Questions about Solitaire

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Something’s always bothered me about the character of Solitaire in the film version of LALD. Kananga tells her: “These growing signs of impertinence begin to disturb me, Solitaire. Even as they did with your mother before you. She lost the power and became useless to me. You will not make the same mistake.”

Soon after, we learn that what takes a seer’s powers away is the act of sexual intercourse.

So. Question #1 is, just how old is Solitaire supposed to be in this film? If it’s true that her mother served Kananga, then Kananga must be a good deal older than she is. Let’s say she’s 20 now; unless Kananga’s been ruling San Monique since childhood, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was at least 20 when she was born, making him around 40 now. I don’t know how old Yaphet Kotto was in this film, but 40 would be at the upper end, just based on his appearance.

And if Solitaire is significantly younger than 20…or really even just a couple years younger…Bond’s seduction of her is even ickier than it already is.

Interestingly a version of the script I found online (supposedly the “shooting script”) has the line as “she lost her powers and was destroyed.” That phrasing would leave open the possibility that Solitaire’s mother was merely someone Kananga knew about, a woman who had perhaps served Kananga’s father or another powerful man. But as delivered in the finished film it’s “became useless to me,” meaning Mom definitely worked for the Kananga we know.

So Question #2 , then, is what happened in the years between Mom and Solitaire? We see that the power is taken from Solitaire immediately upon having sex, so if the same was true for Mom, that leaves 9 months where she would have been useless to Kananga but was allowed to live anyway, at least until giving birth. So does that mean Kananga was so cold-blooded that he patiently waited for the pregnancy to reach term before murdering the mother, then took the child to eventually serve in her place? Or does it mean Mom is still alive somewhere, locked away maybe as extra insurance to keep Solitaire in line? (But if so, you’d think she’d mention it and ask Bond to free her, too).

Question #3, then, would be who raised Solitaire? Has she spent her entire life with Kananga acting as her guardian/father? If so, does that mean the “power” is entirely genetic and instinctive and requires no instruction or tutelage from another seer, like her Mom? Is Solitaire able to just figure out the power on her own? And if Kananga is her “foster father,” that raises the really disturbing…

Question #4: How sick is it that “dear old Dad” plans to eventually rape Solitaire? Of her power, he says, “when I decide the time has come for you to lose it, I myself will take it away.” Not exactly Father of the Year material, right there. And what then? A repeat of history? Get Solitaire pregnant and wait for the baby to arrive before killing her? And then how many years will it be before the baby has powers (including the power to speak and convey her visions)? Is it worth it? And what if it’s a boy? Would he have the power?

I tend to be more forgiving than some to the iffy racial elements in this film, but it’s definitely uncomfortable that we have a white woman being held captive by a black man with the constant threat of rape before the big brave white guy comes to save her. Interestingly, that same online script I linked to above includes this creepy bit of stage direction:

KANANGA: “Your power exists to serve me and is mine to control. If and when I decide the time has come for you to lose it… (pause. smile.) …I myself will take it away.”

I can’t think of any possible way to play that “pause. smile” that wouldn’t prove absolutely suicidal for everyone involved in the film, and thankfully – either because he refused to go there or because he was too busy focusing on the “rage” angle – Kotto doesn’t even attempt it. But holy crap.

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Since I always accepted that Jane Seymour was at least in her 20‘s I always thought Solitaire is of that age, too, and was already a teenager when Mr.Big met her mother. Who „lost her powers“ when he decided to have sex with her.

Of course, the whole thing about reading cards to see the future is nonsense just as much as having sex stops the woman from having these powers.

I think Mr.Big is just as absurdly superstitious as, well, Catholics thinking sex is sinful.

Which would raise the question, of course, who is Solitaire‘s father. I have forgotten how that is explained in the novel. But I would think in the film Mr. Big takes in her mother because he believes in her powers (and maybe even believing she got pregnant in a supernatural way - or that nobody was as powerful as he could be, and only he destroyed her abilities. When it actually was just her predictions did not please him anymore, and he himself started to doubt his own convictions about her powers.)

Bond tricking Solitaire with his own brand of cards, therefore, was always a clever way of showing us how silly the whole predictions/powers idea was: pure superstition.

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Kotto was 33 during the production, 12 years younger than Moore. I would argue though that Big/Kananga follows the traditional Bond template to be an anti-father figure that’s supposed to be about 20 years Bond’s senior.

Thinking about the Kananga/Solitaire dynamic is indeed uncomfortable terrain. My own assumption has always been that it was not the actual intercourse that takes away the powers but the fact of falling in love. In fact I assumed Solitaire’s mother had been working for Kananga when she already had her daughter; possibly even when Solitaire’s own gift had already manifested, which must have been a bonus in Kananga’s eyes. But I admit the dialogue doesn’t support this reading.

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One point to make that should be factored in:

For people who are psychics or spiritualists or whatever you want to call them… impairment of their abilities is a symptom of them experiencing spiritual and/or emotional difficulty. Their belief would be that the act of sex in and of itself doesn’t necessarily cause them to lose power, but if the act of sex is one that caused them psychological, emotional, or spiritual distress (rape, guilt, confusion over what to think about it because of their young age, etc) THAT would cause them to lose their power.

In other words, if the act of sex is to them a spiritually healthy one, they would not lose their power.

What does this mean to LALD? Mom could have conceived Solitaire and had kept her power. She could have lost her power long after Solitaire was born.

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This is an interesting take. So I think you’re saying that Solitaire in fact has no “power” and it’s just Kananga’s superstition that makes him believe she does?

Normally, I’d agree with you, and I certainly would in real life, but this film is unique in its embrace of the supernatural, not just in the form of Solitaire’s “power” but also in its portrayal of Samedi as “the man who cannot die.”

Solitaire predicts that “a man comes” (which always gets a giggle, since we just saw Bond heading for bed with Miss Caruso), that “he travels over water” and that “he brings violence and destruction.” Which all fits for Bond because he is on his way, he’s flying over the Atlantic and he never goes anywhere without leaving destruction in his wake. Now, granted, any “predictions” from Nostradamus on down can be made to fit whatever historical facts we like in hindsight, but all of this seems like odd stuff for Solitaire to just make up if the object is to please – or bamboozle – her boss. There’s no way Kananga wants to hear that a guy like Bond is coming and bringing trouble for his operation, and no motivation for Solitaire to concoct such a tale. In having her express this vision while we’re watching Bond on the way to America, the deck is very much stacked (if you’ll pardon the expression) towards having us believe this gal does indeed have some kind of supernatural ability.

I do like the idea, though, that maybe the whole “sex removes the power” thing is a red herring, not least because in order for your scenario to work, Solitaire’s mother would have to have had sex before Kananga met her and her offspring. Maybe how it works is that Solitaire’s family really does have some talent with Tarot; both mother and daughter were captured by Kananga, but the mother, watching her daughter grow up in front of Kananga and become more beautiful every day, told Kananga that while she (Mom) had learned her magical skills via lost and forbidden texts, a deal with the devil or whatever, Solitaire inherited those same powers and would lose them if she were ever physically violated. That is, maybe Mom told that story to Kananga so he’d keep his grubby mitts off her daughter.

And maybe Solitaire bought into the story herself, since she was raised on it. When Bond offers her the cards after sex, she doesn’t even try to read them, convinced her power is gone. Later when she’s forced to read them by Kananga with Bond at the table under threat of mutilation, Solitaire is either still convinced of her lost powers, or too worried about Bond to concentrate, or some combination of the two, and thus botches the reading. But maybe whatever power she had would actually still work if she could get into the right mindset.

Bond tricking Solitaire with his own brand of cards, therefore, was always a clever way of showing us how silly the whole predictions/powers idea was: pure superstition.

I think he certainly thinks so. But on two separate occasions, the “Lovers” card has already turned up to explain Bond’s destiny, so again it is possible to read it all as an endorsement of the supernatural. Although I will admit that the second time she sees the “Lovers” card – while Rosie is luring Bond into a trap – it’s possible all it means is that Bond and Rosie will be lovers, and Solitaire, unnerved by seeing the card again, merely assumes it’ll be Bond and herself. Then, when Bond’s altered deck brings the card around a third time, she’s had enough time to sit around thinking about the possibility and decide maybe it’s kind of appealing…so all she needs is a tap, not a shove.

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Doesn’t Strutter mention he had had a look at the cards and they were all marked? Perhaps the ‘reading’ follows a different mechanism, Solitaire interpreting what Kananga/Big wants to hear anyway - but making him and/or his lieutenants believe in the supernatural powers?

Solitaire’s first reading is impressive - but is it really? Kananga just killed three SIS agents*, it stands to reason there will be some kind of reaction from London. And if one happens to be in organised crime one may have heard about SIS having personnel for this kind of affair, somebody to cause violence and death.

So all Solitaire is saying is really what you’d expect anyway. Perhaps this kind of stuff is what keeps Kananga’s underlings motivated and confident of the management, the fact the boss is allied with forces of the beyond and divine. Even on the island the whole cult is actually based on theatre magic and tricks.

*Just occurs to me, why actually did he kill these guys? Didn’t look as if they had been anywhere close to uncovering Kananga’s underwater heroine scheme, did it?

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I think what Strutter said was, “I saw those cards on my way up. Spades, James, every one of 'em.” It’s a race joke.

I decided to review all of Solitaire’s “readings.” First up is the one where she says “A man comes…” You’re probably right that it’s a safe bet someone or other is always out to stop Kananga, and if Solitaire knows 3 British agents have been killed, it’s also logical to assume the latest lawman on the trail will be coming from England, to even the score. Interestingly, however, just based on this “generic” reading, Mr Big is able to figure out the “man’s” identity, the arrival time of his flight, what car he’ll be riding in and what route he’ll be taking, because Whisper is Johnny-on-the-spot with the pimpmobile and a poison dot aimed at Charlie the chauffer. This is even more impressive if Solitaire’s reading occurs while Bond’s plane is still in flight, which the edit suggests.

Bond meets Solitaire after his “nasty turn in a booth” and she says, “I know who you are, what you are and why you have come,” which we should probably assume merely means she knows he’s a lawman of some kind and not specifically that his name is James Bond and he works for the British Secret Service. Although if she did know those things, it would explain how Whisper could find him and try to kill him, but even the cards aren’t as specific as all that…right?

In the next sentence, though, she proves she’s not infallible, since she says, “You have made a mistake. You will not succeed.” She’s wrong in that, and Bond’s own sense of self-assuredness (and knowledge that it is, after all, his movie) leads him to say, “Rather a sweeping statement, considering we’ve never met.” She answers, “the cards have followed you for me,” so either they really are more specific than you’d think or she’s just laying on the “I see all and know all” routine a bit thick for the benefit of the hired help.

Tee-Hee enters and asks, “Is he armed?” She checks another card and nods in the affirmative. Now, this is interesting because (1) it’s a logical assumption he’d be armed and it doesn’t really take any magic cards to figure that out, so we can’t count this as evidence either way, but also (2) it shows that not only Kananga but also his underlings are so superstitious that they have to ask for a card reading rather than trust their common sense or instinct, or indeed simply frisk the guy. So maybe she’s got the whole gang in her thrall.

Bond asks if he’s represented in the deck and Solitaire invites him to pick a card. He picks “The Fool” and Solitaire tells him he’s found himself. So is he really the fool? Maybe, or maybe she’d have found a way to justify any card he turned over. Or maybe she even put “The Fool” there with plans to use it against him in this way. Honestly, if the cards wanted to send an important message, then Bond should have been represented with “Death,” since that’s what he’ll prove to be to multiple persons in the organization, before it’s all over.

Before he’s hauled off, Bond asks if the cards can reveal his future, and she lets Bond choose one. He turns over “The Lovers” and she seems pretty surprised. Is this because she feels it’s fate talking? Or is it just because she’s in the awkward position of having come up with some explanation for why every other card that gets turned over has great import but this one doesn’t? Has he busted up her scam? Or is this perhaps an indication that the power of the Tarot is no match for Bond’s own supernatural ability to achieve a sexual conquest under any and all conditions? Has his supernatural manly “mojo” in fact just rewritten fate itself?

Next Bond is off to San Monique and Solitaire reports “He comes again.” At this point, Kananga knows he’s in town because he’s already tried to kill him with the snake. Maybe Solitaire knows that and maybe she doesn’t, but it’s a logical assumption he’d show up since she’d have heard he got away in NY. Was the snake gambit the result of her announcing his presence in San Monique? If so, we don’t see it. Anyway, he’s on a boat now and we hear her say “he’s coming” while he’s en route by water, so it plays like she’s “sensing” it in real time. “There will be violence,” she adds. Again a logical assumption given what’s happened up to this point, and she’s not committing herself to who’s going to be on which end of the violence. Not a big stretch as “predictions” go. “He has arrived,” she says, as we see Bond tying up the boat. So again, it’s either a coincidence of editing or she’s really calling plays in real time.

Kananga asks what’s in the future, and Solitaire finds “The Lovers” again. Kananga asks, “Is it Death” and she lies that yes, it’s Death. Interpretation #1 is that she does have the ability to get more details out of the cards than we can see, and they are telling her “this man will make love to you.” Interpretation #2 is that the cards are right that someone will be having sex soon, but they mean Bond and Rosie and Solitaire only assumes it’s Bond and herself. Interpretation #3 is that Solitaire herself knows the whole card reading routine is a sham but the fact that “The Lovers” keeps coming up is starting to freak her out.

Bond is not killed and Kananga wants answers. Solitaire says it must have been Rosie’s death she foresaw. Kananga asks where Bond is now and Solitaire says she’s too upset to see. So is she? If you look at it one way, maybe she’s getting unnerved because the whole charade is starting to fall apart; she’s unsettled by her feelings for Bond and/or realizing that she can’t just assume Bond will be beaten like every other foe Kananga’s encountered, and all these x factors are making it too hard to keep up the act. Or maybe Bond really has broken some kind of cosmic thread with his personal superpower and destiny itself has entered a state of flux. Or maybe she actually CAN see where Bond is right now, and the answer is: a couple hundred yards from this house, on a hang glider. But if she says that to Kananga, she might get Bond killed, which she doesn’t want either because she has feelings for him or because she senses he’s her way out, or both.

Bond arrives and says, “But you do believe…I mean really believe in the cards?” and she answers, “They have never lied to me.” Meaning she really does believe in them, or that she’s simply not able to admit, “Okay, I made it all up?”

But then comes the “morning after” and I’m hard-pressed to find a reading where Solitaire doesn’t legitimately believe she’s lost her powers. So either she only thought she had powers, and was fooling herself as much as Kananga with all her educated guesses, or she really was in tune with something supernatural in her virgin days. I think it’s conceivable that Solitaire’s conviction that Kananga was ruthless and cunning enough to triumph against almost any foe made it safe to always read the cards in a way that led to predictions of his victory, until Bond showed up and added the very real possibility of defeat for the first time ever. Then “predictions” got a lot tougher once a true element of chance entered the picture.

But it still feels like something more than that.

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Of course, the movie wants to have it both ways - or rather the way it is most effective.

But as you and Dustin pointed out, everything Solitaire predicts is either easy to assume or just a coincidence.

That’s how every prediction works. Any astrologist will be correct in their conclusions because the target either wants to believe it or considers it possible.

I always thought Bond represents a realist fighting a villain who is superstitious himself and holds his people ransom with superstition. But it’s all a cheap trick.

Having Baron Samedi reeappear at the end, laughing into the camera, might support a reading of the film actually confirming the supernatural.

But for me it is mostly the filmmakers winking at us, underlining that all of it is just pure silly fun.

Just like the idea of an invincible British agent with the licence to kill.

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There can be an ambiguous reading of both Solitaite and Samedi. It was just good luck and coincidence, and the Samedi that died was a double, or whatever. But to be honest I’ve long felt the powers of both Solitaire and Samedi are actually genuine in the context of the film. Which is pretty crazy when you think about it.

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Samedi’s appearance at the end could be taken several ways.

Maybe he’s just human, faked his death with the snakes (they’re his snakes, maybe he trained them not to bite him?) and is back again for another shot at Bond. Except if so, he’s pretty stupid to dress in the costume from his night club act and climb onto the engine when he could’ve worn a proper suit and bought a ticket…with the added benefit of ending up inside the train where he could actually accomplish something.

Maybe he really is a supernatural figure, in which case he can’t be killed. It always seemed odd that such a figure would spend part of his time in civilian garb, however, and hang out with Kananga as one of his flunkies (or maybe an advisor? The devil on his shoulder, quite literally?). This opens up the possibility, as sharpshooter hints, that there are two characters in play: one is the flunkie who hangs out by day and uses a flute-shaped radio transmitter, then manages to get himself killed by the snakes, and the other is the real deal, supernatural and immortal Samedi. Or maybe Samedi can be killed, just not for long, so the snake thing takes him off the board only temporarily.

Another possibility is that the Samedi we see riding the train is symbolic, and not really there at all. A bit of artistic license. He’s a flesh-and-blood incarnation of the question mark added to “The End” on a monster movie…a symbolic reminder that wherever Bond goes, Death goes with him. In the “for” column, this interpretation avoids having to explain how a human character could have climbed onto the front of the train engine without notice, what he could possibly hope to accomplish from that position and why he’d be crazy enough to subject himself to such discomfort and danger wearing no more than a few skimpy tatters and a top hat that I can only imagine would take all his effort to keep the wind from blowing off. In the “against” column is the fact that Bond movies have never really gone in for artsy “symbolism” before or since. But given the film’s flirtation with supernatural themes at all, I think we can agree LALD is already an outlier.

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I decided to see if that script I found could provide any clues to Samedi’s true nature in the description of that final shot. Interestingly, it is not in the script at all. Instead we get this visual gag that seems much more in keeping with Mankiewicz’s decidedly more earthbound locker room humor, after Bond makes his “disarming” remark and moves towards Solitaire on the bed:

CAMERA CLOSE on a large, circular sign hanging over one track at a central train junction: A red light blinks on and off over the words: NO ENTRY. With a loud “ding,” the sign flips down, is replaced by a bright, blinking green light as Bond’s train whistles through, and off into the distance…

Wink, wink, nudge nudge.

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Given to what extraordinary lengths LIVE AND LET DIE went to incorporate the tarot theme - seems to me even more important than the vodou/voodoo hocus-pocus - it’s perhaps interesting that ‘the Fool’

holds the distinction of being the first card in the Tarot deck. It symbolizes **the embrace of new beginnings, the expansion of one’s horizons, and the willingness to take risks guided by intuition.

source Hindustan Times

I think that particular layer, inconsequential to the plot and insignificant to most of the audience, wasn’t an accidental choice.

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Uncomfortable is putting it mildly. Trying to stir Blaxploitation elements into the Bond template is the worst Bond script idea ever, even topping Blofeldhauser, which despite its egregious nature, avoids the racism/degradation of LALD’s choices.

Exactly. Another racist trope that Black people are superstitious, and incapable of using reason (why there were so few Black quarterbacks for decades–Black athletes were thought to be not smart enough to run an offense).

Solitaire does, since she was raised/trained by people who believe that they do. For superstitious/ignorant/backward Black people, the cards have predictive power, and part of White Savior/Bond’s mission is to save the White Heroine not only from physical/sexual danger, but and also superstitious beliefs. As @secretagentfan points out

I had the exact same thought. The movie’s belief in Solitaire’s powers has a dual purpose: it adds another layer to her rescuing, and allows the Black characters to be depicted as superstitious lackeys.

I do not think that LALD was going for symbolism here. The movie took handfuls of Black cultural tropes (or what the filmmakers believed were Black cultural tropes), and threw them against the celluloid to see what would stick. There was no attempt to be symbolic–merely decorative. LALD is a supreme well of outrageousness, with a heavy does of racism thrown in.

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Interesting that you use the word “lackeys.” Even at a very young age I picked up on Roger’s canny decision to add a small pause and meticulous pronunciation when he says, “I’m not in the habit of giving answers to…lackeys” and figured it was because he wanted to make extra sure no one in the audience misheard it as “blackies.”

The whole movie’s a tapdance in a minefield. Even given the popularity of Blaxploitation films at the time, it’s fairly amazing that Eon could face the make-or-break challenge of introducing a new Bond (when their last attempt to do so had bombed) and decide “Hey, I know, let’s have all the villains in the film be black, and we’ll throw in a racist cop for comedy relief.” I know the motto is “Everything or Nothing,” but that shouldn’t mean playing Russian roulette with only one empty chamber.

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But at that time… a winning formula.

I know, I know.

But Bond is not a racist, nor has ever been in the movies. Just a spoiled white guy going with the mainstream.

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I experience the pause as allowing two things to happen: 1) Bond to find a substitute for the word he wants to use (and the times/producers cannot permit); and 2) the audience to fill in the blank/pause with the word that Bond cannot say.

There was an empty one?

A sine qua non of racism.

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I’ve always read that pause as being Bond knows Kananga is under the mask and wants to stop the charade, and also buy time to save both himself and Solitaire.

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I never got, or even thought, either of those inferences. I’ve always taken it as Bond 1) delaying the inevitable of having to answer the question and, most especially, 2) simply taking the opportunity to insult Mr. Big by calling him a lackey, i.e. a simple underling for Kananga just to get under the drug kingpin’s skin. And the pause is used to further drive the insult home.

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Certainly in the context of the film, Bond is avoiding the question, but I had interpreted Moore’s delivery as a way to cover himself as an actor. That said, I prefer your take that Bond is trying to deliberately provoke “Mr Big” with an insult, and indeed it fits the rest of the film, wherein he displays a remarkable – if not unhinged – tendency to deliberately create dangerous situations for himself. Here he is captured, in enemy territory and helplessly trapped in the chair, and his response is to dig himself even deeper. It fits. In the same scene, he takes a shot at Tee-Hee with the “Butterhook” jibe.

There is, for me, a recurring theme throughout Roger’s tenure in that he works to maintain a sense of calm and composure to provoke his foes into frustration and rage. The villains try to unnerve or terrify him with threats or just leave him gobsmacked by the genius of their schemes, and he never gives them any satisfaction. Instead he seems unimpressed, dismissive and disdainful and projects an air of innate superiority that drives them crazy. I appreciate this as a tactic because it’s fun to watch and it always works. Every now and then we get a brief moment where the facade falls away and he looks genuinely worried, or relieved, or furious, and that’s when we know he’s not really imperturbable; it just benefits him to act like he is. For him, half the battle is fought on the psychological level. Giving into anger or panic leads to mistakes; the first guy to lose his cool is the loser, and Roger’s Bond is never going to be that guy.

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I always took this as an early Roger innuendo regarding his antics with Miss Caruso in his apartment… oh dear, I’m in the gutter again!:confounded:

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