This is surprisingly hard given that I’d never have thought I cared about either scene.
That said, the OHMSS fight does a great job of heightening the mounting tension of Bond’s predicament in a way that is, rather brilliantly, both funny and terrifying at the same time. All Bond wants to do is slip the Hell away from Blofeld’s men ASAP and things just keep going from bad to worse; every second he’s delayed in that noisy room puts him in greater danger and just when you think it can’t get any louder, it always does. One of the things I love about Lazenby is his ability – unique among all the Bonds – to project genuine fear without seeming any less the tough guy, and the entire sequence from breaking out of Piz Gloria to skiing on one foot to desperately trying to keep the guy he’s strangling from crying out to this fight in the bell room to Tracy finally saving his hash may be my favorite part of the whole film.
In contrast, Roger’s fight in Saida’s dressing room feels for all the world like a standard Simon Templar throwdown, only somehow looking cheaper and more set-bound than anything on the TV show. He does a good job with the action, and arguably needs every “tough” scene he can bank, but it’s still not as cleverly conceived or effectively staged as the OHMSS fight. Also, I never know whether to ding Hamilton for his sloppiness or applaud him for his cheekiness at leaving in the bit where we can plainly see the camera crew in the vanity mirror, but today I’m falling on the side of “sloppy.” I can’t in good conscience give the nod to a fight scene that feels so utterly phoned in. Bonus points for giving us an ultra-rare look at an actually bloodied Roger, but it’s not enough to tip the scales for me.
Sorry but from where I’m standing the Golden Gun fight has lost its charm.
When I was rewatching THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN a couple of months ago this was what struck me about this particular fight, how much it reminded me of The Saint/The Persuaders shenanigans and how flimsy the set for it looked.
I wasn’t able to track down either scene on YouTube to compare them. But my memory of the bell shed was that it certainly looked authentic and convincing enough. So, in spite of it being somewhat superfluous to the plot - one more fight - that’s what I will keep. And it has to be given to Lazenby, he’s does a fabulous job in the entire escape sequence. Had it been Connery’s role the effect might have been more along the lines of the Kobe docks fight, no real sense of danger to Bond.
I couldn’t find the OHMSS fight on YouTube either (interestingly, searching “Lazenby bell fight” turned up a bunch of videos of a boxer named Lazenby!) but the one from TMWTGG is here:
I did consider the fact that Roger’s fight is somewhat more needed in that we’d gone without action for while in that film compared to OHMSS where the bell fight is just one action scene in a prolonged parade of them. But really that’s why the Laz scene works for me: he keeps pulling off one win after another but the bad guys just. Never. Stop. No matter how many dangers he survives, they just keep coming, and he knows, as we do, that his luck can’t last forever. He has to win every time but they only have to win once.
OHMSS is always great. But Moore always wins for me. Just the way he conducts himself in this towers over anything Lazenby could do. Moore just had more in his little finger… sorry, I digress.
Moore’s my favorite, too, but this scene is really lacking in comparison, IMHO. In evoking The Saint upthread, I’m thinking of little things like Roger waiting that extra beat to make sure the other guy sees his “punch” coming before he throws it, or glancing behind himself to judge the distance to the wall before he “falls” into it. Check out the moment in the above clip at 3:08 where he obligingly waits, bent forward, for his foe to break a bottle on his back despite having received no injury that would double him over like that. The editing helps a bit, though the music is so overly dramatic it actually works against the scene for me, but the point is that it’s all very broad and “stagey” and it doesn’t help that there’s no real tension or urgency at work behind it, plot-wise. Bond simply shows up somewhere and people try to kill him…because he’s Bond, I guess. Just another Tuesday. There’s some fun to be had in watching it unfold – we all like a good fight – but there’s no emotional stakes. In comparison, we understand the stakes and motivations in the OHMSS scene and even if that fight will never end up in any “Greatest Moments” montage either, the fact that its driven by a sense of desperation and peril makes all the difference.
As an aside, however, one of the joys of Roger’s era is that his Bond comes to realize that yes, wherever he goes someone is going to try to kill him for no other discernible reason than that he is James Bond, and that results in some great reaction shots, like in the Moonraker PTS where the stewardess pulls the gun and his expression says, “Great, here we go again…”
It’s like the Isla de Muerta: can not be found, except for those who knew where it was.
Really, I never noticed it while watching the movie myself, but I remembered that I’ve read it was there (and probably saw screenshots better than this one). This is one for the pub quizzes
But I’d like to take the opportunity and hijack the thread for a brief moment (just because it’s fitting and I don’t really want to start a new thread for it) and like to draw your attention to this really great book of which I recently received a copy and the existence of which has been hitherto unknown to me. A rare gem…
Lazenby is the most athletically impressive of all the Bonds and his fight scenes tower over anything in the Moore era, as much as I love the man. There’s desperation and power whenever he moves.
Look at the way he slides out the window after the bell house fight. It even goes down to his hat toss, which I think is the best one. He turns to Moneypenny before it even hits the target. With Connery, for instance, it feels like “aha! did you see what I just did?” With Lazenby it’s not a party trick, he’s completely mastered the skill and has the confidence to do it without breaking stride.
Lazenby’s lack of acting experience gives him this mixture of vulnerability that suits the story that was being told, and when the time came to punch he exceeded expectations, with only Craig matching him decades later IMO. Moore’s strengths were humour and class, but seeing how good OHMSS handled things does make me somewhat regret the overall physically standards slid down during his tenure.
Oooh, tough choice. Both are iconic and take place in the two most legendary sets in the series. I think I like The Spy Who Loved Me supertanker battle better, but You Only Live Twice’s crater battle was first and probably means more to, and has more impact on, the series as a whole. So YOLT stays and TSWLM goes–grudgingly.
Ninjas down a hollowed out volcano already seems like a pitch for a Moore Bond - but strangely the battle between hostages and thankfully even-clothed guards in a hollowed out tanker feels to me more… no, realistic is not the word. But… believable?
Going against the grain and eliminate the original here. On no other basis than that the ninja abseil act seems a recipe for disaster when they have to slide a significant distance on those ropes without cover and against enemy fire. It looks terrific but one wonders how many hundred men Tanaka can send into that volcano.
Personally hate both, but that’s because I’ve always hated the “get the cavalry!!” endings but for this…TSWLM did it better with at least trying to make you care about this group of random soldiers.
Supertanker battle , I don’t know why even in the cinema recently I found it very dull, at least YOLT has Connery on strike in a very unflattering ninja outfit and it’s quite jaunty in its own way
I also chose the craterfight from YOLT, because and -it’s already mentioned before- I just watch the ninjas go down the robes and I assume in advance that they will be shot. Also time was not realy good for this movie, all looks very old and dated. TSWLM only made ten years later looks still a movie that could 've been made a couple of years ago, it doesn’t look that old fashioned to me and the tanker fight still kicks ass.
, I don’t know why even in the cinema recently I found it very dull, at least YOLT has Connery on strike in a very unflattering ninja outfit and it’s quite jaunty in its own way