DAF is no longer at the bottom of my list. More like bottom 3 or 4 - right now. Grading it objectively, and not just as a statement against Connery's bitterness toward Eon, it's not the least pleasant experience I've had in the series.
It's still a mediocre movie. It still ruins the Blofeld trilogy. Connery's acting was still bad. The Bond girls are still bad. The villain is still bad. But I like the music, scenery and a few of the campy elements. It can, at times, be an fun escapist film. And it was sort of a prototype for the Roger Moore era (which I'm grateful for).
One thing that bothers me now is how Bond was able to put up a brutal fight with Peter Franks yet doesn't even try in the "fight" with Bambi and Thumper.
But there's no point analysing this film. Put your dumb hat on and it's really quite enjoyable
One thing that bothers me now is how Bond was able to put up a brutal fight with Peter Franks yet doesn't even try in the "fight" with Bambi and Thumper.
Nah, that's just Our Man dealing with the hand he's been dealt- Franks is a serious threat to him (he could blow his cover with Tiffany) while he could easily kick the sh1t out of Bambi & Thumper, although they take him by surprise.
One thing that bothers me now is how Bond was able to put up a brutal fight with Peter Franks yet doesn't even try in the "fight" with Bambi and Thumper.
Nah, that's just Our Man dealing with the hand he's been dealt- Franks is a serious threat to him (he could blow his cover with Tiffany) while he could easily kick the sh1t out of Bambi & Thumper, although they take him by surprise.
The first kick sure. But afterwards he should've been on full alert. But anyway, I've learnt to enjoy DAF for what it is.
Watched DAF last night for the first time in probably 10 years.
Pros:
Titles
Music
Elevator Fight
Crematorium
Moon Buggy Chase
Entering the Whyte House from outside the building.
M - Plenty O'Toole
Cons:
Terrible dubbing
Dreadful Special Effects
Tiffany has heard of James Bond
Camp style throughout
Putting Bond in a pipeline to kill him
Bambi & Thumper losing the fight in the pool
Blofeld - Leiter - Wint - Kidd
Observations:
The dubbing and special effects / process work are truly dreadful. The tone of the series has changed from serious but fun to high camp. Bond does not even mention his dead wife. It looks as if SC is only here for the payday.
Conclusion:
Up to this point this is the worst cast film of the series. Charles Gray is hopeless as Blofeld and is the first time a reasonably prominent actor was recast in another prominent role - it does not work - Blofeld is not a camp character. Wint and Kidd are awful henchman even an untrained but reasonably fit person would despatch these two morons with ease. The movie has a cheap look to it and does not look in the least spectacular - the car chase is obviously staged and pretty boring compared to contemporary movies of the time like Bullitt and French Connection. There are some good scenes - the elevator fight is up there with the best fights in the entire canon and the crematorium scene is tense. I remember in the cinema the entering of the Whyte House was breathtaking but it does not look so good on the small screen. The climax is pretty dull the obvious model helicopters not helping.
On a plus side the score is classic Barry - the last time he would put together a real classic soundtrack for a Bond movie.
This has gone down a lot in my estimation and I can see this finishing quite low in my revised rankings.
CHB will return reviewing LALD soon
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I an agree with much of that CHB. Although I love Wint and Kidd as characters.
A very odd couple, the psychopathic feel, they give off. I think is very well done.
They would enjoy torturing victims.
Sadly DAF, as very much played along the " everyone's having a good time" lines.
A very funny script, but lacking in a villain with any menace, ( which Charles Gray, could
Do very well. I guess he was told to play it " light"). And few moments of tension.
The final attack is poor, with very cheap looking exploding helicopters, but given all
it's faults DAF, has a charm to it. It's very easy to watch, with many laugh out loud lines in it.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Yeah, I must admit it's comfort food Bond: not terribly good for peak performance but enjoyable. I'm never overly bothered by it's presence in the series like I am with certain others (DAD, MR et. al.)
Definitely the worst special effects in the series...they did not even try. However horrible the parasailing and Qos skyfall is, at least you could tell someone spent hours working on it
But DAF is a guilty pleasure for me, the score is a large reason why
Wint and Kidd are awful henchman even an untrained but reasonably fit person would despatch these two morons with ease.
What is so bad about Wint and Kidd? They're very successful henchmen until they try to kill Bond. They're not a threat to Bond, but they're unique characters. Most people don't expect them to be a threat (unlike Oddjob and Jaws), so nobody except Bond tries to kill them. When they try to kill Bond, Bond has an understandably easy time doing away with them.
Wint and Kidd are awful henchman even an untrained but reasonably fit person would despatch these two morons with ease.
What is so bad about Wint and Kidd? They're very successful henchmen until they try to kill Bond. They're not a threat to Bond, but they're unique characters. Most people don't expect them to be a threat (unlike Oddjob and Jaws), so nobody except Bond tries to kill them. When they try to kill Bond, Bond has an understandably easy time doing away with them.
I like the henchmen to be almost invincible like Red Grant and Oddjob - the problem was the later films didn't develop them very well (Vargas for instance) - paradoxically Wint and Kidd were developed but they were so insipid they held no threat whatsoever.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I like a mix...wouldn't want all henchmen to be invincible. Dario's a good example, very menacing even though he didn't do many evil deeds on screen (didn't even put up a good fight)....off screen is another matter
I have to agree with the OP. It's simply my least favorite of the series, and it doesn't help that Sean is so bored in the movie. Also, devolving Blofeld's character into a clown version of who he was doesn't do justice to the character.
It's also probably the least elegant movie of the series in terms of locations and sets.
John Barry score and title song.
Some of the car crashes are funny.
Klaus Hergesheimer.
Space-lasers are cool weapons.
Mr.Wint & Mr.Kidd are amusing.
Cons:
The lazy and greedy Connery making no effort whatsover, as indicated by his girth.
Cheap, tacky feel all the way through.
Nobody can really explain the plot.
Technical shoddiness the whole way through.
Dull, get-it-in-the-can-as-quick-as-possible-then-go-down-the-pub direction by Guy Hamilton.
A shocking lack of class and panache.
Blofeld in drag.
Jill St.John
Oil rig action climax is crap.
Dull, get-it-in-the-can-as-quick-as-possible-then-go-down-the-pub direction by Guy Hamilton.
That's why I dislike his films, yes GF included. They have some of the best moments in the series which I'm happy to watch separately from the rest of the movie
Forgive me for re-posting below my old post on DAF (with a slight revision). Although it's not arranged under 'Pros' and 'Cons' subheadings, I say what I like about the film - its 'Pros' - and challenge some of the most commonplace criticisms or 'Cons':
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
I fell in love with DAF when I saw it as a kid, at the age of eight, in a listed-building 30s cinema packed out during the film's UK general release in 1972. I remember that, during the main title sequence, lights were projected onto a revolving ‘disco’ glitterball so that the screen and cinema interior were dazzled with diamond-like reflections.
The film has worked its magic for me ever since, and I now believe it to be a masterpiece of camp. Connery's relaxed interpretation of Bond as a maturing, sexy comedian is one of his most entertaining... a more accomplished performance in the role than any since GF. Sure, there are holes in the plot, but there's also a knowing wit in the screenplay which simultaneously celebrates and debunks Connery-AS-Bond's superstardom: audiences at the time really 'got' that and responded to it.
Charles Gray's louche turn as Blofeld blends with the overall tone of the film: his camp persona brings amusing new meaning to the trope of the character's attachment to his Persian pussy cat. (Blofeld never shares screen time with Wint and Kidd, but one wonders whether there may have been a queer 'casting couch' element to his recruitment of them as assassins. Witness Gray's other camp role in the series, as Henderson in YOLT, with his purring confession that he gets Russian vodka "from the doorman at the Russian embassy... amongst certain other things": the smutty implication is that the "other things" include sexual favours from the doorman as well as secret Soviet files. Yet one has to wonder, too, whether Marie of DAF's PTS has supplied Gray's Blofeld with 'personal services' of some kind or other, and clearly he's an admirer of Tiffany's "cheeks"!)
Other highlights? John Barry brilliantly complements DAF's location work with one of his most evocative soundtracks, imbuing Amsterdam with a sense of prettiness and Vegas with razzamatazz, while realising in his action cues a musical sense of "precariousness glorified" (to quote Pauline Kael's contemporary review of the film). DAF can be edgy: occasional moments of startling violence (historically cut from many TV broadcasts) and a slant towards morbid humour and the bizarre lend the film a frisson which is often overlooked.
A criticism frequently levelled at DAF is that it isn't, like FRWL, a taut thriller, and that its climax is relatively lame. John Brosnan was publishing such complaints as early as 1972, in his book 'James Bond In The Cinema': "there is no real sense of menace in the film ... [and it] has a very weak squib of an ending when one compares it to the climaxes of DN, GF, YOLT, and OHMSS." DAF admittedly has a loose structure with a token plot. While the oil rig location is impressive, it's also undeniable that the film's climax is on a smaller scale than in some previous Bonds, and that some of it is played for laughs. But DAF doesn't want to be a taut thriller. Nor could it hope to expand in its finale on the extravagance of YOLT's Pinewood volcano set.
Should DAF have taken a sober direction and attempted to be more faithful to Fleming's novel of the same title? I think it was too late for that. A true adaptation of 'Diamonds Are Forever' - assimilating its rather downbeat meditations on mortality, its fifties mise-en-scene and the psychological tangle of Bond's relationship with Tiffany - would have needed to have been Hitchcockian in style, and made during Terence Young's early Bond tenure, probably as a companion film to FRWL and certainly before the horse bolted with GF in terms of outlandish fantasy and spectacle.
So what is DAF trying to do? In 'The James Bond Man: The Films Of Sean Connery' (1983), Andrew Rissik puts his finger on it. He eloquently places the film in the specific pop-cultural context of the late 60s/early 70s, comparing its style with other decadent movies of the time: "[They conveyed] a sense of decaying Carnaby Street glamour combined with an idea of the movie as a pictorial and psychological game: they dealt in weird, contorted relationships between pictorially interesting groups of people."
If DAF's appeal is partly to do with visual glamour it's also to do with verbal wit. DAF is often criticised for lacking a sense of danger, but the ostensible menace of Blofeld's latest bid for world domination is not where the film's conflict drama lies: rather, it's in the game of witty one-upmanship played between Connery's Bond, a graceful old pro, and the assortment of friends and foes who cross paths with him, assail him and try to debunk him. It's a 70s comedy of manners, with all the elements of the Bond genre at its disposal as points of reference during the repartee and banter - in the same way that LTK (my other favourite Bond film) is an 80s crime/revenge drama with a legacy of Bond stock from which to draw to give it its context. As light comedy, DAF is a movie I'd like to watch in a double-bill with, let's say, 'Plaza Suite' (1971), rather than with any serious crime or action movie of the same vintage. In fact, I can easily see DAF's humorous, thick set Sean Connery going back-to-back with a wisecracking Walter Matthau!
How does this work in practice? Part way through the film Bond, posing as Peter Franks, pretends to be in mourning: he accompanies the body of a man he claims to have been his brother on a flight from Holland to Los Angeles. Feigning grief, Bond explains to the Lufthansa captain at the airport that “We were inseparable.” The deceased man is, in fact, the real Franks - a diamond smuggler killed by Bond before he was able to contact his Amsterdam connection, Tiffany. Bond is on a mission to follow the smugglers’ pipeline to America, having concealed the diamonds in Franks’ corpse to get past customs. Played with knowing irony by Connery, Bond’s claim to have had an “inseparable” relationship with a man whose identity he’s assumed hints at a meaning between the lines: it’s an oblique joke about the bond between the actor himself and the role, 007, which had made him a star.
In 1967, the publicity posters for YOLT had loudly insisted: “Sean Connery IS James Bond”. This proclamation of an “inseparable” connection between actor and role was, at the time, partly a strategy for undermining Charles K. Feldman’s spoof movie Casino Royale, which boasted a number of rival James Bonds; it was also testament to Connery’s phenomenal popularity as 007 at the height of Sixties Bondmania. Yet Eon Productions had to weather re-casting the lead for their own next Bond film, OHMSS. Connery had refused to return to the series for this one, having grown frustrated with the media frenzy surrounding 007 and the length of time it took to complete shooting the Bond movies. Audiences missed him as Bond: his absence put his replacement, George Lazenby, at a disadvantage from the outset, irrespective of any shortcomings in the newcomer’s performance; box office returns for OHMSS were slow. Is it too much of a stretch to infer a cheeky, revisionist parallel between the moonwalk technician's exasperation with Bond's antics at the Tectronics facility and the frustrations that the producers had experienced with Lazenby in the preceding film? - "What *is* this? Amateur night? Stop him, Harry!"
Back with a vengeance in DAF, Connery’s Bond immediately reasserts his machismo: he apparently kills off his arch-enemy Blofeld at the climax of a violent pre-credits sequence. When he returns to his official duties, M introduces him to an expert on diamonds, Sir Donald Munger, who remarks, “You've been on holiday, I understand. Relaxing, I hope?” Bond replies, “Hardly relaxing, but most satisfying.” On the surface, Bond is referring to his seemingly successful personal hunt for Blofeld, but these lines are also an in-joke about the fact that Connery had taken a “holiday” from the Bond series since YOLT. The break had been busy but “satisfying” for Connery, as he'd used the opportunity to focus on roles in other movies (Shalako, The Molly Maguires, The Red Tent and The Anderson Tapes. See James Chapman, 'Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of The James Bond Films').
DAF exudes a sense of how special it is to have its star, Sean Connery, back in action as Bond. The image of Connery rising atop the scenic elevator for The Starlight Lounge of The Whyte House - carnation in lapel; flanked by neon-lit, diamond-shaped star decorations - is a glitzy assertion of his superstardom in ascendancy: “priceless”, but debunked at the end of the ride by his need to duck to avoid being crushed. If DAF delights in Connery’s return, the publicity posters could make no pretense, this time, of an absolute equation of identities between actor and role. The link having once been severed, in OHMSS, it was now a more conventional case of billing “Sean Connery AS James Bond [my capitals]” - a reversion to the phrasing used in the early Sixties, prior to YOLT. As M puts it, rolling his eyes, “We do function in your absence, Commander.” This plays like a defensive message on behalf of the producers: the Bond franchise had got by without Connery, albeit not as successfully.
This lends a mischievous meaning to Connery’s exchange with Tiffany after the demise of Peter Franks. Bond dupes her by switching wallets with the dead smuggler. She exclaims “You've just killed James Bond!” He replies, with a twinkle in his eye, “Is that who it was? Well, it just goes to show - no one's indestructible!” Again, Connery is playing himself playing Bond – comically acknowledging a sense in which 007 has become newly vulnerable. Aware of his reputation as ‘the real James Bond’, Connery could be joking, here, about the potentially fatal effect on the franchise which his departure might cause beyond this one-off return for the film in hand (“no one’s indestructible!”). The joke is also, obliquely, about "the other fella" George Lazenby’s short-lived, less successful tenure as Bond in OHMSS (“Is that who it was?”).
Thus writer Tom Mankiewicz was clever and sly enough to incorporate to his screenplay reflexive in-jokes and semi-jokes about Connery's decoupled/recoupled relationship with the Bond franchise as its star. For his part, Connery, who said he approved of the script, improved his performance to something considerably more polished than his previous bored plod through YOLT. M is perhaps again speaking for the producers when he says, “The least we can expect from you now is some plain, solid work!” Arguably, the only part of DAF in which Connery sags is during the short but pedestrian expository scenes with Willard Whyte and the CIA agents as they work out Blofeld’s plot; otherwise, he gives a light but nuanced, engaging performance.
Rising from a coffin at Morton Slumber’s funeral parlour, Bond sums up his deal with the crooks, Slumber and Shady Tree: “You get me the real money, and I'll bring you the real diamonds.” If the “real diamonds” represent, at some level, the sparkling success of Connery's on-screen presence as Bond, the proven asset of his “incomparable charm”, it’s tempting to read this money-for-diamonds line as a cheeky allusion to the actor’s contractual negotiations with the producers and United Artists for a substantial reward to return to the franchise - especially since Cubby Broccoli, like the exasperated Slumber, had a background in the funeral business as a coffin-maker. With all his pulling power as Bond, Connery was lured back for DAF only after unprecedented financial incentives, including a million dollars which he donated to the Scottish International Education Trust. Exercised by the enormous cost of signing Connery for just one more Bond movie, the money men might also have shared the frustration of Blofeld as he refers to Bond’s escapades of the pre-credits sequence: “All that time and expense - just to provide you with one mock-heroic moment!”
Mankiewicz’s comic emphasis on the fact that Connery’s Bond is, after all, a performed role, not a necessary fact of nature, fits neatly within his broader theme of artifice in DAF. Phoniness is evident in a range of elements: from cloned (and drag artist) Blofelds, to a pretend girl-to-gorilla transformation for the kids in ‘Circus, Circus’; from a ludicrous ‘zero gravity’ simulation at Whyte’s space research center (given the lie by Bond's sprint across the fabricated moonscape), to a red-herring pussy cat and a fake bombe surprise dessert; from “Felix Leiter, you old fraud,” to Bond's own false identities (not only as Peter Franks but also his improvisations as Klaus Hergesheimer, the smoocher outside Tiffany's apartment and the genial English speaker in the elevator); from Tiffany’s changing hair colour, to Bond’s bogus finger whorls, to the various voice boxes cunningly set to impersonate “the voice patterns” of Blofeld, Whyte and Burt Saxby. Indeed, phoniness is so pervasive as the film’s thematic strategy that it allows us to forgive, if we're willing, even unintended moments of exposed artifice, such as the unconvincing special effects work on the exploding helicopters in the playful climax and the comically resolved “Lean over!” continuity lapse in the execution of the Mustang wheelie stunt.
Sean Connery made it clear in interviews that DAF was his swan song as Eon's Bond. There would have to be a different leading man for LALD, hopefully more successful than the last pretender, Lazenby. This is also implied in the movie, when Connery jokes about the diamond-laden corpse: “I think we ought to let Mister Bond take the load from here on out!” The producers were left with the headache of finding a new star again, an actor capable of sustaining the mythos of Bond through the rest of the Seventies. Mankiewicz’s metaphorical association of the elusive diamonds with stardom has final resonance in the last line of the film. Aboard the cruise ship, John Barry’s lounge music has built softly, like a mock requiem. With Wint and Kidd despatched, Tiffany gazes up at a single star shining in the night sky - it’s actually Blofeld’s diamond-studded satellite. She asks, “James, how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?” The original audience might well have wondered how the hell the 007 franchise could renew its sparkle without its proven star returning again to play the role with which he’d been synonymous for almost a decade.
The oft-recycled fan criticism of DAF that it chooses not to be a serious sequel to OHMSS is misplaced. The common complaint is that although OHMSS ends with Blofeld's murder of Tracy, DAF deals only briefly / perfunctorily with the business of Bond's single-minded hunt for Blofeld, in the pre-credits sequence, and that even this has elements of slapstick. Connery's subsequent exchanges with the 'real' Blofeld seem almost genial, teetering on Adam West 'Batman'-style buffoonery by the time we're on the oil rig. (Blofeld's cheroot is certainly more The Penguin than Ian Fleming, and TV audiences may have remembered Jill St John for playing Molly, The Riddler's moll, in the 1966 pilot episode of 'Batman'. Indeed, she became the only female character in the 'Batman' series to get killed. Shades of Tracy perhaps?) DAF misses a trick, or so the argument goes, and we have to wait till CR06/QOS before we get a linked pair of Bond films which seriously address the theme of Bond following up the death of a loved woman. But all this misses the point. DAF should be enjoyed on its own terms. It chooses to leave alone OHMSS, a film which performed relatively slowly at the box office. It sets out instead to be a light-hearted romp, foregrounding Connery's return to the glittering playground of 007 - a milieu presented, entertainingly, as more decadent than ever with the demise of the swinging sixties.
Sure, DAF's violent PTS is designed in such a way that viewers wishing to do so can infer a brief 'revenge' coda to OHMSS, but this isn't made explicit because it's not a reading meant to be obligatory. Although DAF's classic title song is sung from a female perspective, audiences disposed to identify a link with OHMSS could, if they wanted, interpret the song's lyrics as reflecting Bond's strategy for repressing his grief: the song's about an abandonment to hedonism, eschewing meaningful love and the pain which it brings in favour of impersonal pleasures symbolised by the hardest substance known to man. (The lyrics of Wings' 'Live And Let Die' advocate a similarly repressive coping strategy, this time from a male perspective.)
So would a longer tenure for George Lazenby have been better for the series, ahead of Roger Moore's innings? Could DAF have been an out-and-out 'revenge' movie? No, I don't think so. A 'revenge' Bond needs a skilled actor as lead... and Lazenby wouldn't have cut it. We get emotive 'revenge' themes later on, in the brilliant but commercially disappointing LTK and in QOS (flawed for reasons other than Daniel Craig's impassive persona). Lazenby wasn't an accomplished enough actor to have been capable of the powerful performance which would have been necessary to pull off a 'revenge' sequel to OHMSS convincingly. Despite arguments sometimes made to the contrary, his lack of training and his inexperience as an actor mattered. He'd perhaps have passed muster in a movie like YOLT, where Bond has little more to do than punch his way from one location to the next and (literally) press a few buttons; but in OHMSS, which had much more of a personal story for Bond, Peter Hunt's idea that it's possible to use editing to get a good performance out of any 007 actor proved to be only partially true. Lazenby didn't want to return anyway, a fact explained by reports that at the time he was too immature to take on the challenge of becoming a 'movie star'. In 1971 it was the right decision, pleasing for contemporary audiences, to put some 'movie star' playboy pzaz back into the series, in the person of Sean Connery - and to make DAF a celebration of that rather than a film about some 'other fella's' unfinished business.
Besides, our current notions of serious movie sequels didn't really exist in 1971/72: it arguably wasn't until 'The Godfather: Part II', later in the 70s, that a cutting-edge template for sequels was established. Despite Doctor No receiving a namecheck in FRWL, the Bond series wasn't interested in high levels of continuity between films until CR06/QOS, and even then the effectiveness of this approach (in QOS) was debatable. (In this respect, of course, the films differed from the novels, as 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'You Only Live Twice' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun' have significant continuity.) I think the mainstream audiences of 1971/72 were just loving having Connery back as 007 in a fun-filled movie. That's my recollection, anyway. Although John Brosnan, whom I've quoted above, was writing in '72, I'd hazard that his objections to DAF represented minority dissent. I suspect, ironically, that his complaints are more likely to resonate with the notional Bond fan of today, whose reified, critical experience of seeing DAF is typically alone, out of time, hankering for non-existent story arcs within a close-knit series of DVD viewings of the 60s/70s Bond movies as a set.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Fantastic review Shady Tree!! Really superb. You make many very interesting and insightful points. The one in particular that I thought was most poignant was in regards to the the most common criticism of the movie, which is that the film is not a direct sequel to OHMSS and therefore, does not resolve the revenge story that the previous film set up. You are of course right, there were hardly any instances of direct sequels back in 1971, and it was not until The Godfather Part II (my favourite movie, along with Part 1 of course ) ) that sequels started to become the massive film trend that they are now. With this in mind, I feel you are right, you can't really criticize Diamonds for not directly continuing the OHMSS storyline, because there wasn't really any precedent for doing so in mainstream film making at that time. You therefore have to judge the film solely on its own merits, and whilst it is not one of my favourites, there are plenty of things to like about it. It's an enjoyable romp
I do enjoy the scenes with Wint and Kidd. They are genuinely unsettling villains. They have some great lines together but I really enjoy the way Bruce Glover phrases his lines as Mr Wint. "Shady, we just adored your act!". "Bitten by the bug". "He would have given him wings Mr Kidd". The many classic lines, plus John Barry's eerie music certainly make them memorable villains indeed.
I fell in love with DAF when I saw it as a kid, at the age of seven, in a listed-building 30s cinema packed out for the film's initial release in 1971. I remember that, during the main title sequence, lights were projected onto a revolving ‘disco’ glitterball so that the screen and cinema interior were dazzled with diamond-like reflections. The film has worked its magic for me ever since, and I now believe it to be a masterpiece of camp. Connery's relaxed interpretation of Bond as a maturing, sexy comedian is one of his most entertaining... a more accomplished performance in the role than any since GF. Sure, there are holes in the plot, but there's also a knowing wit in the screenplay which simultaneously celebrates and debunks Connery-AS-Bond's superstardom: audiences at the time really 'got' that and responded to it. Charles Gray's louche turn as Blofeld blends with the overall tone of the film: his camp persona brings amusing new meaning to the trope of the character's attachment to his Siamese pussy cat. (Blofeld never shares screen time with Wint and Kydd, but one wonders whether there may have been a queer 'casting couch' element to his recruitment of them as assassins! Witness Gray's other camp role in the series, as Henderson in YOLT, with his purring confession that he gets Russian vodka "from the doorman at the Russian embassy... amongst certain other things": the smutty implication is that the "other things" include sexual favours from the doorman as well as secret Soviet files.) Other highlights? John Barry brilliantly complements DAF's location work with one of his most evocative soundtracks, imbuing Amsterdam with a sense of prettiness and Vegas with razzamatazz, while realising in his action cues a musical sense of "precariousness glorified" (to quote Pauline Kael's contemporary review of the film). DAF can be edgy: occasional moments of startling violence (historically cut from many TV broadcasts) and a slant towards morbid humour and the bizarre lend the film a frisson which is often overlooked.
A criticism frequently levelled at DAF is that it isn't, like FRWL, a taut thriller, and that its climax is relatively lame. John Brosnan was publishing such complaints as early as 1972, in his book 'James Bond In The Cinema': "there is no real sense of menace in the film ... [and it] has a very weak squib of an ending when one compares it to the climaxes of DN, GF, YOLT, and OHMSS." DAF admittedly has a loose structure with a token plot. It's also undeniable that the climax is staged on a smaller scale than in some previous Bonds, and that some of it is played for laughs. But DAF doesn't want to be a taut thriller. Nor could it hope to expand in its finale on the extravagance of YOLT's Pinewood volcano set.
Should DAF have taken a sober direction and attempted to be more faithful to Fleming's novel of the same title? I think it was too late for that. A true adaptation of 'Diamonds Are Forever' - assimilating its rather downbeat meditations on mortality, its fifties mise-en-scene and the psychological tangle of Bond's relationship with Tiffany - would have needed to have been Hitchcockian in style, and made during Terence Young's early Bond tenure, probably as a companion film to FRWL and certainly before the horse bolted with GF in terms of outlandish fantasy and spectacle.
So what is DAF trying to do? In 'The James Bond Man: The Films Of Sean Connery' (1983), Andrew Rissik puts his finger on it. He eloquently places the film in the specific pop-cultural context of the late 60s/early 70s, comparing its style with other decadent movies of the time: "[They conveyed] a sense of decaying Carnaby Street glamour combined with an idea of the movie as a pictorial and psychological game: they dealt in weird, contorted relationships between pictorially interesting groups of people." If DAF's appeal is partly to do with visual glamour it's also to do with verbal wit. DAF is often criticised for lacking a sense of danger, but the ostensible menace of Blofeld's latest bid for world domination is not where the film's conflict drama lies: rather, it's in the game of witty one-upmanship played between Connery's Bond, a graceful old pro, and the assortment of friends and foes who cross paths with him, assail him and try to debunk him. It's a 70s comedy of manners, with all the elements of the Bond genre at its disposal as points of reference during the repartee and banter - in the same way that LTK (my other favourite Bond film) is an 80s crime/revenge drama with a legacy of Bond stock from which to draw to give it its context. As light comedy, DAF is a movie I'd like to watch in a double-bill with, let's say, 'Plaza Suite' (1971), rather than with any serious crime or action movie of the same vintage. In fact, I can easily see DAF's humorous, thick set Sean Connery going back-to-back with a wisecracking Walter Matthau!
How does this work in practice? Part way through the film Bond, posing as Peter Franks, pretends to be in mourning: he accompanies the body of a man he claims to have been his brother on a flight from Holland to Los Angeles. Feigning grief, Bond explains to the Lufthansa captain at the airport that “We were inseparable.” The deceased man is, in fact, the real Franks - a diamond smuggler killed by Bond before he was able to contact his Amsterdam connection, Tiffany. Bond is on a mission to follow the smugglers’ pipeline to America, having concealed the diamonds in Franks’ corpse to get past customs. Played with knowing irony by Connery, Bond’s claim to have had an “inseparable” relationship with a man whose identity he’s assumed hints at a meaning between the lines: it’s an oblique joke about the bond between the actor himself and the role, 007, which had made him a star.
In 1967, the publicity posters for YOLT had loudly insisted: “Sean Connery IS James Bond”. This proclamation of an “inseparable” connection between actor and role was, at the time, partly a strategy for undermining Charles K. Feldman’s spoof movie Casino Royale, which boasted a number of rival James Bonds; it was also testament to Connery’s phenomenal popularity as 007 at the height of Sixties Bondmania. Yet Eon Productions had to weather re-casting the lead for their own next Bond film, OHMSS. Connery had refused to return to the series for this one, having grown frustrated with the media frenzy surrounding 007 and the length of time it took to complete shooting the Bond movies. Audiences missed him as Bond: his absence put his replacement, George Lazenby, at a disadvantage from the outset, irrespective of any shortcomings in the newcomer’s performance; box office returns for OHMSS were slow. Back with a vengeance in DAF, Connery’s Bond immediately reasserts his machismo: he apparently kills off his arch-enemy Blofeld at the climax of a violent pre-credits sequence. When he returns to his official duties, M introduces him to an expert on diamonds, Sir Donald Munger, who remarks, “You've been on holiday, I understand. Relaxing, I hope?” Bond replies, “Hardly relaxing, but most satisfying.” On the surface, Bond is referring to his seemingly successful personal hunt for Blofeld, but these lines are also an in-joke about the fact that Connery had taken a “holiday” from the Bond series since YOLT. The break had been busy but “satisfying” for Connery, as he'd used the opportunity to focus on roles in other movies (Shalako, The Molly Maguires, The Red Tent and The Anderson Tapes. See James Chapman, 'Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of The James Bond Films').
DAF exudes a sense of how special it is to have its star, Sean Connery, back in action as Bond. The image of Connery rising atop the scenic elevator for The Starlight Lounge of The Whyte House - carnation in lapel; flanked by neon-lit, diamond-shaped star decorations - is a glitzy assertion of his superstardom in ascendancy: “priceless”, but debunked at the end of the ride by his need to duck to avoid being crushed. If DAF delights in Connery’s return, the publicity posters could make no pretense, this time, of an absolute equation of identities between actor and role. The link having once been severed, in OHMSS, it was now a more conventional case of billing “Sean Connery AS James Bond [my capitals]” - a reversion to the phrasing used in the early Sixties, prior to YOLT. As M puts it, rolling his eyes, “We do function in your absence, Commander.” This plays like a defensive message on behalf of the producers: the Bond franchise had got by without Connery, albeit not as successfully. This lends a mischievous meaning to Connery’s exchange with Tiffany after the demise of Peter Franks. Bond dupes her by switching wallets with the dead smuggler. She exclaims “You've just killed James Bond!” He replies, with a twinkle in his eye, “Is that who it was? Well, it just goes to show - no one's indestructible!” Again, Connery is playing himself playing Bond – comically acknowledging a sense in which 007 has become newly vulnerable. Aware of his reputation as ‘the real James Bond’, Connery could be joking, here, about the potentially fatal effect on the franchise which his departure might cause beyond this one-off return for the film in hand (“no one’s indestructible!”). The joke is also, obliquely, about "the other fella" George Lazenby’s short-lived, less successful tenure as Bond in OHMSS (“Is that who it was?”).
Thus writer Tom Mankiewicz was clever and sly enough to incorporate to his screenplay reflexive in-jokes and semi-jokes about Connery's decoupled/recoupled relationship with the Bond franchise as its star. For his part, Connery, who said he approved of the script, improved his performance to something considerably more polished than his previous bored plod through YOLT. M is perhaps again speaking for the producers when he says, “The least we can expect from you now is some plain, solid work!” Arguably, the only part of DAF in which Connery sags is during the short but pedestrian expository scenes with Willard Whyte and the CIA agents as they work out Blofeld’s plot; otherwise, he gives a light but nuanced, engaging performance. Rising from a coffin at Morton Slumber’s funeral parlour, Bond sums up his deal with the crooks, Slumber and Shady Tree: “You get me the real money, and I'll bring you the real diamonds.” If the “real diamonds” represent, at some level, the sparkling success of Connery's on-screen presence as Bond, the proven asset of his “incomparable charm”, it’s tempting to read this money-for-diamonds line as a cheeky allusion to the actor’s contractual negotiations with the producers and United Artists for a substantial reward to return to the franchise - especially since Cubby Broccoli, like the exasperated Slumber, had a background in the funeral business as a coffin-maker. With all his pulling power as Bond, Connery was lured back for DAF only after unprecedented financial incentives, including a million dollars which he donated to the Scottish International Education Trust. Exercised by the enormous cost of signing Connery for just one more Bond movie, the money men might also have shared the frustration of Blofeld as he refers to Bond’s escapades of the pre-credits sequence: “All that time and expense - just to provide you with one mock-heroic moment!”
Mankiewicz’s comic emphasis on the fact that Connery’s Bond is, after all, a performed role, not a necessary fact of nature, fits neatly within his broader theme of artifice in DAF. Phoniness is evident in a range of elements: from cloned (and drag artist) Blofelds, to a pretend girl-to-gorilla transformation for the kids in ‘Circus, Circus’; from a ludicrous ‘zero gravity’ simulation at Whyte’s space research center (given the lie by Bond's sprint across the fabricated moonscape), to a red-herring pussy cat and a fake bombe surprise dessert; from “Felix Leiter, you old fraud,” to Bond's own false identities (not only as Peter Franks but also his improvisations as Klaus Hergesheimer, the smoocher outside Tiffany's apartment and the genial Dutchman in the elevator); from Tiffany’s changing hair colour, to Bond’s bogus finger whorls, to the various voice boxes cunningly set to impersonate “the voice patterns” of Blofeld, Whyte and Burt Saxby. Indeed, phoniness is so pervasive as the film’s thematic strategy that it allows us to forgive, if we're willing, even unintended moments of exposed artifice, such as the unconvincing special effects work on the exploding helicopters in the playful climax and the comically resolved “Lean over!” continuity lapse in the execution of the Mustang wheelie stunt.
Sean Connery made it clear in interviews that DAF was his swan song as Eon's Bond. There would have to be a different leading man for LALD, hopefully more successful than the last pretender, Lazenby. This is also implied in the movie, when Connery jokes about the diamond-laden corpse: “I think we ought to let Mister Bond take the load from here on out!” The producers were left with the headache of finding a new star again, an actor capable of sustaining the mythos of Bond through the rest of the Seventies. Mankiewicz’s metaphorical association of the elusive diamonds with stardom has final resonance in the last line of the film. Aboard the cruise ship, John Barry’s lounge music has built softly, like a mock requiem. With Wint and Kidd despatched, Tiffany gazes up at a single star shining in the night sky - it’s actually Blofeld’s diamond-studded satellite. She asks, “James, how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?” The original audience might well have wondered how the hell the 007 franchise could renew its sparkle without its proven star returning again to play the role with which he’d been synonymous for almost a decade.
The oft-recycled fan criticism of DAF that it chooses not to be a serious sequel to OHMSS is misplaced. The common complaint is that although OHMSS ends with Blofeld's murder of Tracy, DAF deals only briefly / perfunctorily with the business of Bond's single-minded hunt for Blofeld, in the pre-credits sequence, and that even this has elements of slapstick. Connery's subsequent exchanges with the 'real' Blofeld seem almost genial, teetering on Adam West 'Batman'-style buffoonery by the time we're on the oil rig. (Blofeld's cheroot is certainly more The Penguin than Ian Fleming, and TV audiences may have remembered Jill St John for playing Molly, The Riddler's moll, in the 1966 pilot episode of 'Batman'. Indeed, she became the only female character in the 'Batman' series to get killed. Shades of Tracy perhaps?) DAF misses a trick, or so the argument goes, and we have to wait till CR/QOS before we get a linked pair of Bond films which seriously address the theme of Bond following up the death of a loved woman. But all this misses the point. DAF should be enjoyed on its own terms. It chooses to leave alone OHMSS, a film which performed relatively slowly at the box office. It sets out instead to be a light-hearted romp, foregrounding Connery's return to the glittering playground of 007 - a mileu presented, entertainingly, as more decadent than ever with the demise of the swinging sixties. Sure, DAF's violent PTS is designed in such a way that viewers wishing to do so can infer a brief 'revenge' coda to OHMSS, but this isn't made explicit because it's not a reading meant to be obligatory. Although DAF's classic title song is sung from a female perspective, audiences disposed to identify a link with OHMSS could, if they wanted, interpret the song's lyrics as reflecting Bond's strategy for repressing his grief: the song's about an abandonment to hedonism, eschewing meaningful love and the pain which it brings in favour of impersonal pleasures symbolised by the hardest substance known to man. (The lyrics of Wings' 'Live And Let Die' advocate a similarly repressive coping strategy, this time from a male perspective.)
So would a longer tenure for George Lazenby have been better for the series, ahead of Roger Moore's innings? Could DAF have been an out-and-out 'revenge' movie? No, I don't think so. A 'revenge' Bond needs a skilled actor as lead... and Lazenby wouldn't have cut it. We get emotive 'revenge' themes later on, in the brilliant but commercially disappointing LTK and in QOS (flawed for reasons other than Daniel Craig's acting abilities, which are fine). Lazenby wasn't a skilled enough actor to have been capable of the powerful performance which would have been necessary to drive a 'revenge' sequel to OHMSS. Despite arguments sometimes made to the contrary, his lack of training or experience as an actor mattered. He'd perhaps have passed muster in a movie like YOLT, where Bond has little more to do than punch his way from one location to the next and (literally) press a few buttons; but in OHMSS, which had much more of a personal story for Bond, Peter Hunt's idea that it's possible to use editing to get a good performance out of any 007 actor proved to be only partially true. Lazenby didn't want to return anyway, a fact explained by reports that at the time he was too immature to take on the challenge of becoming a 'movie star'. In 1971 it was the right decision, pleasing for contemporary audiences, to put some 'movie star' playboy pzaz back into the series, in the person of Sean Connery - and to make DAF a celebration of that rather than a film about some 'other fella's' unfinished business.
Besides, our current notions of serious movie sequels didn't really exist in 1971: it arguably wasn't until 'The Godfather: Part II', later in the 70s, that a cutting-edge template for sequels was established. Despite Doctor No receiving a namecheck in FRWL, the Bond series wasn't interested in high levels of continuity between films until CR/QOS, and even then the effectiveness of this approach (in QOS) was debatable. (In this respect, of course, the films differed from the novels, as 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'You Only Live Twice' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun' have significant continuity.) I think the mainstream audiences of 1971 were just loving having Connery back as 007 in a fun-filled movie. That's my recollection, anyway. Although John Brosnan, whom I've quoted above, was writing in 1972, I'd hazard that his objections to DAF represented minority dissent. I suspect, ironically, that his complaints are more likely to resonate with the notional Bond fan of today, whose reified, critical experience of seeing DAF is typically alone, out of time, hankering for non-existent story arcs within a close-knit series of DVD viewings of the 60s/70s Bond movies as a set.
Well said Shady Tree!
It seems to be the generation who saw the thing on DVD. People don't understand what a hit it was...
1. For Your Eyes Only 2. The Living Daylights 3 From Russia with Love 4. Casino Royale 5. OHMSS 6. Skyfall
Worst bond film by a mile!
Yes Connery was awful but that still doesn't account for the rest of the film being terrible!
I don't know how they went from the brilliant OHMSS to this?
Worst hench men Mr wint & Mr Kidd( not funny or menacing) all they do in the film is repeat each other's names to each other (yes Mr Kidd' no Mr Wint.
Terrible Bond girl in Tiffany case
Blofeld in drag wtf!
Far too American for a bond film
Willard whyte is very annoying in the usual southern American way
Pros
None
By the way' the name is "James St. John smythe" I'm English
Pros:
The elevator fight scene
- Tense. Taught. Impactful.
Mr Wint and Mr Kidd
- Quirky they may be, but they add an interesting comedic yet sinister presence to the film.
The witicisms
- Tom Mankeiwicz had a knack for one-liners that really added to the series, which began here.
John Barry's score
- While it lacks the impact of his previous and future scores, it adds some much needed panache to parts of the film.
Scaling Willard White's tower
- Well-played moment of tension.
Jill St. John as Tiffany Case
- Certainly not the most memorable Bond girl, and, at times, quite annoying, but one that can hold her own against Bond and the baddies, which makes her interesting.
The Cloning
- I certainly feel that it would be valid that Blofeld would need to hide his identity after the events of OHMSS, in which this idea sort of originates with the clipped ear lobes.
Cons:
Very poor, flat resolution to the OHMSS story.
- OHMSS had a shocking ending and unfortunately it was barely acknowledged here.
Charles Grey as Blofeld
- Both Donald Pleasance and Telly Savalas portrayed Blofeld as a menacing character in previous films, as he was in the book. Grey portrays Blofeld as queer and too soft. He does have a few good lines though.
Connery's performance as Bond
- Lacklustre. Just lacklustre. Although I get that by this stage in the series, the producers just wanted an action hero with no real substance or similarity to Flemming's character.
The moon buggy sequence
- Little Nelly was bad enough in YOLT and this is even worse.
Overly camp tone
- Moore did camp much better than Connery and it really shows in this film.
The lame, unfulfilling ending
- This is the worst ending in the series. It falls flat and has no drama.
Las Vegas
- This setting just does not suit Bond.
Shoddy production values
- The film looks cheaply made.
Flipping car
- A poor way to correct the error during filming.
Bambi and Thumper
- They were so short lived. There was little point.
Jimmy Dean
- Not a great performance and the character was rather flat.
The Story and plot
- What exactly is going on here besides a lot of random gags and action sequences?
The Connery Cash-in
- It's so obvious that the producers were selling the film simply on the premise that Connery was returning to the role.
Overall, I feel this is the weakest entry in the official film series. That said, it certainly has it's moments, as per my Pro listings. I also understand that, at the time, it was a necessary step to keep the series going. Still, I can't but wish they had taken the story more seriously and honoured what had come before.
Comments
AJB007 Favorite Film Rankings
Pros and Cons Compendium (50 Years)
What's really sad is that half of a performance from Connery is worth about 20 times as much money as Lazenby's. Sean was robbed!
It's still a mediocre movie. It still ruins the Blofeld trilogy. Connery's acting was still bad. The Bond girls are still bad. The villain is still bad. But I like the music, scenery and a few of the campy elements. It can, at times, be an fun escapist film. And it was sort of a prototype for the Roger Moore era (which I'm grateful for).
AJB007 Favorite Film Rankings
Pros and Cons Compendium (50 Years)
But there's no point analysing this film. Put your dumb hat on and it's really quite enjoyable
Nah, that's just Our Man dealing with the hand he's been dealt- Franks is a serious threat to him (he could blow his cover with Tiffany) while he could easily kick the sh1t out of Bambi & Thumper, although they take him by surprise.
The first kick sure. But afterwards he should've been on full alert. But anyway, I've learnt to enjoy DAF for what it is.
Pros:
Titles
Music
Elevator Fight
Crematorium
Moon Buggy Chase
Entering the Whyte House from outside the building.
M - Plenty O'Toole
Cons:
Terrible dubbing
Dreadful Special Effects
Tiffany has heard of James Bond
Camp style throughout
Putting Bond in a pipeline to kill him
Bambi & Thumper losing the fight in the pool
Blofeld - Leiter - Wint - Kidd
Observations:
The dubbing and special effects / process work are truly dreadful. The tone of the series has changed from serious but fun to high camp. Bond does not even mention his dead wife. It looks as if SC is only here for the payday.
Conclusion:
Up to this point this is the worst cast film of the series. Charles Gray is hopeless as Blofeld and is the first time a reasonably prominent actor was recast in another prominent role - it does not work - Blofeld is not a camp character. Wint and Kidd are awful henchman even an untrained but reasonably fit person would despatch these two morons with ease. The movie has a cheap look to it and does not look in the least spectacular - the car chase is obviously staged and pretty boring compared to contemporary movies of the time like Bullitt and French Connection. There are some good scenes - the elevator fight is up there with the best fights in the entire canon and the crematorium scene is tense. I remember in the cinema the entering of the Whyte House was breathtaking but it does not look so good on the small screen. The climax is pretty dull the obvious model helicopters not helping.
On a plus side the score is classic Barry - the last time he would put together a real classic soundtrack for a Bond movie.
This has gone down a lot in my estimation and I can see this finishing quite low in my revised rankings.
CHB will return reviewing LALD soon
A very odd couple, the psychopathic feel, they give off. I think is very well done.
They would enjoy torturing victims.
Sadly DAF, as very much played along the " everyone's having a good time" lines.
A very funny script, but lacking in a villain with any menace, ( which Charles Gray, could
Do very well. I guess he was told to play it " light"). And few moments of tension.
The final attack is poor, with very cheap looking exploding helicopters, but given all
it's faults DAF, has a charm to it. It's very easy to watch, with many laugh out loud lines in it.
But DAF is a guilty pleasure for me, the score is a large reason why
Wonderfully haunting theme song. -{
What is so bad about Wint and Kidd? They're very successful henchmen until they try to kill Bond. They're not a threat to Bond, but they're unique characters. Most people don't expect them to be a threat (unlike Oddjob and Jaws), so nobody except Bond tries to kill them. When they try to kill Bond, Bond has an understandably easy time doing away with them.
I like the henchmen to be almost invincible like Red Grant and Oddjob - the problem was the later films didn't develop them very well (Vargas for instance) - paradoxically Wint and Kidd were developed but they were so insipid they held no threat whatsoever.
It's also probably the least elegant movie of the series in terms of locations and sets.
John Barry score and title song.
Some of the car crashes are funny.
Klaus Hergesheimer.
Space-lasers are cool weapons.
Mr.Wint & Mr.Kidd are amusing.
Cons:
The lazy and greedy Connery making no effort whatsover, as indicated by his girth.
Cheap, tacky feel all the way through.
Nobody can really explain the plot.
Technical shoddiness the whole way through.
Dull, get-it-in-the-can-as-quick-as-possible-then-go-down-the-pub direction by Guy Hamilton.
A shocking lack of class and panache.
Blofeld in drag.
Jill St.John
Oil rig action climax is crap.
How so? He gave his fee to charity.
That's why I dislike his films, yes GF included. They have some of the best moments in the series which I'm happy to watch separately from the rest of the movie
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
The film has worked its magic for me ever since, and I now believe it to be a masterpiece of camp. Connery's relaxed interpretation of Bond as a maturing, sexy comedian is one of his most entertaining... a more accomplished performance in the role than any since GF. Sure, there are holes in the plot, but there's also a knowing wit in the screenplay which simultaneously celebrates and debunks Connery-AS-Bond's superstardom: audiences at the time really 'got' that and responded to it.
Charles Gray's louche turn as Blofeld blends with the overall tone of the film: his camp persona brings amusing new meaning to the trope of the character's attachment to his Persian pussy cat. (Blofeld never shares screen time with Wint and Kidd, but one wonders whether there may have been a queer 'casting couch' element to his recruitment of them as assassins. Witness Gray's other camp role in the series, as Henderson in YOLT, with his purring confession that he gets Russian vodka "from the doorman at the Russian embassy... amongst certain other things": the smutty implication is that the "other things" include sexual favours from the doorman as well as secret Soviet files. Yet one has to wonder, too, whether Marie of DAF's PTS has supplied Gray's Blofeld with 'personal services' of some kind or other, and clearly he's an admirer of Tiffany's "cheeks"!)
Other highlights? John Barry brilliantly complements DAF's location work with one of his most evocative soundtracks, imbuing Amsterdam with a sense of prettiness and Vegas with razzamatazz, while realising in his action cues a musical sense of "precariousness glorified" (to quote Pauline Kael's contemporary review of the film). DAF can be edgy: occasional moments of startling violence (historically cut from many TV broadcasts) and a slant towards morbid humour and the bizarre lend the film a frisson which is often overlooked.
A criticism frequently levelled at DAF is that it isn't, like FRWL, a taut thriller, and that its climax is relatively lame. John Brosnan was publishing such complaints as early as 1972, in his book 'James Bond In The Cinema': "there is no real sense of menace in the film ... [and it] has a very weak squib of an ending when one compares it to the climaxes of DN, GF, YOLT, and OHMSS." DAF admittedly has a loose structure with a token plot. While the oil rig location is impressive, it's also undeniable that the film's climax is on a smaller scale than in some previous Bonds, and that some of it is played for laughs. But DAF doesn't want to be a taut thriller. Nor could it hope to expand in its finale on the extravagance of YOLT's Pinewood volcano set.
Should DAF have taken a sober direction and attempted to be more faithful to Fleming's novel of the same title? I think it was too late for that. A true adaptation of 'Diamonds Are Forever' - assimilating its rather downbeat meditations on mortality, its fifties mise-en-scene and the psychological tangle of Bond's relationship with Tiffany - would have needed to have been Hitchcockian in style, and made during Terence Young's early Bond tenure, probably as a companion film to FRWL and certainly before the horse bolted with GF in terms of outlandish fantasy and spectacle.
So what is DAF trying to do? In 'The James Bond Man: The Films Of Sean Connery' (1983), Andrew Rissik puts his finger on it. He eloquently places the film in the specific pop-cultural context of the late 60s/early 70s, comparing its style with other decadent movies of the time: "[They conveyed] a sense of decaying Carnaby Street glamour combined with an idea of the movie as a pictorial and psychological game: they dealt in weird, contorted relationships between pictorially interesting groups of people."
If DAF's appeal is partly to do with visual glamour it's also to do with verbal wit. DAF is often criticised for lacking a sense of danger, but the ostensible menace of Blofeld's latest bid for world domination is not where the film's conflict drama lies: rather, it's in the game of witty one-upmanship played between Connery's Bond, a graceful old pro, and the assortment of friends and foes who cross paths with him, assail him and try to debunk him. It's a 70s comedy of manners, with all the elements of the Bond genre at its disposal as points of reference during the repartee and banter - in the same way that LTK (my other favourite Bond film) is an 80s crime/revenge drama with a legacy of Bond stock from which to draw to give it its context. As light comedy, DAF is a movie I'd like to watch in a double-bill with, let's say, 'Plaza Suite' (1971), rather than with any serious crime or action movie of the same vintage. In fact, I can easily see DAF's humorous, thick set Sean Connery going back-to-back with a wisecracking Walter Matthau!
How does this work in practice? Part way through the film Bond, posing as Peter Franks, pretends to be in mourning: he accompanies the body of a man he claims to have been his brother on a flight from Holland to Los Angeles. Feigning grief, Bond explains to the Lufthansa captain at the airport that “We were inseparable.” The deceased man is, in fact, the real Franks - a diamond smuggler killed by Bond before he was able to contact his Amsterdam connection, Tiffany. Bond is on a mission to follow the smugglers’ pipeline to America, having concealed the diamonds in Franks’ corpse to get past customs. Played with knowing irony by Connery, Bond’s claim to have had an “inseparable” relationship with a man whose identity he’s assumed hints at a meaning between the lines: it’s an oblique joke about the bond between the actor himself and the role, 007, which had made him a star.
In 1967, the publicity posters for YOLT had loudly insisted: “Sean Connery IS James Bond”. This proclamation of an “inseparable” connection between actor and role was, at the time, partly a strategy for undermining Charles K. Feldman’s spoof movie Casino Royale, which boasted a number of rival James Bonds; it was also testament to Connery’s phenomenal popularity as 007 at the height of Sixties Bondmania. Yet Eon Productions had to weather re-casting the lead for their own next Bond film, OHMSS. Connery had refused to return to the series for this one, having grown frustrated with the media frenzy surrounding 007 and the length of time it took to complete shooting the Bond movies. Audiences missed him as Bond: his absence put his replacement, George Lazenby, at a disadvantage from the outset, irrespective of any shortcomings in the newcomer’s performance; box office returns for OHMSS were slow. Is it too much of a stretch to infer a cheeky, revisionist parallel between the moonwalk technician's exasperation with Bond's antics at the Tectronics facility and the frustrations that the producers had experienced with Lazenby in the preceding film? - "What *is* this? Amateur night? Stop him, Harry!"
Back with a vengeance in DAF, Connery’s Bond immediately reasserts his machismo: he apparently kills off his arch-enemy Blofeld at the climax of a violent pre-credits sequence. When he returns to his official duties, M introduces him to an expert on diamonds, Sir Donald Munger, who remarks, “You've been on holiday, I understand. Relaxing, I hope?” Bond replies, “Hardly relaxing, but most satisfying.” On the surface, Bond is referring to his seemingly successful personal hunt for Blofeld, but these lines are also an in-joke about the fact that Connery had taken a “holiday” from the Bond series since YOLT. The break had been busy but “satisfying” for Connery, as he'd used the opportunity to focus on roles in other movies (Shalako, The Molly Maguires, The Red Tent and The Anderson Tapes. See James Chapman, 'Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of The James Bond Films').
DAF exudes a sense of how special it is to have its star, Sean Connery, back in action as Bond. The image of Connery rising atop the scenic elevator for The Starlight Lounge of The Whyte House - carnation in lapel; flanked by neon-lit, diamond-shaped star decorations - is a glitzy assertion of his superstardom in ascendancy: “priceless”, but debunked at the end of the ride by his need to duck to avoid being crushed. If DAF delights in Connery’s return, the publicity posters could make no pretense, this time, of an absolute equation of identities between actor and role. The link having once been severed, in OHMSS, it was now a more conventional case of billing “Sean Connery AS James Bond [my capitals]” - a reversion to the phrasing used in the early Sixties, prior to YOLT. As M puts it, rolling his eyes, “We do function in your absence, Commander.” This plays like a defensive message on behalf of the producers: the Bond franchise had got by without Connery, albeit not as successfully.
This lends a mischievous meaning to Connery’s exchange with Tiffany after the demise of Peter Franks. Bond dupes her by switching wallets with the dead smuggler. She exclaims “You've just killed James Bond!” He replies, with a twinkle in his eye, “Is that who it was? Well, it just goes to show - no one's indestructible!” Again, Connery is playing himself playing Bond – comically acknowledging a sense in which 007 has become newly vulnerable. Aware of his reputation as ‘the real James Bond’, Connery could be joking, here, about the potentially fatal effect on the franchise which his departure might cause beyond this one-off return for the film in hand (“no one’s indestructible!”). The joke is also, obliquely, about "the other fella" George Lazenby’s short-lived, less successful tenure as Bond in OHMSS (“Is that who it was?”).
Thus writer Tom Mankiewicz was clever and sly enough to incorporate to his screenplay reflexive in-jokes and semi-jokes about Connery's decoupled/recoupled relationship with the Bond franchise as its star. For his part, Connery, who said he approved of the script, improved his performance to something considerably more polished than his previous bored plod through YOLT. M is perhaps again speaking for the producers when he says, “The least we can expect from you now is some plain, solid work!” Arguably, the only part of DAF in which Connery sags is during the short but pedestrian expository scenes with Willard Whyte and the CIA agents as they work out Blofeld’s plot; otherwise, he gives a light but nuanced, engaging performance.
Rising from a coffin at Morton Slumber’s funeral parlour, Bond sums up his deal with the crooks, Slumber and Shady Tree: “You get me the real money, and I'll bring you the real diamonds.” If the “real diamonds” represent, at some level, the sparkling success of Connery's on-screen presence as Bond, the proven asset of his “incomparable charm”, it’s tempting to read this money-for-diamonds line as a cheeky allusion to the actor’s contractual negotiations with the producers and United Artists for a substantial reward to return to the franchise - especially since Cubby Broccoli, like the exasperated Slumber, had a background in the funeral business as a coffin-maker. With all his pulling power as Bond, Connery was lured back for DAF only after unprecedented financial incentives, including a million dollars which he donated to the Scottish International Education Trust. Exercised by the enormous cost of signing Connery for just one more Bond movie, the money men might also have shared the frustration of Blofeld as he refers to Bond’s escapades of the pre-credits sequence: “All that time and expense - just to provide you with one mock-heroic moment!”
Mankiewicz’s comic emphasis on the fact that Connery’s Bond is, after all, a performed role, not a necessary fact of nature, fits neatly within his broader theme of artifice in DAF. Phoniness is evident in a range of elements: from cloned (and drag artist) Blofelds, to a pretend girl-to-gorilla transformation for the kids in ‘Circus, Circus’; from a ludicrous ‘zero gravity’ simulation at Whyte’s space research center (given the lie by Bond's sprint across the fabricated moonscape), to a red-herring pussy cat and a fake bombe surprise dessert; from “Felix Leiter, you old fraud,” to Bond's own false identities (not only as Peter Franks but also his improvisations as Klaus Hergesheimer, the smoocher outside Tiffany's apartment and the genial English speaker in the elevator); from Tiffany’s changing hair colour, to Bond’s bogus finger whorls, to the various voice boxes cunningly set to impersonate “the voice patterns” of Blofeld, Whyte and Burt Saxby. Indeed, phoniness is so pervasive as the film’s thematic strategy that it allows us to forgive, if we're willing, even unintended moments of exposed artifice, such as the unconvincing special effects work on the exploding helicopters in the playful climax and the comically resolved “Lean over!” continuity lapse in the execution of the Mustang wheelie stunt.
Sean Connery made it clear in interviews that DAF was his swan song as Eon's Bond. There would have to be a different leading man for LALD, hopefully more successful than the last pretender, Lazenby. This is also implied in the movie, when Connery jokes about the diamond-laden corpse: “I think we ought to let Mister Bond take the load from here on out!” The producers were left with the headache of finding a new star again, an actor capable of sustaining the mythos of Bond through the rest of the Seventies. Mankiewicz’s metaphorical association of the elusive diamonds with stardom has final resonance in the last line of the film. Aboard the cruise ship, John Barry’s lounge music has built softly, like a mock requiem. With Wint and Kidd despatched, Tiffany gazes up at a single star shining in the night sky - it’s actually Blofeld’s diamond-studded satellite. She asks, “James, how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?” The original audience might well have wondered how the hell the 007 franchise could renew its sparkle without its proven star returning again to play the role with which he’d been synonymous for almost a decade.
The oft-recycled fan criticism of DAF that it chooses not to be a serious sequel to OHMSS is misplaced. The common complaint is that although OHMSS ends with Blofeld's murder of Tracy, DAF deals only briefly / perfunctorily with the business of Bond's single-minded hunt for Blofeld, in the pre-credits sequence, and that even this has elements of slapstick. Connery's subsequent exchanges with the 'real' Blofeld seem almost genial, teetering on Adam West 'Batman'-style buffoonery by the time we're on the oil rig. (Blofeld's cheroot is certainly more The Penguin than Ian Fleming, and TV audiences may have remembered Jill St John for playing Molly, The Riddler's moll, in the 1966 pilot episode of 'Batman'. Indeed, she became the only female character in the 'Batman' series to get killed. Shades of Tracy perhaps?) DAF misses a trick, or so the argument goes, and we have to wait till CR06/QOS before we get a linked pair of Bond films which seriously address the theme of Bond following up the death of a loved woman. But all this misses the point. DAF should be enjoyed on its own terms. It chooses to leave alone OHMSS, a film which performed relatively slowly at the box office. It sets out instead to be a light-hearted romp, foregrounding Connery's return to the glittering playground of 007 - a milieu presented, entertainingly, as more decadent than ever with the demise of the swinging sixties.
Sure, DAF's violent PTS is designed in such a way that viewers wishing to do so can infer a brief 'revenge' coda to OHMSS, but this isn't made explicit because it's not a reading meant to be obligatory. Although DAF's classic title song is sung from a female perspective, audiences disposed to identify a link with OHMSS could, if they wanted, interpret the song's lyrics as reflecting Bond's strategy for repressing his grief: the song's about an abandonment to hedonism, eschewing meaningful love and the pain which it brings in favour of impersonal pleasures symbolised by the hardest substance known to man. (The lyrics of Wings' 'Live And Let Die' advocate a similarly repressive coping strategy, this time from a male perspective.)
So would a longer tenure for George Lazenby have been better for the series, ahead of Roger Moore's innings? Could DAF have been an out-and-out 'revenge' movie? No, I don't think so. A 'revenge' Bond needs a skilled actor as lead... and Lazenby wouldn't have cut it. We get emotive 'revenge' themes later on, in the brilliant but commercially disappointing LTK and in QOS (flawed for reasons other than Daniel Craig's impassive persona). Lazenby wasn't an accomplished enough actor to have been capable of the powerful performance which would have been necessary to pull off a 'revenge' sequel to OHMSS convincingly. Despite arguments sometimes made to the contrary, his lack of training and his inexperience as an actor mattered. He'd perhaps have passed muster in a movie like YOLT, where Bond has little more to do than punch his way from one location to the next and (literally) press a few buttons; but in OHMSS, which had much more of a personal story for Bond, Peter Hunt's idea that it's possible to use editing to get a good performance out of any 007 actor proved to be only partially true. Lazenby didn't want to return anyway, a fact explained by reports that at the time he was too immature to take on the challenge of becoming a 'movie star'. In 1971 it was the right decision, pleasing for contemporary audiences, to put some 'movie star' playboy pzaz back into the series, in the person of Sean Connery - and to make DAF a celebration of that rather than a film about some 'other fella's' unfinished business.
Besides, our current notions of serious movie sequels didn't really exist in 1971/72: it arguably wasn't until 'The Godfather: Part II', later in the 70s, that a cutting-edge template for sequels was established. Despite Doctor No receiving a namecheck in FRWL, the Bond series wasn't interested in high levels of continuity between films until CR06/QOS, and even then the effectiveness of this approach (in QOS) was debatable. (In this respect, of course, the films differed from the novels, as 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'You Only Live Twice' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun' have significant continuity.) I think the mainstream audiences of 1971/72 were just loving having Connery back as 007 in a fun-filled movie. That's my recollection, anyway. Although John Brosnan, whom I've quoted above, was writing in '72, I'd hazard that his objections to DAF represented minority dissent. I suspect, ironically, that his complaints are more likely to resonate with the notional Bond fan of today, whose reified, critical experience of seeing DAF is typically alone, out of time, hankering for non-existent story arcs within a close-knit series of DVD viewings of the 60s/70s Bond movies as a set.
Some very well written and entertaining observations Shady Tree. -{
Well said Shady Tree!
It seems to be the generation who saw the thing on DVD. People don't understand what a hit it was...
Worst bond film by a mile!
Yes Connery was awful but that still doesn't account for the rest of the film being terrible!
I don't know how they went from the brilliant OHMSS to this?
Worst hench men Mr wint & Mr Kidd( not funny or menacing) all they do in the film is repeat each other's names to each other (yes Mr Kidd' no Mr Wint.
Terrible Bond girl in Tiffany case
Blofeld in drag wtf!
Far too American for a bond film
Willard whyte is very annoying in the usual southern American way
Pros
None
The elevator fight scene
- Tense. Taught. Impactful.
Mr Wint and Mr Kidd
- Quirky they may be, but they add an interesting comedic yet sinister presence to the film.
The witicisms
- Tom Mankeiwicz had a knack for one-liners that really added to the series, which began here.
John Barry's score
- While it lacks the impact of his previous and future scores, it adds some much needed panache to parts of the film.
Scaling Willard White's tower
- Well-played moment of tension.
Jill St. John as Tiffany Case
- Certainly not the most memorable Bond girl, and, at times, quite annoying, but one that can hold her own against Bond and the baddies, which makes her interesting.
The Cloning
- I certainly feel that it would be valid that Blofeld would need to hide his identity after the events of OHMSS, in which this idea sort of originates with the clipped ear lobes.
Cons:
Very poor, flat resolution to the OHMSS story.
- OHMSS had a shocking ending and unfortunately it was barely acknowledged here.
Charles Grey as Blofeld
- Both Donald Pleasance and Telly Savalas portrayed Blofeld as a menacing character in previous films, as he was in the book. Grey portrays Blofeld as queer and too soft. He does have a few good lines though.
Connery's performance as Bond
- Lacklustre. Just lacklustre. Although I get that by this stage in the series, the producers just wanted an action hero with no real substance or similarity to Flemming's character.
The moon buggy sequence
- Little Nelly was bad enough in YOLT and this is even worse.
Overly camp tone
- Moore did camp much better than Connery and it really shows in this film.
The lame, unfulfilling ending
- This is the worst ending in the series. It falls flat and has no drama.
Las Vegas
- This setting just does not suit Bond.
Shoddy production values
- The film looks cheaply made.
Flipping car
- A poor way to correct the error during filming.
Bambi and Thumper
- They were so short lived. There was little point.
Jimmy Dean
- Not a great performance and the character was rather flat.
The Story and plot
- What exactly is going on here besides a lot of random gags and action sequences?
The Connery Cash-in
- It's so obvious that the producers were selling the film simply on the premise that Connery was returning to the role.
Overall, I feel this is the weakest entry in the official film series. That said, it certainly has it's moments, as per my Pro listings. I also understand that, at the time, it was a necessary step to keep the series going. Still, I can't but wish they had taken the story more seriously and honoured what had come before.
8. TSWLM 9. TMwtGG 10. AVtaK 11. SF 12. TND 13. LtK 14. NTtD
15. MR 16. LaLD 17. YOLT 18. GF 19. DN 20. SP 21. TWiNE
22. TB 23. DAD 24. QoS 25. DaF
8. TSWLM 9. TMwtGG 10. AVtaK 11. SF 12. TND 13. LtK 14. NTtD
15. MR 16. LaLD 17. YOLT 18. GF 19. DN 20. SP 21. TWiNE
22. TB 23. DAD 24. QoS 25. DaF