In May, the moviegoer’s fancy turns wistfully to the sustained adrenalin rush. It’s an appropriate time, then, to revisit the granddaddy of modern action/adventure movies:

Goldfinger (1964)

running time: 1 hr., 52 m. / original studio: United Artists

produced by: Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli

directed by Guy Hamilton; screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn, from novel by Ian Fleming; director of photography, Ted Moore; edited by Peter Hunt; music by John Barry

with: Sean Connery (James Bond), Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore), Gert Fröbe (Auric Goldfinger), Harold Sakata (Oddjob), Shirley Eaton (Jill Masterson)

Woman: My name is Pussy Galore.

Bond: I must be dreaming.

Visually dazzling, outlandishly funny, jazzy, sexy and unceasingly inventive, Goldfinger was the third film in the James Bond series and it remains the best. It isn’t a great movie in the Citizen Kane/Lawrence of Arabia/Godfather sense, but it is a classic guilty pleasure and a landmark film from a turbulent decade, bursting with a period style and panache that changed moviemaking and moviegoing in ways which are still with us, for better and for worse. For instance: there had been many blockbuster movies before, single films that somehow hit the right chords with the paying audience, but Goldfinger turned the Bond movies into the first blockbuster franchise, a studio chief’s wet dream, a brand name that was guaranteed to pack houses every time.

That’s one way to look at it. Another would be: Hey, wow, someone made an entertainment packed with audacity, speed and creative energy in just the right doses. Looks hard, but it might be possible again.

Sometimes it is, but in a collaborative art form no one gets to choose when that will be.

*         *       *      *

Bond: Do you expect me to talk?

Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

Goldfinger is often identified as the Bond entry that established the series formula, but I’ve always thought that was a little too glib, a way of not giving the film or its two predecessors their due. The creators of the Bond Phenomenon, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, already had a formula going: they were adapting Ian Fleming’s most cinematic books first, the ones with a clear, St.-George-Versus-the-Dragon through line, and they would worry about the darker, more problematic books later.

But simply by choosing to adapt Fleming for the movies, Broccoli and Saltzman had a built-in formula, the Thriller-as-Game (see Notes): Bond makes move, puts Dragon in check, Dragon countermoves and so on, the stakes raised in each encounter, each one a little more deadly, until the final struggle in which Bond checkmates the Dragon. Fade out in the heroine’s arms. A world of variations are possible within this framework by adding exotic locales to the cocktail, a little esoteric crime lore, some fetishistic trivia and a touch of nightmare imagery.

By the time of Goldfinger, the Broccoli-Saltzman team had produced two extremely entertaining movies that aced the formula on modest budgets and cultivated an expanding audience, Dr. No (1962) and From Russia With Love (1963). Directed by Terence Young, a veteran filmmaker of impeccable taste and great personal style, these first two films also used Fleming’s strategy of beginning a tale in contemporary reality and moving toward a strange and wondrous, mythical underworld. The Young films made Bond palatable for the cinema by carefully sanitizing his political dimensions, emphasizing the novels’ movie serial aspects, and occasionally bringing in a touch of Flemingesque, winking absurdity.

Enter Guy Hamilton, who had been on a short list of directors Broccoli and Saltzman wanted to try from the beginning. Hamilton was adamant that his Bond movie would not take itself too seriously. “Let’s have fun!” became his constantly repeated mantra to cast and crew, and by “fun” he meant, “Let’s ratchet up the absurdity, the double-entendre, the fantasy and the tongue-in-cheek.” Hamilton was instinctively keyed into a growing self-consciousness in the culture, he didn’t care about carefully linking Bond World with reality, and most important, he knew the audience didn’t either.

What he cared about was how it looked.

Dancer: (eyeing gun in holster) Why do you always wear that thing?

Bond: I have a slight…inferiority complex.

From its preposterous opening shot, in which a paddling duck turns out to be a decoy on the cap of Bond’s wet suit, to its final reprise of images from the opening titles, Goldfinger shimmers and glows, photographed almost exclusively in myth-making low angles and sensuous camera moves, suffused with yellow light, its second half filled with ravishing sets dictated by the plot (rather than vice versa). It is a movie that never lets you forget you’re watching a movie and still it’s a gleaming, non-stop thrill machine of sudden curves, wild plunges in and out of the abyss and constant reversals of expectation.

The “pre-credits” sequence, a teaser device which had been tried briefly in the previous film, now becomes a full bore, five minute mini-Bond film all its own, an exercise in action-packed titillation for its own sake with no connection to the rest of the film except as a bold overture stating Bond World aesthetics — motion, motion, outrageous visual pun, big explosion, femme fatale in bathtub, loud fight with thug, clever dispatch of thug (by electrocution), sardonic punch line. “Shocking,” Bond quips, recovering easily from betrayal and near death while portending the demise of a later villain. “Positively shocking.”

Before the startled laughter has died, a blast of music launches John Barry’s brassy, erotic title tune, and the most economical, elegantly imagined credits sequence in the Bond canon: the film’s primary symbol, a beautiful golden woman, glides across the screen in various poses while images from the film and its immediate predecessor are projected across her body to a pulsating beat, linking everything in the film with sex, gold and sudden death: the main characters, fast cars, golf, neon nightlife, moviegoing itself, and the way Sean Connery walks across a room.

After such an opening movement, running eight minutes total, who needs a real movie? But now the viewer has been dropped head first into Bond World, where anything can happen. Partly because of Guy Hamilton’s free-spirited approach to the material, partly because everyone else connected with the production had been primed by experience, and partly because of Goldfinger’s moment in time, the movie unfolds gloriously on every level, each scene falling into place as if it was inevitable.

The screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn is the only film adaptation of Fleming that actually improves on one of the books, tightening a casually paced novel to roller-coaster specifications, adding a touch of science fiction here and there whenever possible. Thus, the novel’s giant buzz saw threatening Bond with dismemberment becomes a sleek, pre-Star Trek laser beam; a lightly equipped Aston Martin becomes a suped-up, gadget-laden sports car, which is so much fun to watch no one notices it would be impossible to load anything but a Sherman tank with all that stuff; and the flimsiest project Fleming ever gave to a Bond villain, an unworkable scheme to steal the gold from Fort Knox with a freight train, suddenly becomes the best, a plot to contaminate the U.S. gold supply with radioactivity, causing global economic chaos and a permanent increase in the value of Goldfinger’s own stockpile.

Sean Connery is at his most charismatic and debonair in Goldfinger, perfecting a characterization that made him the highest paid actor of the decade and a household name around the world. Connery’s Bond has remained the only true Bond for generations of fans because he was able to play the character’s many contradictions as if they made sense: he’s both a gentleman and a cad, a deadly assassin with a strict moral code, a brutal street fighter who also cares about his appearance. Most importantly, Connery knows when Bond should be vulnerable, when he should sweat a little to keep our sympathy and identification, as in this film’s harrowing finale, where he is trapped inside Fort Knox with a ticking nuclear bomb and no idea how to stop it.

The supporting ensemble is especially good for a Bond extravaganza. Gert Fröbe (pronounced Froh-ba) gives a wonderful performance as the most perfectly realized of the series’ villains, an unforgettable, genial madman whose heart pumps ice water. Fröbe was a German making his first film in English, he learned all his lines phonetically, and his dialogue was eventually dubbed over (by actor Michael Collins), making his wise and funny portrayal all the more amazing. Meanwhile, the casting of Honor Blackman and Shirley Eaton marks the first time experienced actresses portrayed Bond women, an innovation lending dramatic authority to the film, though sadly it never became an on-going policy.

Goldfinger: This is gold, Mr. Bond. All my life I’ve been in love with its color, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock.

Goldfinger was such a smash hit in its first several weeks of release that it is still, forty years later, one of the fastest grossing films of all time, outstripping the expectations of everyone associated with the production. It wound up taking in seven times its negative cost in the U.S. alone, and eighteen times its negative cost around the world (a Bond film that did the same thing today would gross nearly two billion dollars).

The James Bond cultural virus exploded with this film, unleashing a storm of merchandising in everything from toy attaché cases for the boys to “007 After Shave” for Dad. Spy novels and television shows, and movies either spoofing the Bond phenomenon or critiquing it, became a regular part of entertainment fare for the rest of the decade. The world of James Bond that solidified in this film towered over the cultural landscape, so that it was nearly impossible to make an action movie that was not in its shadow.

Unfortunately, that rule included Goldfinger’s sequels. Though the next film Thunderball (1965) grossed even more and was the top box-office attraction in the U.S. the following year, it was a lumbering affair by comparison, and its follow-up You Only Live Twice (1967) was the first in the series to abandon all but the title and location of a Fleming book. Here was the true Bond Movie Formula unveiled at last, a collection of interchangeable set pieces with a generic plot (that has been recycled at least twice!), unimaginative villains and dim-witted heroine clones, a traveling three ring circus with Bond as the lead clown. And it made a mint anyway.

But we’ll always have Goldfinger: John Barry’s greatest dramatic score for the series (out of an even dozen), working marvelous variations on his famous title tune, from lush romanticism to white-knuckle suspense; Ted Moore’s cinematography has a dreamlike radiance, especially whenever his lens gets near gold; and the hyperkinetic editing by Peter Hunt influenced a generation of moviemakers.

Indelible highlights not mentioned above: all of the dialogue (except that ill-advised crack about the Beatles); the discovery of Jill Masterson’s body, a quintessential Bond image mixing glamour and dread; Q’s briefing on the Aston Martin; the brilliant golf match; Goldfinger’s eloquent address to the gangsters; and the wholly invented Fort Knox set, designed by Ken Adam.

NOTES:

THE FIRST THING YOU SEE: The “Gun Barrel Logo” that opens every Bond movie, in which a silhouette of 007 appears in an enemy’s sights and suddenly fires at the camera, was a last minute addition to the first Bond film just a few weeks before its release. The bit became a trademark for the Broccoli-Saltzman films, but the actor playing Bond in that first version was stunt coordinator Bob Simmons; Connery did not take his place in the logo until Thunderball, a ten second sequence in which his years of dance lessons become immediately apparent. Look closely and you’ll notice that each Bond actor puts his own stamp on the pace, the walk and, especially, the sudden turn.

And speaking of doubles, the golden girl in the titles is not Shirley Eaton but the more buxom Margaret Nolan, a model who also has an early walk-on as “Dink.”

THE THRILLER-AS-GAME: I am indebted to semiologist Umberto Eco for this idea, from his chapter “Narrative Structures in Fleming” in The Role of the Reader (1984, Indiana University Press).

NICE TOUPEE: Thomas Sean Connery (b. 1930) grew up in an impoverished area of Edinburgh, Scotland and worked tirelessly to rise above that background throughout his early years. Honorably discharged from the British Navy after he developed stomach ulcers, he filled a variety of jobs before establishing himself as a character actor in his mid-twenties, including a stint as runner-up in the Mr. Universe contest. He was already losing his hair.

By the time he was auditioning for Bond, Connery was very familiar to British audiences for a wide range of television roles, among them a well-received turn as Macbeth in a BBC production of the Scottish Play. He never stopped trying to shake his Bond image even when the series was at its peak, often taking unsympathetic roles to show his range, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that it became obvious he was a star in his own right with a loyal following.

Must-see Sean Connery: From Russia With Love, of course, my second favorite Bond film by a hair; Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), The Offence (1973), John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Untouchables (his Oscar, 1987), Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990).

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Last reported to be writing a candid autobiography.

THE, UHM, LEGACY: Not all subsequent Bond films are completely without merit. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Broccoli-Saltzman’s first post-Connery effort, actually comes closer than any film in the series except From Russia With Love to capturing the Fleming ethos, a momentary lapse into real storytelling, and it has my favorite Bond woman, Diana Rigg, undoubtedly the most believable heroine to ever share the screen with 007. George Lazenby, contrary to grossly unfair reports at the time, makes a perfectly reasonable Bond if taken on his own merits. Also, he was the right age for a high performance, gentlemanly killing machine — 29.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) plays like Old Home Week, Guy Hamilton’s second stab at the franchise, and though there’s too much campy silliness taking over, Connery does an ingratiating self-parody and the film is a lot of fun, after all.

I’m not a fan of the Roger Moore kiddy matinees, but For Your Eyes Only (1981) has its good points and even I have to admit Octopussy (1983) is one darned entertaining three-ring blowout.

Timothy Dalton was an okay Bond, but he was saddled with boring scripts. Pierce Brosnan is the second best actor to take the role, in my opinion, but by the time he stepped in, Bond had endured two decades of neutering and “modernizing,” only confirming that he was a hopeless anachronism. And the scripts were just bad.

THE DVD: a splendid disc if you can find it, Goldfinger is currently on a distribution hiatus, as are all but a couple of the twenty extant Bond movies. Released in July of 2000, it’s the kind of offering that media giants now spread over two discs so they can justify an inflated price tag: outstanding extras include two commentaries, two documentaries about making the film and its subsequent cultural impact, some highly amusing, cheesy trailers from the era, and scripted radio interviews with Connery from the set.

If you must own, there are some good deals to be found from individual sellers on Amazon.com, but Netflix, bless ‘em, still offers every Bond film ever made for rent. Now may be the time to sign up.

The retail hiatus is probably due, in part, to the recent corporate takeover of MGM/UA, the last of the old Hollywood studios to go belly-up. But it is also because the films are being horded until Cubby Broccoli’s heir, Barbara, decides to stop dithering over casting and make Bond #21, Casino Royale.

NOTES UPDATE, 04/15/07: The original review had a link to a great web site called Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was the best free site for the latest in 007 news. They are now defunct, though the old site remains and has plenty of decent info.

I recently came across what looks like an interesting pay site, 007 Magazine, which is extremely well designed and maintained, if you don’t mind the £19.99 subscription fee.

The great DVD described above is the “Special Edition,” still available at Amazon for an obscenely low price.

Barker’s Classic Movies #4 was Amadeus

This entry was posted on Friday, May 20th, 2005 at 10:42 am and is filed under DVD, Eric Barker, Barker's Classics, Film. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.