Tilly's line readings here - "I didn't, I was shooting at him" are kind of weird, but not as weird as Bond saying that someone around here isn't a lousy shot immediately after "someone around here" fails to shoot either of them. (Do recall that across 25 films and roughly umpty zillion bullets fired his way, Bond's been hit only twice, not counting tranquilizer guns. He actually has no idea what constitutes a "good shot" when it's aimed at him.) They run back to the car. Now, I can't say for sure that all of this is day-for-night shooting (the shadows do look awfully bright in a few shots), but what I will say is that you can clearly see what's going on, Miguel. Bond is able to start his car because, even though Goldfinger's thugs have found it (Bond is stealthy, you see, he just left it in the middle of the road), they've taken no steps to disable it. 

By the way, note the minor jump cuts during the "getting in the car" sequence. Between shots, Bond gets a bit closer to the thug he needs to subdue, and then a bit closer to the car door. Again, Peter Hunt is more than happy to sacrifice continuity for speed. I have absolutely no problem with this.

Tilly seems awfully ready to immediately accept the fact that the car has bulletproof windows. She's appearing to be tough and competent, which is at odds with her portrayal thus far as a bumbling sniper and her portrayal in about thirty seconds as a rapidly-cooling corpse. I do like how she smiles at Bond as he deploys the smokescreen though. They're tricking you into thinking she's going to stick around longer than she will. 

What happens next is rather interesting, given the imminent introduction of Pussy (yes, really) Galore. The car goes all spurty, and then there's a really big bang. What I mean by this is Bond deploys the oil slick, causing one of the pursuing cars to lose control, drive over a cliff, and explode. And I will say that, although this car-exploding-as-it-slides-down-a-cliff scene is pieced together from multiple shots, it unfolds faster and is more slickly edited than what we saw back in Dr. No. (Ah, but you see, in Dr. No, Bond was dispatching a recurring trio of villains, and that car explosion ended the immediate danger he was in; whereas here, this is just one incident of vehicular mayhem in a scene that's got a lot of it going on.) I do question the decision to show other henchmen running towards the burning wreck for a few seconds at the end of this sequence. I think that could have been cut. Though I suppose the foreshadows the endless reaction shots and gags of the Moorera chase scenes.

Bond then very nearly runs off the road himself, and there's head-on shot of the car coming to a stop while a camera cranes down. Now go watch the Brachiosaur reveal scene in Jurassic Park. And you thought Spielberg would exorcise Bond from his system via the Indiana Jones films.

Bond's got an extra bulletproof screen that comes out of his trunk, in addition to the bulletproof windows. One wonders why. The director tries to work with that, but it ends up just being, unsurprisingly, Bond hiding behind his door shooting at the bad guys.

Oddjob shows up and does his thing, hail and farewell Tilly. Bond is captured, I guess just so he can use the ejector seat. Really this whole setup just reeks of needing to kill off Tilly early. A fate worse than lesbianism indeed.

Bond is let back into his own car and allowed to drive. For some reason. Little old lady comes up and opens the gate. Bond takes forever to trigger the ejector seat. Like, we know from the first close-up of the gear shift that that's what he intends to do. This might be the least-tightly-edited action scene of the Peter Hunt era, and I'm not at all surprised it's attached to a Guy Hamilton film, given the flab he'll be heaving at us in the 1970s. Old lady comes out with the machine gun, which is pretty funny. Bond ends up driving through the factory/warehouse/whatever. Not a lot to say about this. It's competently done, even if all the footage is sped up (except when an extra is running across the scene). 

Another jump cut as Oddjob's car stops; he's already halfway out the door when the shot changes. Now that's interesting: Trim a few microseconds of Oddjob getting out of his car, but leave in a gazillion and three reaction shots of the thug holding his gun on Bond as Bond goes for the ejector seat control.

Anyway next we're looking at an industrial laser, which Goldfinger insists is "considerably more practical" than Bond's car. I'm not too sure about that. Not that we ever get to see it happen, but I'm pretty sure Bond can f*ck in the backseat of his car, and he can't do that on the laser. (Note from Ed: later we see Bond f*ck in zero gravity; he absolutely could f*ck on a laser if he wanted.)

More Doctor Who sound effects and the laser comes on. The beam inching its way up to Bond's crotch. OBLIGATORY GOLDFINGER TRIVIA: the effect was achieved by a technician under the table with a blowtorch who didn't know where to stop, so Connery's sweat is real.

Does Goldfinger always wear a dinner jacket when he cuts gold with his laser, or only when he has company?

"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." Okay, then shoot him in the head. Use the laser if you want. Anyway, the scene is nice and tense and everything, I have no real complaints about that. Feels like if this film had been made at any other point in the franchise, someone else would have rescued him or a bomb would go off or something, but because we still don't know what a Bond Film is, Bond says the magic words and gets tranquilized. Which I do like. I am about to go into a multi-paragraph tirade about Why Goldfinger Is Actually Kind Of Rubbish, so I should reiterate this: Bond grasping at straws to get himself out of a messy execution is quite nice, and I really wish there was more of this in the series.

Now, here's where I have a problem with Goldfinger. For almost the entire remaining runtime, Bond is Goldfinger's prisoner. That's very Not Cool. (In fact, using Amazon's time-bar as a guide, I note that Bond tumbles out of the Aston at 50:09, and the feds burst into the gold vault at 1:44:31, at which point there are five minutes and thirty seconds left in the film, including the end titles. So Bond literally spends half the film as a prisoner.) Someone made the observation that Raiders of the Lost Ark trundles on without any meaningful interference from its ostensible protagonist, and the same is basically true here. Pussy (yes, really) Galore takes care of the gas and alerts the feds. Some Other Guy stops the bomb. All Bond does is kill Oddjob (who was locked in the vault with the bomb and thus no longer remotely essential to Goldfinger's plan) and, rather indirectly, Goldfinger (after said plan had disintegrated). Tania killed Rosa Klebb last time, but that doesn't make her the protagonist.

What I'm trying to say, and there's no point beating any further around the bush here, is Bond saves the day by raping a lesbian straight. That is canonically what happens in this film. That is his major contribution to the plot. This is not in fact a Current Year complaint (James Bond is a product of the 50s, with all of the mindset and prejudice that entails, and works only with increasing difficulty* outside of that context), but rather an observation about the utility of Bond's character and profession, as applied to the "plot" of this "film." I don't mind the notion of Bond being A Very Bad Man What Gets The Dirty Job Done Because Somebody's Got To Do It (in theory; in execution, Daniel, I mind very much). In fact, when that Very Bad Man is played by Timothy Dalton and the Dirty Job is to shoot Gimli dead, I quite enjoy it. But Bond has a license to kill, bottled up in the weight and wisdom of knowing when to pull the trigger (yes, all right, for all the abuse I sling Craig's way, Quantum of Solace at least has more to say than Goldfinger does), and correct me if I'm wrong, but he kills a whopping three people in this film, all in something approximating self-defense.** There is a light-year of difference between this and Bond thumping an extra bullet into an already-dying Professor Dent two years ago. The series has already moved on. Duck helmet. Aston Martin. Pussy (yes, really) Galore. This is not a "Bond Film," this is an exercise in how much the makers of Bond Films can get away with. And I don't think it's a coincidence that they did this the very first time they changed directors.

*Q.v. Tomorrow Never Dies, which seems to have been written specifically to let every single female character get a zinger in at Bond's expense.

**"James, if this is your criticism, I can't wait to see your partial defense of The Man With the Golden Gun." Yeah, that's why it's a partial defense.

And that brings me to another point, and the apparent strengths of Guy Hamilton as a director. I've already said that he's not as good at painting a picture as Terence Young, and I stand by that; in fact, of the Broccoli A directors, only Lewis Gilbert gives Young a run for his money. Hamilton will take you on a ride. You, and Bond, are passive observers of the inane. Hamilton is good at this, at casting Bond as a rock of sanity amidst a theater of the absurd (I can't imagine Hamilton helming any of the Young films, but I could imagine giving him a go at Gilbert's You Only Live Twice - Gilbert undeniably has the edge in spectacle, though, which leads me to assume his version of the film is better than whatever Hamilton would have come up with*). Thing is, as will become evident once we get to You Only Live Twice, that wasn't the Bond Connery wanted to play. Compare and contrast Roger Moore, hired to literally "keep the British end up" amidst the madness.

*Although Hamilton, on the strengths of his villains compared to Gilbert, certainly would have cast a better Blofeld. No, wait, I forgot Diamonds Are Forever exists. Strike that.

Anyway, speaking of juvenile euphemism, enter (fnar) Pussy (yes, really) Galore. The shot cuts away literally the instant she finishes that line, as though, understandably, Honor Blackman couldn't quite manage to keep a straight face. Now, not having watched the film on any higher-visual-quality-than-DVD format until now, I'm surprised to realize how much stubble Bond has. I know that it's to justify him "needing" an opportunity to freshen up in a minute. But correct me if I'm wrong, this is the last hint of facial hair Bond has until Die Another Day. (I certainly don't recall Roger Moore having any stubble before a snake interrupts his shave in Live and Let Die, which shares a director with this film.) (On reflection, I suspect Dalton has some stubble after being knocked out by ninjas in Mexico - just roll with it - in Licence to Kill. Will check if I can be bothered to remember, but at this point I'm pumping out these reviews with only slightly more urgency than Bond's new owners are hunting for a new lead, which is to say almost none at all. Place your bets on how far through the series I'll get before the next film's title is announced; my money is on Octopussy, a sentence I've never typed before and probably never will again.)

We are told that Goldfinger "flew on ahead," even though this is his private jet and Pussy (yes, really) Galore is his personal pilot. This makes even less sense than Goldfinger keeping Bond alive. Truthfully I don't know why they needed the Swiss diversion at all; could have just had Goldfinger have a smelting plant in America, and for him to head there after the golf game. Too much trouble making the Aston left-hand drive?

They don't make 'em like they used to. Who's she dressed up for, Goldfinger or Pussy (yes, really) Galore?

By the way, assuming he didn't get a drink order in in From Russia, this marks the first time Bond says "shaken, not stirred." (A quick perusal of Wikipedia suggests that this is actually the only time Connery says it; that neither Lazenby nor Moore ever say it; and that Dalton is the only Bond to say it in every one of his films. I have no idea if any of that is accurate, aside from Moore never saying it, so we shall see as this enterprise continues.)

Pussy (yes, really) Galore is "immune" to Bond's charms (she's actually bisexual and her only options for male companionship are a fat European and his Korean servants. Is this better or worse?). One gets the sense that if they remade Goldfinger today, she'd drop that line on him at the end of the film. As poorly as I think her sexuality is handled here, the scenario I just described is significantly worse. Yikes.

Bond still has his mini-tracker, the larger one having presumably been discovered when Goldfinger had the Rolls dismantled. Speaking of objects and information that will be important later, Bond points out what a dumb idea it is to fire a gun inside a pressurized airplane. He says they'll "both be sucked out into outer space together." Not at all convinced that's how planes work, but science in the Bondfilmverse behaves quite strangely; there's no other way to explain Bond being able to touch the metal parts of his jetpack in Thunderball right after using it, or Moonraker's bizarre notion that spacecraft on parallel courses (not really possible to begin with) are going to rendezvous.

Back in London, M's bookshelf is real this time. Leiter calls and tells him that they've picked up Bond's tracker signal. Leiter's office appears to be right outside the White House, because we just wouldn't know it's Washington D.C. without that helpful hint. (That they go from this to assuming that viewers of Quantum of Solace would remember who Vesper was demonstrates an evolving and perhaps unwarranted faith in their audience.)

Felix's office appears to be parked on LBJ's front lawn. Seriously, did they just blow up a tourist photo of the White House without looking at a map?

We've landed. I'm not entirely sure why Pussy (yes, really) Galore feels the need to keep the gun hidden under her coat. This is her private hangar, and the only people around are employed by either her or Goldfinger. Pussy Galore's Flying Circus is staffed entirely by busty blondes (in black bodysuits, for added alliterative appeal), and then we're off to Goldfinger's stud farm, and John Barry picking on a banjo for the one and only time in the series. Come to think of it, this is Barry's only outing south of the Mason-Dixon line, as Live and Let Die is done by the Beatles' producer, without his pair of earmuffs. Probably for the best, which is not to widdle on the superb Barryblanging we'll be getting in about 20 minutes.

Bond starts walking towards a surface-level entrance, but is instead directed down a staircase. Decent enough gag. (This will be homaged, sort of, in A View to a Kill with the line about one mansion being the servants' quarters.) Next, Kisch tells Goldfinger that "they're all here," and no effort is made to synch up what's very obviously an overdubbed line with Gert Frobe's reaction. What follows is a trio of slow, stately tracking shots following Mr. (Napoleon?) Solo (the mind boggles) across the best set in the entire history of the franchise. Keep your volcano lairs and your sea bases and your mountaintop restaurants.* Give me Goldfinger's rec room any day.

*Why yes, all of these iconic Evil Lairs date no more recently than Georgie Lucas's little indie sci-fi flick. And yes, there is a space station right afterwards, but after that the villain lairs get monotonously dull and remain so until the franchise finally dies another day.

The assembled mobsters weirdly all become hostile to each other as soon as Goldfinger enters the room. They seemed pretty chill a moment ago, aside from Solo. They're also hostile to Goldfinger, who hasn't paid them yet, which makes a bit more sense.

God, I love this briefing scene. The trick pool table (the fact that Goldfinger just casually puts the balls way before flipping it), the way Goldfinger introduced the whole thing ("Banks don't open on Sunday." "My bank will!"), the fact that he's quietly sealing up the room to gas everyone in it, and the fact that he's doing this entire briefing fully intending to gas everyone recieving it. Man's ego knows no bounds, I love it.

I want one.

Meanwhile Bond breaks out of his cell by waving at a guard a couple of times and they vanishing. It's kind of weird that we never see this again; he's always got to have a pen with acid in it, or a laser watch, or whatever. Weirdly the guard doesn't try screaming for help once Bond jumps him, but then, they never do.

Inconveniently for Goldfinger but conveniently for Bond, Bond is able to get right up under the model of Fort Knox and hear the entire plan. At least, that's what we're supposed to think. Remember, Bond's message that he's writing right now will never be delivered. Which does make me feel like this entire setup is an enormous waste of time. Remember, Goldfinger's telling his plan (because this is BondFilm and he must tell his plan to the audience) to a room full of people he fully intends to murder, and Bond's efforts to warn Felix are expected, but must be futile in order for the plot to unfold as it does.

Incidentally, it's at about this point in Guy Hamilton's final Bond Film, The Man With the Golden Gun,* that Sir Christopher Lee stops the plot stone dead to relate his backstory to a terminally bored Roger Moore and a terminally shot Andrea Anders, while watching two young boys wrestle. In case you needed a visual indicator of how far and how fast the franchise falls. This - Goldfinger turning his rec room into a briefing room and then bombastically disclaiming his criminal genius - is far more entertaining.

*He starts and ends on the 79th element, huh? It's like poetry, it rhymes.

OBLIGATORY GOLDFINGER TRIVIA: The Bond film where a German actor gasses a bunch of people to death was banned in Israel for a few years until it turned out that Gert Frobe (a Nazi Party member from 1934 to 1937) hid Jews in his basement.

Bond is captured - "Pussy, who taught you judo?" John Steed, obviously. To keep the charade (that Bond's message to Felix is going anywhere), Bond is taken not back to his cell but to meet with Goldfinger and Mr. (Napoleon) Solo. One again, the camera just has to show us something - in this case, Bond fishing the message and mini-tracker out of his pocket. I don't think that shot was necessary. 

Speaking of unnecessary, the "Felix follows Oddjob to the trash compactor and then back to the stud farm" sequence starts at 1:16:13 and ends at 1:20:39. Not notable for much except John Barry blanging away with the James Bond theme (Bond is not in this scene) mixed with the Goldfinger theme (Goldfinger is not in this scene either). I do wonder if the tiny little tracker might have survived the compacting process, but I don't doubt for a minute that Oddjob's little truck couldn't possibly carry around a fully-compacted car. Really starting to think that the mini-tracker didn't need to be in this at all.

By the way, this scene is a lot less glitzy than the rest of the film. Like it wandered in from Live and Let Die or something.

Felix decides that there must have been a mechanical failure and goes back to the farm. I guess that makes sense, and it is actually nice to see a scene from Felix's perspective (which if I remember correctly never happens again until Licence to Kill, yikes). One does wonder why Felix was just hanging out at a gas station, instead of casing the farm to begin with. But one suspects that he's not all that much Breiter than the version we'll see in Diamonds Are Forever. (Earlier on, right after Bond was put in his cell for the first time, Felix said that Bond would "shout if he needs us," demonstrating a hilarious lack of concern.)

Bond is then dragged out of his cell again so that Goldfinger can explain the actual plot to him. But do pay attention to the start of the scene, where Pussy (yes, really) Galore is talking about her retirement plans. "I'll hang up a sign," she says, as she flinches away from him. "No trespassing." You know, I'm not entirely convinced she's a lesbian to begin with; I really am buying into the theory that she just says that to keep the fat perv away from her.

Boy, it's a good thing this is Goldfinger and not Diamonds Are Forever, or that statement would have gone in a different direction.

"Do. Not. Touch me."

I do like this change from the book, though. Bond has worked out that Goldfinger won't have enough time to move all that gold, so in this version, Goldfinger's not trying to steal it. He's trying to irradiate it. The gold supply of the United States would be radioactive for 58 years. So, right after Bond goes and gets himself blown up in No Time To Die. 

Goldfinger points out that if the authorities try to stop him, he could always explode the bomb somewhere else. He names Cape Kennedy, which I'm pretty sure was a potential target of Largo's nuclear terrorism in the novel version of Thunderball. Anyway, then Oddjob comes back with the car - Felix really sucks at tailing people, doesn't he? - and Bond wanders off arm-in-arm with Pussy (yes, really) Galore. Felix has seen enough (he probably had Bond's room in Miami bugged, he knows exactly what Bond gets up to) and wanders off, and then Bond gets to toss Pussy (yes, really) Galore around in the hay and convince her to join his side via the medium of sexual assault. The less said about that, the better.

The flying circus gas attack (a phrase I never thought I'd write - this film is certainly original) is, aside from the golf game, probably the high point. Helps that John Barry gets to flex the Goldfinger theme quite a bit here. Every other time it's deployed, it's a bit lazy, reworking the title arrangement into a comfy drive through Switzerland. Helps that the Goldfinger theme is really used as a secondary bit, a counterpoint threaded throughout blaring horns and a crashing drumbeat. Barry really gets cracking on the next film - "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is a spectacular instrumental, brooding its way through Thunderball with appropriate menace. You Only Live Twice is all over the place, and so is its soundtrack, Barry probably never demonstrating as much breadth anywhere else in the series as he manages between "Capsule in Space" and "The Wedding." Barry surges through The Australian One with one of the best title tracks, easily if lazily (giving him a pass on that because the theme is just so good - also giving him a pass on the fact that half the theme is recycled from "Fight at Kobe Dock" in the previous film) adapted to both ski chases and a prelude to a helicopter assault. And Diamonds Are Forever's opening riff gets downright creepy when Bond enters Willard Whyte's desert estate. But it all really gets underway here. In the hands of a less capable composer (say, Hans Zimmer, whose most notable contribution to No Time To Die's soundtrack was a regurgitation of the aforementioned brilliant OHMSS theme), you'd be left with sonic wallpaper over a montage of a bunch of extras falling over. I've never worked out whether the fact that some of them miss their cues is a filmmaking mistake or brilliant foreshadowing.

I'm pretty sure at least one shot of the Fort Knox gate being dynamited is a miniature, but it is a very impressive miniature. I also find myself wondering about the amount of location work actually being done here. My suspicion, although I cannot prove it, is that everything after they drive behind the building was shot back in Britain. Certainly any shot where you can see Bond's face was.

This shot, for example, I note that although that does look an awfully lot like Connery from the rear, he does not let the camera see his face. But I think this was shot in Britain (why ship the laser prop to America?), so why not show his face?

Anyway, Felix's radiometer doesn't detect the bomb right away, because Goldfinger flew it in. Good thing, I guess. If it had gone in with Goldfinger's convoy, the radiometer would have gone off as Goldfinger was driving by. Probably would have gotten him a tad suspicious. Although, I suppose there is a degree of difference between Gert Frobe's performance here - self-assured, sure, but not horrifically overconfident - and the Adolfo Celi/Yaphet Kotto/Louis Jordan "well, I'm the bad guy and Bond's going to win and nick my missus, so I might as well enjoy myself for two hours, secure in the knowledge that I'll be allowed a few zingers before my inevitable entertaining/humiliating death" approach. 

Goldfinger's also allowed to demonstrate a degree of forethought most of his successors aren't allowed to have, in the form of his escape plan. Four films from now, Blofeld's going to be subjected to the indignity of having to dress in drag to walk out the front door of a building that he has a secret underground exit from (why yes, I did think Diamonds Are Forever was the worst Bond film until Daniel Craig hove his nihilistic anti-Bond attitude onto our screens). But Goldfinger's got a full military uniform under his coat. Not entirely clear why the soldiers don't question General Auric's thick German accent, but hey, this is less than 20 years after a man named Eisenhower conquered Europe, and the general in charge of the airbase is named "Russian" or thereabouts.

I do like how the vault door automatically swings all the way open and crushes some of Goldfinger's goons behind it. Grisly. Come to think of it, these early films had some very inventive villain/henchmen demises, didn't they? Dr. No got drowned in a radioactive pool. Red Grant was strangled with a garotte wire. Largo and Vargas both get skewered. Helga Brandt gets eaten by piranhas. A lot of Roger Moore's badhats just get shot, don't they, and by the time we get to Dalton, yeah, it's violent, but it feels like Typical Action Movie Villain Demises by then.

Speaking of demises, we have Oddjob echoing Capguno at the beginning of this very film. It's a slow, broad punch-up compared to the tight, claustrophobic, fast-paced fight with Red Grant in the previous film. Well, you have to shake things up a bit. Can't just repeat what you did in the previous film (redoing stuff you did at the beginning of this one is okay though).

What's not okay is leaving in both the "three more ticks" line and the shot of the countdown timer stopped at 007. Sorry, you needed to pick one or the other, because as it is, the line makes no sense.

Film's not done yet (is this Peter Jackson's favorite Bond film?) because Bond boards a plane that looks an awful lot like Goldfinger's, and finds Goldfinger aboard. Back on the ground, the editor can't decide whether the real crew is conscious or not, and up in the air, if you look very closely you can see Goldfinger has an extra minion with him who doesn't get any screentime before he's rendered unconscious. Anyway, Goldfinger wasn't there earlier when Bond mentioned how shooting a gun in a plane would result in the passengers getting sucked out into "outer space," so he shoots a gun in a plane and gets sucked out. Rather impressed he was able to squeeze through the window.

Bond and Pussy bail out in time because of course they do, but Bond would rather shag than be rescued. Compare and contrast how the next film ends.

I don't think it should come as any sort of surprise that I think this is the weakest of the first three. Yes, I know, Dr. No doesn't even feel like a Bond Film for half its runtime, and whatever else you can say about Goldfinger, it definitely feels like a Bond Film. That, I suspect, is the problem.

So, what to make of this, The Archetypal Bond Film? Does that status even hold up? Let's see.

• Bond wears a duck on his head. No, this never happens again.
• The pretitle sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film. Aside from Octopussy, this never happens again. Even Never Say Never Again doesn't go there.
• The villain cheats at a game. Again, only Octopussy and A View to a Kill repeat this.
• The villain cheats at a game, twice. But why?
• The villain's top enforcer is a mute, invincible slab of muscle. Jaws does this, obviously, but he's the only other one. (Gobinda in Octopussy gets half credit. You may start to notice a theme here.)
• There is an entirely gratuitous car chase that begins and ends with Bond being a prisoner. Nope. While later entries do have gratuitous car chases (oh hello The Spy Who Loved Me), they do tend to begin or end with the plot being developed at least a little bit. I think the only other film with an entirely gratuitous car chase is Quantum of Solace, which is about as far away from a Goldfinger clone as you can get and still be part of the same franchise. (What about Moonraker, I hear you ask. Ah, grasshopper, it was a gondola, not a car, in Moonraker.)
• During said gratuitous chase, there is a wholly pointless reaction shot that slows down the action. The Moorera has this in spades, unfortunately.
• Bond spends the entire third act as a prisoner. Nope. I think aside from this, the film with the largest amount of time Bond spends in captivity is either Octopussy or Spectre, and, as with Quantum, I can't imagine that the latter was designed to be a Goldfinger clone.
• As the villain lays out his Evil Plan, one member of his audience says he wants no part of it and gets killed for his trouble. A pun is involved. A View to a Kill.
• A Bond Girl has an offensively pornographic name. Kissy Suzuki, Plenty O'Toole, Holly Goodhead, and Octopussy are all still out there, waiting, as is the "Stephanie Broadchest" joke in Casino Royale, aka the only joke in Casino Royale. So okay, I finally found one thing that paraded on into future films.
• The gadget car. Yes, okay, fine, the damn gadget car.
• Bond and the villain meet socially - ah, but that's not enough because Doctor No wined and dined him.
• Bond beats the villain at some game (golf, cards, etc.) Happens in Thunderball and Octopussy, and is the plot of Casino Royale. I wouldn't really call the fencing match in Die Another Day a "game."

Notice how many times Octopussy shows up on this list? Yeah, turns out there was a reason I spent two decades thinking of it as "the generic Bond film." Anyway, my conclusion is that if Goldfinger was really The Archetypal Bond Film, then that's bad for the franchise because the first Austin Powers checks more of the above boxes than an average Bond Film does. What Goldfinger actually is is the film the franchise comes back to when it's out of ideas and needs to disguise the flab with memberberries.

The other observation is that, having transformed Bond into a passenger in his own film, this movie more than any other 60s Bondfilm presages the Moorera. Same director as the first two films, and same tone and a lot of recyclings in the last two. Perhaps this was unavoidable, having cast an older actor to play Bond, but Dalton and Brosnan are about as old in their debuts as Connery is in Diamonds are Forever, and they're far more energetic. Has to do with enthusiasm for the part, perhaps, or maybe a lack of disgust with it. Maybe this explains why Casino Royale spends several hours purporting to sloooooooooooooooooooowly mold Daniel Craig's character into the Bond we all know and love, only to never get there. In any event, I can see why, at the close of Moore's tenure, Goldfinger was hailed as The Archetypal Bond Film. But since then? The Living Daylights owes far more to From Russia and (the not-borrowed-from-Goldfinger parts of) Octopussy than to Goldfinger. GoldenEye is a mishmash of Greatest Hits from across the franchise (as is, less successfully, Die Another Day), and Casino Royale (and the Craig era in general) doesn't really want to be a Bond Film.

But if you close your eyes and picture A Bond Film, chances are the crashing opening chords of Goldfinger's title track start caterwauling through your head. Boomer nostalgia, perchance. I'm not so sure. This one is different, significantly so, to the two that came before it. The usual story is that Dr. No and From Russia were made before they'd really worked out what A Bond Film is, and A Bond Film is Goldfinger.

One suspects that Goldfinger endures because it knows what it wants to be, something that gets increasingly difficult to say of the Bondfilms that follow it until and except Quantum of Solace, and therein lies the flaw in this theory because whatever one can say about Quantum (and I'll be saying quite a lot, although an old review is available here), it most certainly does not "endure," not least because it is the shortest of Bond films.

So what is Goldfinger's secret then? The Car? Certainly the only other film to feature a gadget car as extensively as this - The Spy Who Loved Me - is rightfully regarded as top-quality Bondage. But The Living Daylights, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day all have gadgety vehicular hijinks ("Hi, Jinx" in the latter's case) and are not as fondly remembered. A "memorable" villain? He's fat, he has an accent, and he cheats at games of sport. He's a German plotting a nerve gas attack less than 20 years after the close of World War II. A decision certainly was made there.* The director? Guy Hamilton's other efforts are a "mixed" bag, although one can see the rationale in bringing him back to oversee the transition from Connery Mk. II to Moore, there not being much difference between their approaches (flabby/laid back) or their characters (assholes) until Hamilton shuffles off forever and takes Harry Saltzman with him. The tone?

*Weirdly, the next time we have a European villain plotting a genocide via nerve gas is in the film that came out on the thirtieth anniversary of the War's start. And two films from now, Bond will be in Japan, which is a bit like Bond going to Iraq in whatever trainwreck Denis Villeneuve upchucks at us.

Someone on the internet (and therefore supremely qualified to comment on such things) observed that there are three types of Bond films: spy films, gadget films, and lifestyle films. There can be hybrids (GoldenEye is a spy movie with gadget elements; Tomorrow Never Dies is arguably its inverse)* and deconstructions (Licence to Kill is perhaps best viewed as a lifestyle deconstruction), but if your poster looks like a perfume ad (hello, Casino Royale), you're a lifestyle film. And that's the trend that starts here. (You will detect an undercurrent of anti-Craigism throughout these reviews. Fond though I am of Quantum of Solace, neither it nor any of the other four are actually Bond Films.)

*Come to think of it, the best Bond film ever made is the only one that could arguably be called a hybrid of all three.

Crotch laser scene aside, there is never any doubt that Bond is going to win. Look at him. Connery's never more stylish than he is in the grey three-piece he wears for the last half of the film. (Although I definitely think Thunderball is a better offering of Bondage,* he spends the majority of that film in short shorts. Yikes.) Oh, what's that, he's captured and locked in a cell? Eh, it's fine, look at him, relaxed there, not a hair out of place on his toupee. Oh, what's that, his plan to alert Leiter failed because of Mr. Solo's pressing engagement? Not a problem, let's casually "seduce" an avowed lesbian and get her to save the day for us. There's a level of breezy overconfidence on display here. The filmmakers had struck gold (pun!), and they knew it.

*In case you were wondering, I would classify Thunderball as a spy film with heavy lifestyle elements.

I asked up at the top if Goldfinger would avoid borrowing from the headlines of the time, and it did, at least directly (as far as I know). But here's the thing: between when filming wrapped on From Russia With Love and when Goldfinger hit theaters, JFK was shot, Dr. Who took over British TV, and the Beatles played for the Queen and toured the US (nobody had a pair of earmuffs). Dates notwithstanding, in a very real sense Goldfinger is the first 1960s Bond Film, whereas the previous two have more in common with the very 50s source material or 1959's North By Northwest, than they will with upcoming films like You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, or even Terence Young's next and final Bond effort, the mighty Thunderball.

Until then, ta-ta.