Screen Vistas: BONDATHON: LIVE AND LET DIE

They had tried this before, this recasting of Bond. George Lazenby filled out the tux in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the most ambitious and unusual film in the series. But Lazenby didn’t work. Not because he was a bad actor, but because he was forced to imitate Connery, in look and manner. It didn’t work. The answer to how you replace an iconic actor is that you don’t try to replace him at all. For an audience to accept a new Bond, he would have to be different enough from Connery to be able to grow into an icon in his own right. As a result Roger Moore was cast for 1973’s Live and Let Die, the most trashy and cartoonish entry in the series yet.

The big problem with the last entry, apart from a visibly bored Connery, was the lack of a clear villain or threat worthy of James Bond. Live and Let Die does better in this regard. Several British agents have been killed and MI-6 feels that it might be connected to Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), the prime minister to a small Caribbean Island. Bond heads to New York where he sees the United Nations before heading to Harlem and meeting a bunch of Blaxploitation stereotypes and Kananga’s woman/virginal Tarot card reader Solitare (Donna Summers). Later in his travels, he is joined by Rosie (Gloria Hendly), cinema’s most incompetent CIA agent ever (she doesn’t even know how to take off a gun’s safety catch). Rosie screams and has nervous fits while Bond seduces Solitare and uncovers Kananga’s plans to monopolize the world’s heroin supply.

Roger Moore is, whatever you think of him, a very firm contrast to Connery. While Connery came off as rough and a working class secret agent, Moore comes off as slick and privileged. They both represented old imperialism, but Roger Moore does it much more stereotypically. He’s an Englishman first, James Bond second. A concerted effort was made to differentiate him from Connery, he doesn't drink martinis and as a presence, he’s a softer, goofier Bond. The shift towards broader comedy can't be blamed solely on Moore, the trend had started in earnest with Diamonds Are Forever (remember that elephant gambling scene?) and could arguably be traced back further, but Moore’s facility with the jokes helps put the trend into overdrive and is indicative of many franchises that grow sillier as time goes on (Superman, the first Batman series). Moore's 007 doesn't miss one opportunity to crack a joke or make a pun. Nothing in this film can be taken seriously even for a second.

This extends to the action scenes which are really, truly bizarre. In one scene Bond hops across the back of several alligators to safety. There's also a 12 minute boat chase that focuses not on Bond or his pursuers, but on a hillbilly cop (Clifton James). The cop, who we've never met before in the film, spends most of the chase pursuing, but never quite catching up to, the boat chase. Oh, and one character is dispatched by being inflated like a balloon. Yes, you read that right.

These ridiculous gimmicks are not fantastic, but are ultimately for the best because they soften the movie’s pulpier elements, which are really racist. The books, and to a lesser extent the films, have always been very pro-imperialist and Live and Let Die is one of the most naked examples of this. Kananga is the prime minister from San Monique, a fictional country standing in for any number of Caribbean colonies that the British used to own (particularly Jamaica), and so the entire plot could be seen as 'Bond keeping the old colony in line.' But the problem isn’t that the film has ethnic villains, it’s that it has so many of them. It’s possible that the producers had seen Shaft and decided they wanted to exploit that audience but didn’t understand that Blaxploitation was about empowering the community by letting black audiences see themselves as anti-establishment heroes, not as thugs to be defeated by Whitey. As a result, the film ends up perfectly reflecting the worst fears of the white establishment by showing a world where seemingly the entire black population of the Northern Hemisphere are in on the evil scheme. There are times where the film almost feels like James Bond vs. Black People.

In this scene Kananga hires half of New Orleans to kill one man.

Somewhat mitigating the choice of exclusively black villains is Kananga himself. He’s probably the smartest, most fully realized villain in the series so far. For the first time in eight films I was nodding my head while the villain explained his evil plan and thinking, “Yes, that could actually work. Bravo sir!” Now he does not have the wherewithal to actually kill Bond when he has the chance (this is a Bond film after all), but still, a plausible plan is a rarity for these films. He also has an interesting relationship with Solitaire. The Bond series has made it a tradition of having Bond seducing the villain’s woman as a symbol of his masculinity surpassing that of all other men. But she isn’t like the other women in that she is a virgin. Kananga keeps her virginity intact because it is the source of her psychic powers. The link between virginity and magical power is a standard mythological trope but its inclusion in a series built on the frankness of the sexual revolution is interesting to say the least. It also shifts the light in which we see the characters. Whatever Kananga’s anterior motives are, he does try and protect Solitaire’s virtue. Also, Bond’s seduction of Solitaire is a bit troubling because Bond always has ulterior motives when seducing women and also he explicitly tricks her into the deed by playing on her superstitions. Despite his reputation, Bond isn’t a very classy guy.

"I'm just using you to get to someone else. Wait, why are you crying woman?"

So what’s good about the film? Well, the song by Paul McCartney and Wings is magnificent. As is the opening title sequence which is easily Maurice Binder’s best since Dr. No, while has a lot of the standard Bond credit tropes, but he also gives us this flaming skull image which is one of the strongest in the Bond series.

Despite all the misguided racial politics which, let’s face it are in a lot of these films, Live and Let Die is kind of enjoyable. The camp aspects of the film may not be according to Hoyle Bond, but they work. This isn't a good film, but at least it's never boring and that's more than I can say for Diamonds are Forever.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

BONDATHON: LIVE AND LET DIE

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