Screen Vistas: BONDATHON: THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

After The Man With the Golden Gun, the Bond series got into a spot of bother. Co-producer Harry Saltzman’s bankruptcy forced him to give up his shares of the franchise. The ensuing delay also meant the loss of director Guy Hamilton and the script he was developing with John Landis (The Blues Brothers). So it was that Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, now the sole producer on the franchise, settled on frequent Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum (with help from Christopher Wood) and director Lewis Gilbert (You Only Live Twice) to develop and direct what would ultimately become one of the best films of the series, The Spy Who Loved Me.

In the prologue we learn that both the British and Russians have mysteriously lost a nuclear submarine. We then find Bond (still Roger Moore) in a cabin in the Austrian mountains with his latest conquest. He gets called in by M (Bernard Lee) and on his way down the mountain he gets involved in a gigantic ski chase with Russian agents culminating in a heart-stopping jump off a cliff.

Bond’s investigation into who’s absconded with Her Majesty’s submarine takes him to Egypt, where his contacts are being murdered by a metal toothed heanchman named Jaws (Richard Kiel). While Bond scrambles over the Pyramids trying to figure out who’s behind it all, he finds himself competing with Soviet super-spy Major Amasova (Barbara Bach), also known as agent XXX. Eventually 007 and XXX team up and link the stolen submarines to an industrialist named Stromberg (Curd Jürgans). Stromberg is one of those themed villains we often get in these movies, this guy loves the ocean and plans to use the submarines for nefarious aquatic based purposes.

After three substandard Bond films in a row, it's amazing how much this film gets right. Action is fluid and dynamic. In addition to that great ski chase, we also get our first proper Bond gadget car since Goldfinger. This one is a Lotus Esprit that transforms into a submarine at the push of a button. Other great images include Jaws, who's Karloff like presence is used to often surreal effect by Gilbert, often showing us just segments of him (an arm, a shoulder) to emphasize his size and power while his victim is frozen in fear. It's a shame that for other scenes Gilbert reverts to a more traditional style of photographing the character as it deflates his effectiveness as a villain.

The true standout is the climactic raid on Stromberg's supertanker. Ken Adam's set was so huge that it necessitated the construction of an entire new sound stage. But where other Bond films have gotten lost when dealing with sets of this scale, Spy keeps it practical. It's designed around a script that calls for a lot of shifting plot objectives that allows the action to fill up the giant space organically.

Flat Fact: Stanley Kubrick secretly advised as how to light this set.

The score by Melvin Hamlisch lives up to all the acclaim. His take on the Bond Theme may be a bit too funky for modern audiences but other stretches of the score are quite playful (like a quotation of the Lawrence of Arabia theme). Most of all, his title song Nobody Does It Better, sung by Carly Simon, is easily one of the best songs in the cannon. It's one of those times that the song is much more sophisticated than the film it's supporting, so good that it makes up for Maurice Binder’s outrageously goofy title sequence with people bouncing off trampolines and doing nude gymnastics on giant guns.

The biggest problem with the Moore-era films so far has been tone. Part of the issue is Moore himself. Connery played his Bond as a dark, sadistic anti-hero which suited the material. By contrast, Moore's Bond is a goody two-shoes who makes lots of bad jokes and is visibly uncomfortable with the darker side of his role. You'd think that would lead to the films laying off the violence but instead they amp it up, trying to defuse it with broad comedy which just makes the violence that more unpalatable. In Spy however, Gilbert and Co. are able to avoid most of the Moore-era traps by toning down the quips to a reasonable level and taking out most of the sadism, allowing Moore to play to his strengths without overindulging them.

The trend of not antagonizing the Russians by portraying them as villains continues here in the implementation of the Bond girl. I like the idea that there’s a female Russian equivalent of Bond complete with her own version of M running around somewhere. Also introducing her in bed with her latest conquest is a nice touch that effectively references the way that Bond himself is often introduced. It's also nice to see a Bond girl who's strong, capable and not tripping all over herself. Their relationship develops tension when we learn that one of the men Bond killed in the prologue was XXX’s greatest love. This culminates in a scene where Bond is forced to admit that he does, in fact, kill real human beings, giving a brief moment of depth and maturity to a franchise that has until this point treated all life, and especially those of women, as entirely disposable . It doesn’t matter that the issue is smoothed over far too easily or that Barbara Bach can't really act. It’s a smartly written character and it’s the most grown up subplot the series has dealt so far and a perfect antidote to the forced camp of Golden Gun.

The Spy Who Loved Me is a blast. Moore still isn't Connery, but the script is so inventive that it doesn't matter much. This film never became a transcendent icon onto itself the way that the early films did, but it's not for lack of trying. That effort makes this easily the most enjoyable Bond since Goldfinger.

Grade: A-

Saturday, August 18, 2012

BONDATHON: THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

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