"Why do you persist in rescuing me, Mr. Bond?
Diana Rigg as Tracy
"We'll head him off at the precipice."
Telly Savalas as Blofeld
"This never happened to the other fellow."
George Lazenby as James Bond
I spent most of the spring and summer of 1974 working at the youth hostel in Grindelwald, Switzerland, up in the Alps. It was basically a janitor job that I lucked into while I was bumming around Europe hitchhiking and riding trains. I loved it.
There was a cinema in town, but I didn't go to many movies there. The movies only played at night, and the hostel closed up early and I had to be up early the next morning to sweep the patio and help serve breakfast.
One movie I did see in Grindelwald was "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". I had to. The movie was five years old by then, but it had been filmed in the area, some of it right there in town, and it played at the Kino at least every couple of months. When it came around, we went.
I watched it again a couple of weeks ago, a sort of memorial screening after Diana Rigg died. It's the only James Bond movie I actually own on DVD. It seemed like the least I could do.
I'm not sure I'd call "OHMSS" the best Bond movie - that might be one of the ones with Daniel Craig - but it's got some good things going for it. The location work, for one thing. The usual supervillain-with-a-plan-to-blackmail-the-world-or-destroy-it plot (and Telly Savalas as the villain). Exciting action sequences and lots of them (fistfights, gun battles, car wrecks, chases on skis and bobsleds, an aerial assault on the villain's headquarters and an avalanche). One of John Barry's best Bond scores (with a vocal assist from Louis Armstrong, apparently the last thing Armstrong ever recorded). Groan-worthy puns, one of them, at least, in horrible taste. And Diana Rigg, the classiest Bond Girl ever, and I know I'm not the only one who thinks that.
It's based on what's arguably Ian Fleming's best novel, and famously, it's the only one in which Bond falls seriously in love and (gasp!) gets married. It's also the only Bond movie to star George Lazenby, filling in for Sean Connery, who would return to the role two years later in "Diamonds Are Forever". Lazenby doesn't have Connery's smugness, Roger Moore's smirk, Timothy Dalton's underlying psychosis, Pierce Brosnan's cuteness, or Craig's ice-cold eyes. He's like a guy trying to play Bond and doing a pretty good job of it, without quite convincing you that he's the real thing.
At the same time, there's a boyishness about him that works real well in this particular film, and it would be a mistake to underestimate Bond's appeal back then to teenaged boys. Like, there's a scene where Bond's in a lawyer's office, cracking a safe, and he comes across a copy of Playboy stashed in with some newspapers there. He leaves in the nick of time (of course), having lifted not just the documents he needs, but the magazine's centerfold, which he studies on his way to the elevator. What adolescent male wouldn't think of doing the same thing? As Miss Moneypenny would say, with a knowing sigh, "Oh, James."
According to IMDb, Lazenby's the only actor to date to get a Golden Globe nomination for playing James Bond. That might say more about the Golden Globes than it does about the actors who have played Bond, but when Lazenby at the end has to show Bond's emotional vulnerability, he nails it. That's something none of the other movie Bonds have really been called on to do.
There are things in the film that don't work so well. Bond in a kilt and a ruffled shirt, for example. Maybe Connery could've pulled that off. I'm not sure. Maybe he would've looked just as silly. The back projection in the skiing scenes is pretty obvious (though some of the stunt work is impressive). And there's a cartoonishness about the whole enterprise that most of the Bond films are subject to.
But then there's Diana Rigg. And the snowblower. And those incredible mountains. And the Restaurant Oberland, where I used to drink beer on the terrace with the other ex-pats all those years ago. And the tree branch over the bobsled run. And Diana Rigg
And Diana Rigg.
"James, where have you been?"
Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny
