Bat-May: Batman: The Movie (1966)

Once upon a time, the most divisive fault line in fandom was whether or not you loved Adam West’s Batman. (It was a simpler time.) Chances are that you held him in higher regard if you grew up with him, but if Tim Burton or Frank Miller got to you at a young age, you might not have had the patience for a groovier, campier Batman. By the time Adam West passed in 2017 – and indeed long before that – the tides seemed to have turned in Bat-fandom: even if Batman ’66 (as it came to be dubbed) wasn’t your Batman, it was at least a Batman with its own redeeming qualities. 

Within that neon outpost in the Dark Knight’s long and storied history, amid the pow-biff-bam of the television series, Batman: The Movie finds the Caped Crusader (Adam West) and his sidekick Robin (Burt Ward) facing the unfathomable – all their greatest villains have teamed up, with global domination in their sights. The Joker (Cesar Romero), The Penguin (Burgess Meredith), and The Riddler (Frank Gorshin) have joined forces with Catwoman (Lee Meriwether), who is posing as the Russian journalist Miss Kitka, in a fiendish plot to rule the world.

 

Batman: The Movie is not quite a movie because it feels like three or four episodes of the television series strung together. You can even mark the narrative intervals with each time it seems Batman and Robin have been blown to smithereens; just supply the Bill Dozier “same bat‑time, same bat-channel” narration yourself. While this pacing can be fun on television, even if you string a two-parter together, it becomes a bit interminable as a feature film with an episodic quality. Perhaps Batman: The Movie is better understood as an artifact, a kind of analogue to comic book crossovers. Where the episodes of the television show usually only featured one high-profile villain (often played by a major celebrity guest star), the selling point here is that the show’s four biggest villains are sharing the screen. (Scrapped plans for a second film, with Batgirl in tow, suggest this pattern would have continued on the big screen.)

 

Like the television show, the film is more enamored of its villains than of the Dynamic Duo. Adam West and Burt Ward play their parts in staid and stalwart fashion, their straight faces serving an essential role in the high camp atmosphere, but there’s no question the film only truly comes alive when it has its antagonists on screen. Of the foursome, Burgess Meredith’s Penguin takes the lead; it’s his submarine and his henchmen that run the plot, with the other villains deferring to his leadership. (Maybe it’s the monocle.) As the Penguin, Meredith is almost a Jack Burnley drawing come to life, all squawks and waddles, but what really stands out about his performance is just how hard he’s selling it.

 

Indeed, all the players are acting their parts with the gusto of a toddler at playtime, hammy in all the right places but never compromising the internal integrity of the thing with so much as a wink to the camera. Each villainous performer finds his or her lane and sticks with it. Frank Gorshin’s Riddler is giddy and over-the-top, but it’s dialed into what this incarnation of the Riddler should be (and a clear template for Jim Carrey’s Riddler in Batman Forever). Cesar Romero’s Joker, once you get past the painted-over mustache, puts the “clown” in “Clown Prince of Crime,” whooping and clapping at his own mischief. Meanwhile, Lee Meriwether (herself subbing in for television’s Julie Newmar) plays Catwoman/Kitka with all the purring puns a single screenplay can handle.

 

Kitka’s romance with Bruce Wayne is compelling enough, with Adam West suitably smitten with the passingly dismissive Soviet. In these moments, it’s a little disappointing that Bruce never sees through the disguise until the very end of the film – particularly since his Batman is marked with over-preparation for literally any other scenario he encounters. He’s got shark repellent in his helicopter, a torpedo deflector in his belt, and even a computer that can sort dust particles by color; it’s just too bad he doesn’t have a working set of eyes and ears to know when he’s being duped. Perhaps, however, that’s the point – this Bruce Wayne is a lover, not a fighter. (Though his seduction skills could use some work – quoting Edgar Allan Poe isn’t the first recourse for most casanovas.) 

 

For a Batman film, both Batman and Robin are woefully underdeveloped, static figures of justice and good manners – which is, again, the point. The camp of Batman ’66 requires heroes who are unchanging and unflinching; nothing flummoxes them, and nothing finds them ill-prepared to save the day. These do-gooders need only do good, despite the less-than-stimulating viewing pleasure such heroics provide. There’s never any doubt that good will prevail, with the only surprises being which unlikely gadget our heroes will pull from their bottomless utility belts. Like their villains, though, West and Ward commit wholeheartedly to their act, with West’s deliberately dramatic delivery matching Ward’s gee-whiz enthusiasm.

 

Batman: The Movie was originally intended to be the series debut, launching the television program in big-screen style. Released after the first season, however, it becomes instead a celebration of everything that Batman ’66 was – flashy, vibrant, and campy. It’s a feature-length distillation of the show’s successes and failings, its mod mentality dialed up to 11. If you loved the show, you’ll love the movie, but if West has never been your Batman, this film won’t change your mind. As for me, I like the show just fine, in small doses, and Batman: The Movie proves to be a bit too big a dose for one sitting. For a generation, this was Batman, so kudos to the crew for keeping the flame alive.

 

Batman: The Movie is rated PG. Directed by Leslie H. Martinson. Written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. Based on the DC Comics, and on the ABC television series. Starring Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, and Frank Gorshin.

For more Bat-May action, the good folks at Collected Editions posted my review of Batman: The Movies, the comic book adaptation of the Batman Quadrilogy. Give them a click - no one reviews comics like Collected Editions!

April of the Apes: Planet of the Apes (1968)

I can’t believe it took me five years and a Blu-Ray box set to remember that Planet of the Apes is one of my all-time favorite movies. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been spending more time of late with my Cinema King crown atop my regal head, but when I assembled The Personal Canon in 2016, I left Apes off the list. A year later, I reviewed War for the Planet of the Apes, the third/final in the Andy Serkis trilogy, but still the original Apes skipped my mind. Well, no more – one of the reasons we’re doing “April of the Apes” is to remind me how much I love Planet of the Apes.

George Taylor (Charlton Heston) leads a deep-space exploration that loses its way during two thousand years of cryosleep, stranding Taylor and his comrades (Robert Gunner, Jeff Burton) on a distant world with no way to communicate with their home. To their horror, the astronauts discover that they have landed on a planet where evolution seems to have run in reverse – humans are little better than mute domesticated animals, while apes have mastered civilization. Betrothed chimpanzee scientists Zira and Cornelius (Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall) are fascinated by Taylor, but the orangutan Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) fears that the astronaut’s arrival will be the undoing of ape society.

 

For a movie that is more than 50 years old (I know, right?), Planet of the Apes has a surprisingly modern pace that keeps the movie clipping along briskly. At just shy of two hours, it’s also delightfully well-balanced, with the first ape appearing 30 minutes in; at sixty minutes, the plot turns when the apes discover that Taylor can talk. The final quarter of the film takes an even stranger turn as ape allies with human to investigate the Forbidden Zone – it’s a very methodical and deliberate construction, deploying the underrated four-act structure to craft a narrative that hums like an engine.

 

Though his script was largely rewritten, one senses the steady hand of Rod Serling in the tight plotting, punchy rhythm, and (naturally) the shocking final frames of the film. That ending, which has probably saturated into cultural osmosis by this point, is the sort of tragic allegory that made Serling’s Twilight Zone a television masterpiece. Little of Serling’s dialogue persisted into the finished film, though the bits that remain smack of his brand of cautionary cynicism – as when Taylor opines to his fellow space voyagers, “I’m a seeker, too. But my dreams aren’t like yours. I can’t help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man. Has to be.” Indeed, one almost expects, as the film zooms out from its final tableau, to see Rod Serling standing just out of sight, fingers perched around a smoldering cigarette as he delivers an equally incendiary soliloquy about what man (to borrow a phrase from Serling’s best teleplay, “Time Enough at Last”) has deeded to himself.

 

No one does outrage on the edge of madness like Charlton Heston, and so he’s a perfect audience surrogate for a film that turns the world topsy-turvy as Planet of the Apes does. I’d forgotten how fallible, how cynical Taylor is in this film, even before he falls headlong into the monkey madhouse, but Taylor is that late 60s archetype of the disillusioned older generation, suspicious of the future but guardedly optimistic about his own ability to thrive. His colonial impulses and self-aggrandizement are slowly stripped away throughout the film, and he becomes the hero not because of any traits he possesses – but because he’s the best we have, and he refuses to acquiesce, the reluctant hero whose hesitation is only overridden by his own self-preservation. He comes not as a savior but as a seeker of truth, which is perhaps the higher calling. (Twelve years earlier, Heston had played Moses in the Easter classic The Ten Commandments, though Taylor is a far cry from the divine inspiration of a leader of men.)

 

Of course, no Planet would be complete without its apes, and even though the make-up lacks the technical precision of the 2001 remake or the photorealism of the Serkis trilogy’s CGI effects, there is something very charming about the ape prosthetics as designed by John Chambers. Having just spent a month going through the Universal Classic Monsters franchise and all those lurid make-up effects, jumping into Planet of the Apes almost feels natural. Chambers creates an illusion that never looks phony – hokey, perhaps, compared to its successors, but the film proceeds with such level-headed sincerity that there’s scarcely a chance to question the simian verisimilitude.

Inside of the film’s larger allegory, there’s a sub-allegory about ape society, with the gorillas serving as the ape army, chimpanzees as their workers and scientists, and orangutans as the theocratic governing body. The slippery blur between religion, science, and government feels like another Twilight Zone parable, and nowhere is that tension more acutely rendered than in the character of Dr. Zaius, played brilliantly by Maurice Evans. One of the all-time great screen villains, Dr. Zaius is the venal and desperate orangutan deputy who knows better than any other ape how precariously their society sits atop a mountain of lies, and so his increasing anxiety motivates his every action as he strives to keep Taylor from dismantling his house of cards – not just out of some philosophical drive for truth but also, one senses, out of the escalating spite that exists between the two enemies. Dr. Zaius is so beautifully characterized, his motivations so deftly clear, that he makes a fitting rival for both Taylor and for the very idea of the good; his final scene and his fateful decision therein remind us that there is nothing more dangerous than an authoritarian afraid of losing his power. Put another way, when one man – or ape – controls multiple institutions, those selfsame institutions lose their epistemological power.

 

Let’s not forget Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter as Cornelius and Zira, on whom the unlikely franchise would eventually be built. McDowall especially does a fine job emoting behind his heavy prosthetics, his snout twitching whenever he’s irritated – which is, to be fair, quite often in this film. McDowall would go on to appear in four of the five Apes films (Cornelius was briefly recast while McDowall was away directing his own film), but I was struck by how human Kim Hunter manages to be as Zira, arguably the deuteragonist of the film. Though her fiancé has been beaten down by Dr. Zaius and his refusal to endorse true science, Zira remains open-minded in her pursuit of the truth, captive only to her fascination with Taylor, whom she dubs “Bright Eyes” when she realizes there’s something special about this human. That instinctive and irrepressible curiosity – even more than Taylor’s brutish cynicism – is as compelling a portrait of humanity as anything the film offers.

 

The film’s final statement on humanity is, however, something I can’t spoil here. On the off chance that someone in fifty-three years hasn’t seen the ending or one of its myriad riffs in pop culture, I’ll simply say that it fulfills Aristotle’s definition of an ending – it is both surprising and inevitable, and it is to the film’s great strength that it’s not a mere “twist.” It is the natural conclusion to a dynamite story, and the film only becomes more watchable with each viewing. It’s the sort of film that I’d happily rewatch with anyone who hasn’t seen it before. But it’s also not a film that would demand a sequel, let alone four – unless you’re looking at box office receipts. In its initial release, Planet of the Apes grossed nearly $21 million on a $6 million budget; even in 1968, studio heads went bananas for numbers like that.

 

Planet of the Apes is rated G. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. Written by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling. Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle. Starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter, James Whitmore, James Daly, and Linda Harrison.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

When we last left James Bond, he’d met (and defeated) his great nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  Like any good sequel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service gives us the rematch we wanted, though the faces are a little different – and not entirely, I might add, for the better.

George Lazenby takes the reins as superspy 007 opposite Telly Savalas’s Blofeld, whose dastardly plan aims to poison global food stores.  As if that weren’t trouble enough, Bond is in-and-out of employment at MI6 while wooing the feisty Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), the only woman ever to win movie-Bond’s hand in marriage.  It sounds like it has the potential for horribly maudlin montages (to be fair, we do get one, set to Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World”), but director Peter R. Hunt wisely amps up the action for the whole 2:20 runtime, never letting you feel the 140 minutes.

If I haven’t said it already, the best Bond films are ones where James Bond and the audience are piecing together clues; Goldfinger and Skyfall did this quite well, but Thunderball tipped its hand too soon.  Here, we’re right with Bond in following the central mystery; we know, of course, that Blofeld is up to no good, but we don’t quite know how his “allergy clinic” and harem of female patients fit together.  Smartly, then, the film doubles the suspense; will Bond solve the case, and will he be discovered while doing so?

On top of it all, OHMSS includes several rousing chase scenes, most set near Blofeld’s ski lodge hideout.  One such scene runs for a very long time, going from the slopes to a carnival, but it’s to Hunt’s credit that it never feels bloated.  I suspect, though, that the captivating nature of these scenes has a great deal to do with John Barry’s score, which is among the best in the series so far (see also Goldfinger and Skyfall, which had exemplary scores by Barry and Thomas Newman, respectively).  Barry crafts a new theme tune for the film while deploying the Bond notes we’ve come to expect; lead actor aside, the soundtrack can for my money make or break a Bond film, and in this regard OHMSS thrives.  (Sidebar: The Propellerheads have recorded a brilliant version of the title track, which is well worth the listen.)

Now to the elephant in the room:  the recastings.  The unequivocally good news is that Telly Savalas is a fine Blofeld, adding a layer of physical menace to the squirrelly version Donald Pleasance animated in You Only Live Twice.  Gone are the facial scar and the cat (earlobes, too); instead, we get a burly heavy whose thuggish nature is concealed beneath a thin masquerade as a prospective count.  In fact, so good is his Blofeld that the 1990s Lex Luthor cartoon was modeled after him.

Your mileage may vary, though, when it comes to George Lazenby as James Bond.  Now, arguably the bulk of this review should be dedicated to a dissection of his one-and-only performance as 007, but honestly the film does so much else right that Lazenby would need to do a rubbish job for it to impact the success of the film.  Truth be told, Lazenby isn’t a remarkable Bond – he’s no Sean Connery, to be sure – but his work is, in a word, serviceable.  He never steps too far out of character, and his polish and charm make plausible his scenes with Diana Rigg (about whom I haven’t said enough, though she’s credible enough as a potential wife for Bond).

It’s been said that OHMSS would be the perfect Bond film had Sean Connery starred in it.  I don’t know about all that – Goldfinger is still a perfect movie, let alone a James Bond one – but OHMSS is successful enough at accomplishing a lot of things I thought impossible in a Bond film.  A different actor leads the womanizing James Bond to the altar in a 140-minute flick:  theoretically, that shouldn’t work, but the filmmakers have done a whiz-bang job.  I’m a bit saddened that Lazenby never got a second shot as Bond, but I can’t wait for Connery to return.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is rated PG.  Bond hops into bed with two separate partially-clothed women, while Tracy wears a few revealing outfits.  The violence is quite tame, with much bloodless gunfire and a few fistfights, though the final scene is a bit bloody.

And speaking of returns, James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Diamonds Are Forever (1971) on July 7, 2013!

You Only Live Twice (1967)

You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery’s fifth outing as James Bond, falls under the category of “I love you, but you’re strange.”  Embracing the franchise’s potential for high-octane camp, You Only Live Twice is extremely implausible but entirely entertaining.

After faking his own death (yes, another pre-credits teaser with a presumed-dead 007), Bond hops over to Japan to investigate the mysterious disappearance of an American spaceship.  With the clock ticking amid brewing tensions between the Americans and the Soviets, Bond joins Tiger Tanaka’s secret ninja police in order to infiltrate the secret volcano base where SPECTRE chief Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasance) is hatching a plot for – you guessed it – world domination.

Let’s get the obligatory stuff out of the way – Connery is still the ultimate Bond here, having more fun than he’s ever had in the shoes of the world’s top superspy.  His bemused detachment from the oddity of the plot helps his own credulity as the star, and the droll rapidity with which he fires off those one-liners is captivating.  His opposite number, finally revealed on-screen after five years of teases, is the quintessential iconic Bond villain; Donald Pleasance is a perfect fit for Blofeld, the shadowy supercriminal who’s revealed to be diminutive, weak-voiced, and scarred over his right eye.  In fact, watching You Only Live Twice really gives you a sense of this film’s significance, if only because you recognize all the pieces that have been imitated and parodied:  the volcano base, the hulking blond henchman, and the bald supervillain with a Mao suit, a scar, and a pet cat (see also, Dr. Evil, Dr. Claw).

This movie also has some really great action sequences, including Bond’s some-assembly-required helicopter and the ninja raid on the volcano base.  Even in a smaller piece, when Bond wrestles with a security guard, there’s a callback to Oddjob in Goldfinger that gives the devout fan a comforting sense of familiarity; smaller still, Bond’s pursuit of a mysterious Japanese woman through the side streets of Tokyo is made exciting by the capable direction of Lewis Gilbert.

Before we get to the elephant in the room – the downright ludic weirdness of this movie – there are a few things that don’t work.  For one, the two female leads (Akiko Wakabayashi as Aki and Mie Hama as Kissy) are virtually indistinguishable in that there’s really very little reason to switch characters halfway through the film; indeed, the complex Aki is much more interesting than Kissy, and it’s a loss for the film when she’s replaced by the vapid Kissy.  Worse, the film flirts with “yellowface” when, in a strange and ultimately unnecessary plot point, Bond is obligated to “become” Japanese, change his appearance, and take a Japanese wife.  The Japanese makeup on Connery is entirely unconvincing, rendering him a sort of sunburned Burt Reynolds.

Accentuating the strangeness of You Only Live Twice, the script is written by Roald Dahl – yes, that Roald Dahl, famed for his dark children’s stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Dahl dispenses with much of Ian Fleming’s original (itself more a revenge story than anything else) and opts for what he called a “formula” approach to Bond.  The idea that the series can be reduced to a series of key points and essential beats ought to be discouraging, but the result is something quite smashing – and unexpected from the pen of the man who brought you Matilda.

In fact, that’s a good way to think of You Only Live Twice – full of things that don’t really make much sense but end up working when they’re put together.  It’s not a great Bond film by any stretch, but it’s a successful one in that it never fails to be engaging.  Whether successfully created or absurdly awkward, either way you won’t want to look away from what’s going on.  While some might say this turn toward the irreverent heralds the beginning of the end (remember, the worst excesses of the Roger Moore era are before us), I say enjoy it while it lasts because... well, you know.  “You Only Live Twice, Mr. Bond.”

You Only Live Twice is rated PG.  Bond is involved in some bloodless shootouts with fantastic explosions as well as mild snogging (with bare shoulders and backs visible).  A disconcerting poisoning scene ends with abrupt suffocation, which may trouble some viewers, as may the presence of a tank of man-eating piranhas.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) on June 7, 2013!

Thunderball (1965)

Here’s the thing about Thunderball:  it’s not Goldfinger.  I know it’s unfair to compare Sean Connery’s fourth outing as James Bond to his third, widely regarded as his and the series’ best (and, for my money, a perfect movie).  But watching the two virtually back to back means that something about the movie doesn’t quite hit it.

Thunderball is a different kind of movie, for one.  Where Goldfinger was an insular and personal battle of wits between super spy and bullion baron, Thunderball ups the scale when the shadowy organization SPECTRE holds the world for ransom after stealing two atomic bombs.  On a hunch and inspired by a photograph of the beautiful Domino Derval (Claudine Auger), James Bond (Connery) flies to Nassau, where the bombs are being guarded by SPECTRE second-in-command Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi).

There are elements of Thunderball that work quite well.  The pre-credits sequence is brilliant, beginning at a funeral where Bond pieces together an important clue about one of the mourners before making his escape in the series’ most fantastic gadget yet – a jetpack strapped over 007’s shoulders.  The momentum continues with Tom Jones’s soulful vocals over the title track, a worthy successor to Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger.”

And of note here, more than in any other Bond movie, a good deal of the film takes place underwater (Wikipedia tells me it’s roughly a quarter of the movie).  To director Terence Young’s credit, these scenes are actually quite exciting; though mostly silent and filmed without speeding up the natural drag caused by swimming at the bottom of the ocean, the underwater sequences both distinguish Thunderball from the rest of the franchise while also finding a new and creative way to introduce action scenes into the narrative while preserving the scenic specificity of Nassau (something Dr. No, set on an island, did not quite do).  The only complaint about these scenes is that it is sometimes difficult to make out which swimmer is Bond and which is Largo – and which is no one at all.

What’s missing from Thunderball is the sense of mystery that made Goldfinger such a hit.  As in From Russia with Love, we’re let in on the villain’s scheme almost from the beginning; here we finally get our best look at SPECTRE and how it operates (something the rest of the Connery-era films will continue to pay off), and we know before MI6 does that Largo has the bombs.  Consequently there isn’t much of a sense of intrigue about the movie, and the question is more how Bond will save the world and not why it needs saving.

After Pussy Galore provided a challenge to the “Bond Girl” stereotype emerging from Honey Rider and Tatiana Romanova, Domino Derval is somewhere in the middle.  She doesn’t do much for the bulk of the film, providing Bond’s incentive to visit Nassau and giving the audience a concrete link between Largo and the bomb plot (Domino’s brother had been flying the bombs for NATO... or did he?).  Consequently, she spends most of the movie wearing bathing suits and resisting Bond’s advances.  She does, however, get some wonderful scenes after Bond decides to trust her with his suspicions about Largo, and her role in the film’s climax is a welcome surprise.

All told, with Thunderball the franchise is back to Dr. No levels; it’s not an instant classic in the way that the perfect Goldfinger was, but it does some impressive things within its two hours that make it enjoyable enough for Bond aficionados.

Thunderball is rated PG.  This film, like the other early Bond films, is quite tame by today’s standards; Bond interrupts a woman in a bathtub, who shows bare back and shoulders.  Since the film takes place mostly on an island, many men and women are seen in swimsuits which are somewhat revealing.  There is blood in several scenes involving sharks and gunfire, several more scenes of exaggerated action violence, and one impalement (played almost for laughs)

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of You Only Live Twice (1967) on May 7, 2013!

Goldfinger (1964)

1964’s Goldfinger, the third outing in the James Bond franchise, is almost unanimously regarded as the greatest of the series, the (unavoidable pun alert) gold standard against which all other entries have been measured.  If you’re looking for an alternate take on the film, I suggest you look elsewhere, because this film is so good that I watched it two nights in a row – only because I didn’t have time for two immediately consecutive viewings.  (And I might watch it a third time before I get to Thunderball!)

What is it that works so well about Goldfinger?  Most notably, the film is incredibly tight, with no scene wasted; everything either builds up to or pays off on another element, and the film is so well crafted that even scenes that don’t appear to matter are engaging.  Opening sequence aside – in which Bond marvelously busts up a heroin ring, woos a second-rate femme fatale, and stops a would-be assassin, while still finding time to sneak in a droll one-liner – the film offers a series of disconnected encounters between James Bond (Sean Connery, better than ever) and Auric Goldfinger (a perfectly brutish Gert Fröbe) before we realize that Goldfinger is involved in an international plot to attack Fort Knox.

Connery and Fröbe play beautifully off each other, particularly in the famous “laser” scene where their repartee shines brightest (“Do you expect me to talk?”  “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”).  In fact, the dubbing of Fröbe by Michael Collins augments the performance by giving Goldfinger a gregarious, larger-than-already-large presence that smartly mixes showy dialogue with stoic body language.  It is in some respects a shame that Goldfinger never reappeared in the franchise, since he makes a perfect adversary for Bond – disdainful of the super spy (yet competitive with the punch lines), relentlessly avaricious, and controlling the mute giant Oddjob (Harold Sakata).

Goldfinger improves upon my critique of From Russia with Love, which is that Bond didn’t do very much.  Here, though, Bond returns to his sleuthing roots and tracks Goldfinger to find out just what his game is.  Consequently, we’re put more fully in his shoes, piecing the clues together in between rousing action sequences, ably directed by Guy Hamilton (arguably his finest hour).  Additionally, the film even improves upon the Ian Fleming novel by tweaking Goldfinger’s end game to make it more plausible; this change is subtle but self-conscious, revealed in a clever scene where Bond muses that Goldfinger’s robbery would take twelve years just to move the gold.

And let us not underestimate the value of a good soundtrack.  Shirley Bassey’s bombastic opening number has deservedly entered the hall of fame for title tracks, its melody unforgettable and its words so catchy you’ll be singing them throughout the film.  From then on, though John Barry delivers an amazing score that plays off the two motifs – Bond’s and Goldfinger’s – with brass and percussion so spot-on that it is difficult to imagine the movie registering the same success without Barry at the conductor’s podium.

Simply put, there is nothing about this film that does not work.  From Honor Blackman as the quintessential Bond girl Pussy Galore to the unforgettable Aston Martin Bond drives in the Alps, Goldfinger is filled with memorable moments (which have been frequently been repeated, by admirers and satirists alike) and an infectious enthusiasm that leaves one smiling throughout.

This, friends, is how you do a Bond movie.  Ten out of ten – highest marks all around.

Goldfinger is rated PG.  This film is quite tame by today’s standards; Bond romances a girl in a bikini, as well as several others who show less skin.  Several deaths occur, though all are bloodless, and most occur off-screen.  There is little if any objectionable language present, though we do have “Pussy Galore” named several times with all the innuendo you’d expect.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Thunderball (1965) on April 7, 2013!

From Russia with Love (1963)

From Russia with Love begins with a daring move – in the franchise’s first pre-credits sequence (establishing a trend of these “mini-movies”), James Bond is assassinated.  After a quick turnabout, it’s revealed that “Bond” was only an impersonator in a mask, part of an elaborate training exercise to prepare one man to kill another.  As hooks go, you don’t get much better, so it’s a fitting opener to one of the franchise’s best.

This pre-credits sequence establishes some of the film’s confidence because even though there’s only been one other movie, it’s already plausible that James Bond is dangerous enough to necessitate an entire organization dedicated to his assassination.  Fleming’s book is among the best, as well, because it both makes this plot believable as well as feasible; there are moments in the book when it seems the plot might actually succeed (never mind the fact that Fleming wanted to be done with Bond after writing From Russia with Love, like Doyle with “The Final Problem”).  The film, though, doesn’t go that route; Sean Connery is still super-cool as the world’s greatest special agent, and we never suspect the danger is more than he can handle.

Instead, the film demonstrates how well-prepared Bond is for this latest threat:  armed with a multifunctional satchel (courtesy of Desmond Llewellyn, debuting as Q) that would make Mary Poppins envious, Bond decides to spring what he knows is a trap in search of the bait – a Soviet decoding machine guarded by Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi).  What Bond doesn’t know is that the trap is part of SPECTRE’s elaborate plot for revenge, and that assassin Red Grant (Robert Shaw) and Colonel Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) are following his every move...

Maybe even more than Dr. No, you can really see the filmmakers setting tonal precedents for the rest of the franchise:  the silent killer, the sexless crony (Lenya is perfect in this role), the unseen puppetmaster stroking a cat.  For a film that focuses a great deal on its villains – Bond doesn’t appear for 20 minutes, doppelganger notwithstanding – From Russia with Love has a great cast doing exceptional work, establishing archetypes that would be parodied for decades to come.

What is less convincing, unfortunately, is the set of protagonists.  Obviously, I’ve praised Connery’s work as 007, which is as convincing and entertaining at ever.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t do terribly much for the first half of the film, left to stand around as a spectator as the other characters fill in exposition for him and wait for things to happen.  The second half, though, is classic Bond, with chase scenes and explosions and gunfights galore, resulting in a tense and claustrophobic classic confrontation aboard the Orient Express.  (A more even treatment of Bond would be found in the series’ next outing.)

As Tatiana Romanova, Bianchi is attractive – one of the only requirements for a Bond girl – though the poor dubbing of her voice, as well as the mild confusion over what her role in the plot truly is, results in a bit of an uneven characterization; it’s never really clear (or, perhaps, it’s just badly performed) whether her love for Bond is genuine or a performance.  More compelling, though, is Pedro Armendáriz’s gregarious turn as Bond’s Turkish liaison Kerim Bey.  Sans Felix Leiter, Kerim Bey is a great ally for Bond, friendly in peace and a potent partner when danger’s afoot.  The sense of mutual admiration and camaraderie between the two redeems any issue with Tatiana, as does the overshadowing effect of the potent villains in the film.

The whole of From Russia with Love is truly greater than the sum of its parts, though, because all the negative points the film scores with Bond’s inaction and Tatiana’s empty presence are outweighed by the generally rousing sense of adventure one gets throughout the film.  There are many classic set pieces here and nods toward the tongue-in-cheek style we’ve come to appreciate in the franchise.  It’s not without reason that the first three Bond films are regarded as the perfect trifecta, and I couldn’t be more excited to see that “James Bond will return” teaser at the end of the credits.

From Russia with Love is rated PG.  There is minimal blood, though a few fight scenes and dead bodies are seen.  Bond is depicted in bed with one woman, whose nude silhouette is glimpsed obliquely, and a riverside picnic features both lovers in period bathing suits; faint-of-heart viewers may be scandalized by two scenes of belly dancers. 

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Goldfinger (1964), on March 7, 2013!

Dr. No (1962)

Revisiting Dr. No in a post-Skyfall world gives us a better sense of what the latter film is trying to restore to the mythos, and though I’m not convinced modern audiences would go for it, I say bring it on.

Dr. No introduces us to (Bond,) James Bond (Sean Connery), MI6’s best agent, who travels to Jamaica after the murder of a British diplomat and his assistant.  Bond quickly learns that the diplomat was investigating the titular doctor (Joseph Wiseman), who reclusively inhabits the mysterious island Crab Key amid rumors of a scheme to topple American lunar rockets.  But after making his way to Crab Key, Bond meets Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), a woman who needs saving almost as much as Bond himself does.

I wonder if director Terence Young was cognizant of how many precedents he was setting with the film; the end credits don’t read “James Bond Will Return,” leading me to suspect that franchising wasn’t a top priority – and for good measure.  The film’s self-contained nature works, introducing all of its principals economically (even in spite of a hasty reference to a larger enemy force).  After fifty years and umpteen viewings, the first intonation of “Bond, James Bond” remains instantly iconic and transcendently concise, telling us everything we need to know about the cool customer who’s arguably one of the top five good guys of all fiction.  The omnipresence of Monty Norman’s inimitable theme tune (you’re humming it now, I’m sure) solidifies its connection with this character’s every move.  And Connery, though not quite the Bond of Ian Fleming’s book series, inhabits the role to the hilt, able to handle flirting with Miss Moneypenny while convincingly delivering deadpan death threats to his foes.

As that foe, Wiseman sets the bar for the deranged Bond villain whose physical deformity (here, metallic hands) matches his insatiable insanity, an almost Dickensian move which unites psychological interiority with physical appearance.  His scenes are few, but Wiseman’s stern soft-spokenness sets Dr. No up as a man who is feared beyond his physical abilities.  His treasure room, too, in which he meets Bond, establishes his grand theatricality – another Bond villain hallmark – which Wiseman does well to underplay.  It’s surprising that he’s on screen for less than twenty minutes in a film which bears his name, but he shoulders the role well.

Andress, however, is disappointing, in part because her voice is distractingly overdubbed but more so because she doesn’t do much at all in a film dominated by such compelling leads.  I know that complaining about character development for a Bond girl is a little like chiding a ring for not being a bracelet, but I’ve been spoiled by later entries that do more with the female lead than just strap a bikini on her and set her a-snoggin’.  It doesn’t help that Andress’s dubbing exposes the basic emotionlessness of her performance; she describes an apparent rape with the same monotone ennui as she details her meticulous revenge, never convincing the audience that she’s capable of either.

What’s striking about Dr. No on this latest rewatch is how carefully and methodically everything unfolds.  There are actual clues, suspicions, and improvisations on the part of the Bond character.  He doesn’t enter the film with everything figured out; indeed, he’s a bit of a cipher, playing blank and allowing the drama to unfold around him as he pursues a resolution.  Of course, it helps that M (Bernard Lee) tells Bond most of what he needs to know at the beginning, but this is not a Bond movie that sketches out its players immediately.  Instead, the film includes as much deduction as action sequences, a strength of the film in light of the dated special effects.  I suspect, though, that modern audiences might get bored with a Bond film where Bond is more inscrutable than active.  I for one think it’s a credit to the filmmakers that the world they create is compelling enough to hold my attention when Bond isn’t doing anything.

As the first Bond film, it’s almost too easy to say that Dr. No is an instant classic, a trendsetter, and a first-rate spy film.  But it is.  With the franchise’s darkest hours ahead of me in the coming months, it’s good to revisit the original incarnation of the character and remind myself how they were made back in the good old days.  (They were made, of course, shaken but not stirred.)

Dr. No is rated PG.  There are a few deaths and fight scenes, though blood is only seen thrice.  Bond kisses and canoodles with many women (setting that famous precedent), though nothing in the film ever rises above the level of “tame by today’s standards.”

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of From Russia With Love (1963), on February 7, 2013!