Bond Rewatch #3 :: Goldfinger

Goldfinger — Guy Hamilton, director; with Sean Connery as James Bond

The third film in the Bond fanchise came as 1964’s Goldfinger and is the first film in the franchise to see a change in director. Terence Young was out and seasoned English director, Guy Hamilton was in. This was Hamilton’s first of four Bond pictures that he would direct. Not that Hamilton is a better director than Young, but he is certainly on par. Goldfinger is an incredibly fun Bond film and one with probably one of the most memorable villains, Auric Goldfinger.

This is the first Bond film in the franchise to feature a villain who is working 100% on his own terms. Goldfinger is incredibly wealthy, incredibly organized and incredibly insane. He doesn’t work for SMERSH or SPECTRE or any agency like that. He’s truly on his own and has his own plans for world domination. Well, maybe not world domination per se, but he’s certainly greedy enough to try and destroy Fort Knox with an atomic weapon thus increasing the value of his own supply of gold by leaps and bounds. It’s a great scheme too because he’s not trying to screw over the Soviets and he’s not out to mess with the United States and their space program; no, he’s simply going to render a gigantic supply of gold useless for decades by poisoning it with nuclear radiation. It’s incredibly crazy and it’s not linked to one specific country. Goldfinger has no allegenience to any one country which makes him that much more dangerous. Goldfinger’s plan wouldn’t be as sinister if it wasn’t for the great acting from Gert Fröbe. Sure his lines were all dubbed because his German accent was too thick to not require subtitles, but his facial expressions and body language are pitch perfect. And he’ll forever be tied to the greatest villain line of all time: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” Very straight forward especially for a Bond villain.

Bond first encounters Goldfinger in Miami where M has asked him to keep tabs on him at a beach resort. There Bond finds that Goldfinger is cheating a man in a game of gin rummy. Which is awesome considering that even though he’s about to hatch this plan that stands to make him billions of dollars richer, he’s still just hustling some poor schmuck by the pool. He’s doing this thanks to the aid of his assistant, Jill Masterson, who is spying on the opponent’s cards with binoculars from a balcony. Once Bond notices this he barges into Masterson’s hotel room to distract her and then eventually gets on the radio and blackmails Goldfinger into losing the game. After Goldfinger is ruined, Bond convinces Jill to go back to his place to celebrate and while getting some champagne from the kitchen, Bond is knocked out by one of the most famous Bond assassins, the deadly Oddjob. Oddjob, you’ll remember, is the only cinematic assassin to ever kill someone by throwing his hat at them. When Bond comes to he finds Jill dead in his bed, suffocated under her own skin by a thick layer of gold paint.

The film also features the Bond girl with the most memorable name this side of “Octopussy” which is of course the one and only Pussy Galore, played by Avengers star, Honor Blackman. She was just coming off The Avengers when this movie came up and at first wasn’t sure if she’d take it after being known as Catherine Gale for so long in England. But nevertheless she did the movie and is definitely one of the best Bond girls–mainly because she actually gives Bond a challenge. She fights off his advances for longer than most women Bond attempts to seduce. Pussy Galore is Goldfinger’s personal pilot and also runs her own all-female stunt pilot team, “Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus.” She’s not only a private pilot, but integral to Goldfinger’s scheme because she and her team of pilots are responsible for dropping nerve gas over Fort Knox in order to render everyone on the property unconscious–this is how Goldfinger and his team plan to infiltrate the highly guarded compound.

And infiltrate they do! Another great thing about this movie is that Goldfinger comes  so close to actually pulling off his evil plan! He successfully invades Fort Knox and activates the nuclear weapon. His flaw, like all cocky Bond villains, is that he leaves Bond alive and chained to the device. You idiot, Goldfiner! You could’ce been so rich and alive instead of, well, murdered! So of course Bond is going to break free. What’s great though is that we get to see Bond’s ignorance when it comes to technology. Sure he uses all of Q’s gadgets and they usually wind up saving his life, but when it comes to actually thinking technologically Bond is at a loss. While handcuffed to the bomb’s casing he doesn’t even pick the lock, instead he just smashes the cuffs with gold bars until they break. So obviously he’s baffled when standing over this nuclear weapon and attempting to figure out how to shut it down. Just as he’s about to rip out some wires and really do a number on the thing, a nuclear technician gently reaches over and turns a switch, instantly shutting down the device and stopping the countdown at “007”. So not only is Bond stumped by advanced technology, but by the film’s end the day is also technically saved by some unknown, unnamed, American, nuclear technician who does nothing more than flip a switch. Genius.

Pussy Galore sees the error of her ways and eventually decides to go with Bond instead of Goldfinger, but not before Goldfinger forces her to hijack a plane with Bond on it (bound for D.C. so Bond can be personally congratulated by Lyndon Johnson of course. You think Bond gets thanked by the President of the United States a lot? Probably.) In the last few moments, a gun is fired off in the cabin, breaking a window, and poor, portly Goldfinger is sucked out leaving Bond and Pussy to parachute to safety. And this isn’t the last time we’ll see Bond bed a girl while hiding under a parachute; it happens at least one more time in Goldeneye.

It contains one of the best villains, the best named character and has Connery doing some of his finest work as Bond. While not my favorite film in the franchise, Goldfinger has totally held up over the last forty-five years as one of the greatest Bond thrill rides. The action sequences are great–the best being a car chase featuring Bond and what seems like a hundred Chinese assassins–and they work so well with the sets here too. Especially in the case of Fort Knox, a place that few people know what the inside looks like. The final shootout in the underground vault is really incredible and Ken Adam’s production design really shines through as dozens of extras fire off weapons and do battle on the multi-level set up.

For anyone looking to start watching Bond films but aren’t sure where to start, I’d say that Goldfinger is probably the most accessible Connery film, if not one of the most accessible of the franchise. It has everything that all great Bond films have: great villain, great action, many seductive ladies that pique Bond’s interest and most importantly it’s not cheesy. I think the easiest way to get turned off by these movies is starting with the bad ones: Moonraker, Die Another Day, etc., but if you get the good ones out of the way first, the rest just follow along and are forgiveable. Goldfinger is most certainly a Bond film that needs no forgiveness.

Goldfinger is available on DVD and Blu-ray from MGM.

The Great Bond Rewatch of 2009 returns next week with Thunderball.

~ by allearsalleyesallthetime on July 21, 2009.