007 - The Man with the Golden Gun

Nine films in the James Bond series is running on pure cynicism. Ian Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun was a slight, unfinished novel that saw a compromised 007 shipped off to Jamaica on a suicide mission. Since this is only Moore's second adventure, obsolescence doesn't really fit the bill so Fleming's story about a KGB sanctioned pimp is reorganised into a dreary, unconvincing travelogue that occasionally allows Bond to peck at a dark twin played by Christopher Lee. Scaramanga resides in a pocket universe of tropical islands accented with nightmarish carnival violence, his residence a gaudy mash of low-art and new money living. The big idea being that this would be Bond if he gave into avarice and auctioned off his talents to the highest bidder.

Scaramanga is 007 tracked to the terrifying conclusion of an undead monster residing within a state-of-the-art mausoleum. This concept is good but it would work a little better if Lee's pistolero was reflecting off a particularly virtuous interpretation of Bond but, unfortunately, he isn't. Screenwriters Tom Mankiewicz and Richard Maibaum have written a Bond so indistinguishable from his enemy that when 007 starts sniping at Scaramanga for his amorality it registers as sanctimonious. Perhaps that's the point? Regardless, Golden Gun's Bond is a sadistic control freak who delights in his ability to dominate women both physically and mentally. In a film series not exactly noted for its chivalry, Golden Gun still manages to stand out with a hero that threatens to snap a helpless women's arm one minute, then is breaking out the bubbly to seduce her the next. Moore's performance manages to be both smarmy and robotic, a man so completely drained of charm that his see-sawing mood comes across as manic and psychotic rather than rakish.

007 - Live and Let Die

Live and Let Die is a 70s remix of Dr. No, with Bond arriving in another nation shaking off the shackles of colonialism then promptly murdering his way to the top. In Roger Moore's debut Bond finds himself staring down Yaphet Kotto's softly-spoken Dr Kananga, a Caribbean super-criminal so successful that he can eat a billion dollar heroin loss and still have seemingly every black adult male in the Western Hemisphere on his books. On the surface it appears that Live and Let Die is an overlong action film that trades on an alarmist racial paranoia but, dig a little deeper, and the film starts to resemble an apocalyptic death match between two distinctly defined faiths each associated with consumption. Most obviously, Baron Samedi is a Voodoo loa synonymous with cigars, obscenity and rum. He's a bony figure that hovers between the realms of the living and dead, greeting the recently deceased and chasing after mortal women.  

James Bond, as both a literary character and film franchise, exists because of a kind of conceptual animism. He was willed into being by an ailing Empire desperate to remain vital after a financially crippling world war. 007 embodies everything Britain purports to love - ingenuity and clear-headedness - as well as everything we actually do love - violence and incessant crudity. Moore's new Bond is resurrection incarnate, an invincible sexual magnet blessed with a selection of obnoxious technological gadgets concealed in his shaving kit. He's empty, abdicating his most basic human gifts to electronics. Live and Let Die then presents Bond as a piece of overwhelming, arrogant, machinery cursed to have a dick between its legs.

Bond eventually clashes with Samedi during a choreographed ritual sacrifice. The ceremony is positioned in the film as a spot of casual brutality used by Kananga to conceal his headquarters and provide his doped out subjects with a distraction. Jane Seymour's virginal Solitaire is the prize, the locals want her bitten and devoured by snakes while Bond wants to do much the same to her himself. Samedi rises from the grave to oppose 007 and is swiftly dispatched, thrown into a coffin filled with pythons. Samedi's mistake was to try and confront Bond on the secret agent's celluloid turf. The magical spirit's impromptu gatherings are nothing compared to James Bond's million dollar annual rite. 

It's notable that the two most significant Bond actors share such a similar first adventure. Given the horridness going on in Britain in the latter decades of the 20th century it's tempting to imagine the whole process as some kind of Masonic power ritual: 007 is a spell cast by the rich and deranged to ensure Britain's economic prospects limp on a little further. George Lazenby strayed into the Bond role flanked by an army of filmmakers prepped to deliver their career-best work. Financially, and in terms of cultural penetration (On Her Majesty's Secret Service is often skipped over when ITV are broadcasting bumper blocks of Bond), they underperformed. Turns out all Lazenby really needed was a blockbuster story about a rugged white man travelling abroad to kill lots of poor black people.

007 - Diamonds Are Forever

James Bond finds himself in Las Vegas for Diamonds Are Forever, a boozy caricature that depicts a world ran entirely on corruption. 007 is packed off to the States on behalf of a wheezing old goat who, via some asides set in Sierra Leone, is portrayed as profiting off some pretty grim mining conditions. In short, the (first) world-threatening worry concerns a phantasmic super-criminal who's stockpiling precious stones in such quantities that he could, theoretically, flood the market and threaten this elderly British gentleman's monopoly.

Sean Connery returns as 007, thanks to George Lazenby's sudden departure from the role (not mention a lot of United Artists' money). Connery looks noticeably rougher here, a lounging, thick-set millionaire who couldn't care less about his greying temples. The secret agent's outfits no longer make him look like a well-dressed arrow either. Diamonds makes it clear that youth and vim went out with Lazenby - James Bond finally lumbered with a body better suited to the character's boundless consumption.  Somehow we've ended up with a film that resembles the terminally cynical fantasies of a middle-aged banker.

Despite the rather vicious material, Guy Hamilton seems convinced he's making a comedy. It feels as though the director is always just out of shot, hovering around behind the camera, imploring his actors to smile through the carnage. If the intense grinning is supposed to be a salve it doesn't work. Instead, it ends up lending the film a sense of real mania. Hamilton's anti-panache framing coupled with Bert Bates and John Holmes' slack fight editing invests every confrontation with a kind of ghoulish delight. It's as if Bond knows he's a character in a film, therefore no harm can ever come to him.

007 - Goldfinger

Dramatically, Goldfinger hinges on the idea that James Bond is so charming that even his enemies can't bear to be without his company. The secret agent comes into Auric Goldfinger's orbit as a repeated annoyance - he ruins a sunburnt Miami card scam then embarrasses the criminal on his own golf course. 007 does eventually prickle a certain curiosity in his foe by doling out oblique information at key moments. That, coupled with a little bit of flattery, sees Goldfinger take a shine to James Bond. Surrounded by mute henchmen and a troop of women who do very little to hide their disgust, Bond is at least someone for Auric to talk too. The secret agent is well educated in matters of sabotage, able to guess the particulars of Operation Grand Slam to Goldfinger's clear delight. Bond even manages to fluster the portly bullion thief with a well-timed compliment. There's that charm again. Follow it up with a petty snipe to keep your blushing quarry guessing.

Bond's sexual magnetism is stressed into absurdity here too. In the first fifteen minutes of Guy Hamilton's film we see traces of four distinct seductions, each woman putty in 007's hands. Although it may not seem like it fifty years hence, this is actually a bit of a departure for the character. Dr. No's Bond was confident but brusque. One of his most significant conquests achieved through a specific kind of social hectoring - Miss Taro had to keep him in her apartment until her armed accomplices arrived so, in turn, she had to be seduced. Presumably, 007's irresistibility is built into the piece to justify Pussy Galore's abrupt allegiance switch towards the end of the film. Galore overcomes an obvious, stated, disinterest in men thanks to a spot of Judo. Bond hurls the daredevil aviator about a stable until she agrees that she's met her physical equal. The tryst is violent, the dynamic murky. Are Pussy's affections really won or does she simply relent when faced with a powerful, sexually aggressive, man? After all, she's back piloting a private jet for the enemy not twenty minutes later. Perhaps Pussy is simply a survivor who has, sadly, been conditioned to play pliant whenever men start waving their weapons about?