This, is a kind of microcosm of the movie, magnetic, duality, practice as performance.
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Truly beautiful. Thanks Stbernard. This version made me wonder if John Barry fashioned the song specifically for Shirley Bassey’s voice. Also realized how even a modest arrangement shows off the tune’s beauty.
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Her voice is unbelievably strong and charismatic. No singer ever came close in any other Bond song.
And she even acts the words in this performance.
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It’s that thing, practice as performance. It’s interesting that @MrKiddWint thinks perhaps the song was fashioned around her voice, just as DAF was fashioned around Connery and his return.
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Love this!
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Must have cost you a small fortune 
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Cost us, yes🤣
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The film [NTTD] was a critical and commercial success that succeeded – finally – in dragging Bond into the 21st century…
“Dragging” being the operative word, since it also made a corpse of him.
Diamonds Are Forever was one of the most widely-panned Bond films upon its release with reviewers critical of the film’s slow plot and less than exotic locals.
I don’t think it’s fair to say Vegas has less than exotic locals. Last time I was there, for instance, I spotted a 400-pound Elvis impersonator tooling around on a Rascal scooter.
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Las Vegas is only a “less than exotic location” when you see it from an American point of view. For Europeans, it’s as exotic as a casino in Macau or Nassau, or a volcano in Japan 
Okay, from my point of view, Amsterdam is less than exotic – like Paris or Bern – a less than 5 hours drive…
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The Skinny Bridge not exotic?!?
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The funniest aspect of that article is the author’s desperate attempt at justifying his love for the film by repeatedly chastising it and other Bond films for having tropes which today are considered questionable.
I‘ve never seen articles about the many questionable tropes of the Nouvelle Vague. Apparently, art has to be seen in context, entertainment not so much.
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Perfection 
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The nerd in me had to look it up…
Adjusted for inflation that’s $17,203,904
Those are some major theaters it was playing in. The one for my town plays Broadway size shows, etc.
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Your fellow nerd thanks you.
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Continuing the nedfest:
The average ticket price in 1971 was $1.65.
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Which is about $12.66 in today’s dollars. I’m actually surprised it’s as close as it is to what we’re paying now.
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To think that the favorite actor actually returned must have been an enormous joy.
And then, after one attempt at new casting failed, the next actor must have felt terrible pressure… and yet he succeeded.
It could happen this time as well.
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