James Bond in the Disco Age
In 1992, in Santa Monica, California, I met and conversed with actress Barbara Bach at a friend's birthday party. She was nice, poised, patient with me--a somewhat drunk and definitely stoned midwesterner. I talked too much. I had little knowledge of her film work, other than her acting in a Bond film I hadn't seen, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). I'd seen Caveman, which she made with her husband Ringo Starr, but I didn't mention it. I was a nobody hanging out for a half hour with a Beatle's wife, an elegant actress who'd worked with Roger Moore and Franco Nero.
In her Bond outing, she plays a top Soviet secret agent. Her spy boyfriend gets killed on an Austrian ski slope by Agent 007 before the credits roll. Carly Simon sings the opener; it's good to hear her distinctly American voice, so prominent in the 1970s, in a film taking place nowhere near the United States.
Sardinia, Egypt, and on board nuclear submarines captured by a marine biologist with a Napoleon Complex (Curd Jürgens)--this film travels as do all Bond movies. The marine biologist envisions a future world where people will live in enclaves beneath the sea. His headquarters is an enormous above-water below-water structure resembling a black spider with four legs, host to hundreds of armed servants carrying out his plan, that involves nuking Moscow and New York.
The most memorable minion, played by seven foot two Richard Kiel, is Jaws, equipped with stainless steel teeth. He keeps coming and coming, undefeated to the last, appearing again as a fierce Bond adversary in Moonraker.
Roger Moore has long been my favorite Bond. He looks like Bond from the novels, for one thing. He also possesses, most importantly, a cold, glib, cynical manner also present in the books. Made fun of by some critics and viewers for his tasteless quips after killing people, I view this tendency of Moore's Bond as a sociopathic trait in keeping with his job as a cold-blooded killer working for MI-6, an intelligence agency dedicated to doing whatever it takes to further British, and Western, interests. Like the CIA, MI-6 is not a benevolent organization, but the Bond mythos fitted, during the Cold War years, when Ian Fleming wrote the novels and stories, into a West versus East mindset. In 1977, detente with the Soviet Union was often discussed and written about as desirable by some in the Western establishment press.
The Spy Who Loved Me features a Soviet spy cooperating with a British spy (getting into bed together, literally, of course). Detente plays out, at least temporarily, between Bond and Barbara Bach's character, except that after she finds out Bond killed her boyfriend she decides to knock the Britisher off when the mission is completed. Her conviction in carrying this out is rather weak--we know she won't do it. Given Bond's nature, it would be more likely that he'd kill her, refraining, we can hope, from saying something inane and uncouth as she bleeds to death on the floor.
The film features the famous white Lotus sports car that transforms at need into a mini-submarine. A battle inside an exceptionally huge tanker goes on for the right amount of screen time. Jurgens' character, a megalomaniac, surrounds himself with luxury and rare species of fish in aquariums. He has a special elevator with a drop-floor sending a victim to a shark tank.
I haven't read the Fleming novel that serves as the film's source material, but I know it's a first person narrative from the viewpoint of the Soviet female agent, the Spy of the title being James Bond.
Vic Neptune
In 1992, in Santa Monica, California, I met and conversed with actress Barbara Bach at a friend's birthday party. She was nice, poised, patient with me--a somewhat drunk and definitely stoned midwesterner. I talked too much. I had little knowledge of her film work, other than her acting in a Bond film I hadn't seen, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). I'd seen Caveman, which she made with her husband Ringo Starr, but I didn't mention it. I was a nobody hanging out for a half hour with a Beatle's wife, an elegant actress who'd worked with Roger Moore and Franco Nero.
In her Bond outing, she plays a top Soviet secret agent. Her spy boyfriend gets killed on an Austrian ski slope by Agent 007 before the credits roll. Carly Simon sings the opener; it's good to hear her distinctly American voice, so prominent in the 1970s, in a film taking place nowhere near the United States.
Sardinia, Egypt, and on board nuclear submarines captured by a marine biologist with a Napoleon Complex (Curd Jürgens)--this film travels as do all Bond movies. The marine biologist envisions a future world where people will live in enclaves beneath the sea. His headquarters is an enormous above-water below-water structure resembling a black spider with four legs, host to hundreds of armed servants carrying out his plan, that involves nuking Moscow and New York.
The most memorable minion, played by seven foot two Richard Kiel, is Jaws, equipped with stainless steel teeth. He keeps coming and coming, undefeated to the last, appearing again as a fierce Bond adversary in Moonraker.
Roger Moore has long been my favorite Bond. He looks like Bond from the novels, for one thing. He also possesses, most importantly, a cold, glib, cynical manner also present in the books. Made fun of by some critics and viewers for his tasteless quips after killing people, I view this tendency of Moore's Bond as a sociopathic trait in keeping with his job as a cold-blooded killer working for MI-6, an intelligence agency dedicated to doing whatever it takes to further British, and Western, interests. Like the CIA, MI-6 is not a benevolent organization, but the Bond mythos fitted, during the Cold War years, when Ian Fleming wrote the novels and stories, into a West versus East mindset. In 1977, detente with the Soviet Union was often discussed and written about as desirable by some in the Western establishment press.
The Spy Who Loved Me features a Soviet spy cooperating with a British spy (getting into bed together, literally, of course). Detente plays out, at least temporarily, between Bond and Barbara Bach's character, except that after she finds out Bond killed her boyfriend she decides to knock the Britisher off when the mission is completed. Her conviction in carrying this out is rather weak--we know she won't do it. Given Bond's nature, it would be more likely that he'd kill her, refraining, we can hope, from saying something inane and uncouth as she bleeds to death on the floor.
The film features the famous white Lotus sports car that transforms at need into a mini-submarine. A battle inside an exceptionally huge tanker goes on for the right amount of screen time. Jurgens' character, a megalomaniac, surrounds himself with luxury and rare species of fish in aquariums. He has a special elevator with a drop-floor sending a victim to a shark tank.
I haven't read the Fleming novel that serves as the film's source material, but I know it's a first person narrative from the viewpoint of the Soviet female agent, the Spy of the title being James Bond.
Vic Neptune
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