Film review: The Spy Who Loved Me

After the inanity of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, the Bond films could have gone in two directions: take the series back to its more sombre, spy thriller routes or become even more camp and over the top. With Roger Moore the incumbent Bond, it's perhaps not surprising that they went for the latter. However, while GOLDEN GUN and Connery's last two outings had me rolling my eyes and itching to reach for the fast-forward button, somehow Moore's third film, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, makes the grandiose, campy theatrics work in its favour, delivering a vastly superior film to everything since ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that, while GOLDFINGER provided the template for the series a whole, it's this film that the makers of the four Pierce Brosnan entries were looking to ape -- not out and out self-parody, but grandiose and with a definite whiff of the ridiculous. The pre-credits sequence, which culminates in Bond skiing off a precipice, hurtling several thousand feet, then opening a Union Jack parachute while the Bond theme plays, sums up the film rather nicely: bold, ambitious, technically masterful, but silly as all hell.*

The plot itself is essentially YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE retold, with Curd Jürgens as a sort of Blofeld stand-in (to avoid legal action from creator Kevin McClory). His character Stromberg, has a rare wheeze to trigger nuclear armageddon and then establish a new civilisation under the sea -- a scheme so ridiculous it could only appear in a Moore-era Bond film. And yet it works, because the film itself shares Stromberg's level of outrageous ambition in terms of scope and scale. After Guy Hamilton's constrained, TV-like direction of the last two entries, Lewis Gilbert returns to the director's seat for the first time since YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and delivers a far grander, more cinematic film than its three predecessors. The 2.39:1 aspect ratio makes a welcome return, and Gilbert really opens up the canvas, treating us to sumptuous wide angle shots that show off the exotic locales. A tense stalking sequence amid the ruins of Karnak, photographed almost exclusively in extreme long shot and devoid of music or dialogue, is a particular standout, and when the action moves indoors, Ken Adam's bold production design takes over, offering up sets on such a massive scale that a new custom soundstage had to be built at Pinewood to accommodate them.

Barbara displaying her talents.

As for the cast, Barbara Bach is a perfect example of the series' tendency to cast actresses for their looks over their acting ability. Her character, KGB agent Anya Amasova, is set up as being Bond's equal -- tough, ruthless and libidinous. As long as the script doesn't require her to speak, she acquits herself well. Unfortunately, whenever she opens her mouth, her lack of acting ability becomes painfully apparent and the character becomes harder to take seriously. She also spends the entirety of the final act off-screen as Stromberg's prisoner, effectively neutralising what could have been the series' strongest female character since Tracy in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Moore himself is all raised eyebrows and witty one-liners, but it works amid the overall campy tone of the film, and during the extended climactic battle, which is all action and provides no room for humour, he dispenses with the quips and plays it entirely straight, providing a fascinating glimpse into what could have been. He lacks the serious acting chops of someone like Timothy Dalton (Moore was always more of a "star" than an "actor", in my view), but he's at the height of his game here and pitches it perfectly for the film's tone.

I suspect I won't end up doing full reviews of this length for the lesser Moore Bonds (i.e. the rest of his tenure with the exception of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) because there's very little productive I can say about them, but I might do a short piece summarising the Moore era if I get the time and inclination. For now, I'll just say that THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is almost certainly Moore's best Bond film, and the only one to make it into my Bond Top 10.

PS. The final title card reads "James Bond will return in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY." Curse you, Bond producers, for getting my hopes up! We all know, with the benefit of hindsight, that we have to endure MOONRAKER first.

* Incidentally, this appears to be the first film in the series to really stress the British nationalist element. There was, admittedly, always something a bit chauvinistic about the idea of a British agent travelling to far-flung corners of the world, defeating the savage locals and bedding their women. Previously, however, the character's nationality seemed more or less incidental (and any sense of "Britishness" in the Connery years is surely diluted with hindsight due to the actor's Scottish nationalism). With this film, I get the sense that it became a fundamental part of his identity, and a sense of British triumphalism (a reaction to the loss of the empire, perhaps, and a need to loudly proclaim Britain to still be top dog once this could no longer be taken as given) began to pervade.