That photo made my day.
I did not know there was a Lufthansa plane with DUISBURG INTERCONTINENTAL on its side. And I am from Duisburg!
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Thank you!
But there are only six Connery Bonds (seven if you include NSNA).
Agreed, though Bond is pretty ruthless toward women in TMWTGG. But then again, he is a state-sanctioned assassin, so ruthlessness is part of his equipment (admittedly usually better disguised than it is in DAF).
We are pretty much living in it in 2021. DAF was prophetic in postulating the confluence of government/big business in controlling people’s lives, with citizens then choosing to entertain themselves to death. Las Vegas is no longer just a city in the state of Nevada.
Beautifully put. Thank you for helping me to understand the film better.
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Precisely. Unfortunately.
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Darn it! Also a solo ConneryBond masquerading as a kissing couple.
You’ve probably seen this, but it made me chortle. So it should amuse most.
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Diamonds are forever marks the end of the 1960s…
Before people start screaming “it was made in 1971!”, Please hear me out…
I know decades start on the year 0, but trends, fashions,music etc ,that later define the era,seem to occur later. I.e the sixties started swinging in 1964, before that we were in the 1950s still
Not because of the change of actor, but LALD only two years later, feels and looks very different from DAF, a whole decade apart almost
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And yet, before your persuasive arguments, it still hadn’t made my cut til now. Well done, sir!
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Franks’ Corpse as Bond’s Corpse…
Just thought that should be
Franks’ Corpse as Bond’s Corpse as Frank’s Brother’s Corpse.
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Thank you! You’re the one that makes me appreciate DAF more. It’s perhaps the first Bond movie that shows the world around Bond is changing (GE and CR being perhaps the only other two), much more so than other Bond movies that talk about a changing world, yet don’t really show it.
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Thank you. I had never gone into Gray’s Blofeld so deeply.
I am not going to scream, but I am going to dissent.
I think of DAF as a quintessential 1970’s film with its sense of malaise and decay. For me, it is a companion piece to such other 1971 films as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE FRENCH CONNECTION.
Another thought I had as I was composing my response was that OHMSS (a quintessential 1960’s film) fits well with Arthur Penn’s BONNIE AND CLYDE, while DAF seems a companion piece to his NIGHT MOVES (1975) and THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976).
Another pair of double bills:
BLOW UP and OHMSS
ZABRISKIE POINT and DAF (as a teenager, I thought the desert house in each film was the same house!)
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YES!! That’s always how I’ve felt about the world DAF lives in. Couldn’t think of a good way of describing it
best I had was “the sixties rotting because the 70’s didn’t want to let it go”
I know, it’s too wordy
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DAF reminds of a Roxy Music album cover, Manifesto and that’s what I see in 70s cinema itself. The party is on but everyone is feeling off. Unreal and a bit plastic.
- note they are all shop dolls -
What a brilliant double bill though Night Moves and DAF
Amazing!
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The fact the film leans into the falsehoods of where they are has made it age very well.
It’s not the tourism advert many Bond films are, it’s a viscous critique on nostalgia and propaganda.
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With Connery knowing he his perpetuating a lie, making h the only one who knows it’s all an artiface.
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Thank you so much.
Too brilliant.
Much appreciated, but I do want to say that your insight that
has been rattling around in my brain all weekend. It is the one Connery movie a person would want to live in since it feels like a world that could actually exist (or might already). I have always believed that Ted Moore’s cinematography in DAF was on the documentary side–less the exotic travelogue the earlier films were (complete agreement with what Orion posted as I was writing this post).
Also, I read somewhere that Ken Adam was worried that his set designs would not be able to compete with the reality of Las Vegas. I am always impressed by how Adam’s designs seamlessly blend with the film’s actual locations. That bridal suite must exist somewhere in Vegas!
Might I offer: “as the sixties rotted, they became the '70’s”
&
Many thanks to both of you. You have deepened my thoughts about masquerade in DAF. I misread Orion’s comment at first, and understood it as DAF being a film that showed where/how the falsehoods were made (which is as true as what Orion actually wrote). Misprision can be a wonderful thing.
Is DAF a film that masquerades as a Bond film as the pink tie masquerades as a tie? Dustin once wrote that there was a chest of Bond movie parts that got spilled out and selectively used in combination with of-the-moment material to make the new Bond movie. Maybe DAF is a film where the parts and the contemporary aspects combined in a unique, possibly unrepeatable way.
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And the most intriguing part: since Bond films are the result of a huge creative team and not one auteur, it all came together this way by… a collective subconscious view of the world at that time?
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I was only 5 at the time, but it was pretty much how I saw the world.
Moonbuggies in the desert, cars that flip from one set of wheels to the other in a narrow alley, a magic box that changes your voice to that of any other character you request, villains in drag and major characters in really bad toupees would have fit right in with my diet of “HR Puffenstuff,” " Liddsville" and “The Bugaloos.” Except Sid and Marty Krofft usually managed more impressive special effects.
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On a smaller scale, it is an example of the “genius of the system” concept:
Also, I would argue that the anxiety Eon was feeling over the survival of the franchise made them open to ideas and approaches they would have rejected in more secure times. Eon was in “let’s-recapture-the-magic” mode rather than “let’s-repeat-our-successful-formula-mode.” They gathered together many old Bond hands–Connery, Hamilton, Moore, Adam, Barry, Bassey–and (here was the serendipity) added one key newcomer–Mankiewicz. They also tried to make the film relevant to the moment in a bid to to bring viewers back. As a result, they were open to the zeitgeist, which they caught amazingly well, and this approach was exactly what audiences wanted to see. They caught the mood of the 1970’s (sorry Silvertoe), and it resonated with people.
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May I add: Bond films always reflect the zeitgeist.
Always the same in a different, contemporary way.
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