Maybe not better, but enjoyable in a chilly way: DAF.
A helicopter with a CIA man (the CIA is [supposedly] forbidden to work inside the United States) and a billionaire industrialist overseeing a military assault–the military-industrial complex brought to screen.
Bond battling the villain remotely (he never reveals himself to Blofeld) and abandoning the oil rig before he is certain that Blofeld is dead (having earlier definitely killed two of his doubles).
An aerial assault not employing an invasion force–a precursor to drone attacks.
Out of an assistant director’s error, a paranoid set piece emerges.
DAF cultivates a nice air of paranoia that for me is a quintessential element of 1970’s cinema. For example, Whyte being able to pick up the phone and call Vandenberg AFB; the local Las Vegas police seeming to be a part of Whyte’s private security force; the fake moon landing Bond interrupts. We are only a few years from Watergate and “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence” in real life and EXECUTIVE ACTION and THE PARALLAX VIEW in reel life.
This scene always has a sort of grim mystique for me. Not even two years after the moon landings, conspiracy theories that it was faked were apparently so pronounced that an action scene was built around it in a big-budget franchise film. (Did DAF help foster this myth or was it already there at that point?)
I am not sure sure. When I googled the topic, I learned that these theories began to arise in the mid-1970’s. What is interesting to me is how right at the start of the decade there appears this wonderful Bond film which anticipates/heralds the paranoia cinema of the 1970’s: DAF makes a definitive break with the consciousness of the 1960’s. As much as the film is derided for its camp elements, I wonder if its anxious nature is another reason why it ranks so low in people’s affections.
1- a ride in the country FYEO
2- a cowboy ride in the country MR
3- A ski ride in the country FYEO
4- Downhill ski chase OHMSS
5- The gypsy celebration and fight FRWL
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER is also the first Bond film to outrightly declare Bond dead in a self mocking way: ‘You’ve killed James Bond!’
That line was at once picking up Lazenby’s breaking of the fourth wall and introducing an element of persiflage*. And for some reason it’s seldom really popular when the Bond films try that in dialogue. It’s fine when Connery or Moore use irony, when Moore even looks as if he’s almost about to comment on the ridiculousness of the show. But saying it loud seems to risk breaking the spell.
*This could absolutely have been a line in one of MAD magazine’s brilliant Bond caricatures.
That seems to be the case. Andrew Sarris in his Village Voice review mentions “spoofs of moon men and their dune buggies,” but nothing more (the lunar rover was first introduced on the Apollo 15 mission–July 26-August 7, 1971).
The great American novelist Thomas Berger had a brief stint where he reviewed films for Esquire magazine. In his review of DAF (which he calls “…the best of them, an absolute delight”), he writes:
“…Miss St. John, whose breezy California voice has always previously set my teeth on edge but is at last appropriately utilized in a performance of style and wit.”
Fun to read since Berger also includes thoughts on STRAW DOGS.
Side Note: I have adored Thomas Berger’s novels for decades–his prose is an absolute joy. He is much more than just “Little Big Man”–“Arthur Rex” is the best Arthurian telling I have ever encountered and “Who is Teddy Villanova” is a pastiche of Chandler and Ross Macdonald that outdoes both. He is as great as Barth, Pynchon and DeLillo, but gets much less critical attention than they do. He was also as reclusive as Pynchon, but believe it or not I have an email and an autographed book from him. When he published his final novel, I wrote a review on Amazon praising it and encouraging people to discover him. I did note though that there was outrageous editing error where a women takes off a dress to get into bed, and puts on a skirt when she climbs out.
Out of the blue, I received an email from Berger thanking me for finding this error which would be corrected in future editions, and asking me for a snail mail address so he could send me an autographed copy of his most recent novel in paperback. I was gobsmacked to say the least–one does not usually get emails from one’s literary heroes, especially when they are known to be reclusive.
Blofeld’s nighttime therapy sessions in the previous film qualify.
Indeed. Roger Moore always liked to comment on James Bond being the most un-secret secret agent, and I’d say it really started with DAF. And I don’t mind it. Bond had a decent career under his belt by then, and his reputation became so great he’s thought of as a myth in the underworld. The Lazar meeting in TMWTGG being a perfect example. It’s still present to this day, as Safin speaks about Bond in glowing terms during the NTTD trailer.
