I write these Bond reviews with the expectation that everyone has seen all the movies, if not read the all the books. So, tread as carefully as it seems prudent.
You Only Live Twice is the final of the three Blofeld stories and the most outlandish. Bond ends up in Japan for other reasons, becomes a faux-Japanese only to discover that his enemy is on the spot traveling under the name of "Shatterhand". The coincidence hurts this story a lot, but the action is so over the top that it's hard not to be sucked in. The Garden of Death is a lurid and fascinating invention. The ending is a hoot and a half. The Japanese culture comes in for a lot of knocks, and I can't imagine they feel very warm to this presentation.
Once again, the relationship that Bond has with another man is the key to this story, this time with the head of Japanese secrets named Tiger Tanaka. Bond has been sent to get access to Japanese espionage information, and since he's been in an understandable funk since the death of his wife, this is M's last-ditch effort to save his career. The process by which slowly becomes Japanese in the novel goes down a bit better than the movie which is openly ludicrous. The story makes much more sense than its cinematic offspring. Dr. No had hit the screens before this novel was written and apparently Fleming tried to inject a bit of Sean Connery's lighter-hearted charm into his iconic character.
You Only Live Twice was the final novel written and published in Fleming's lifetime. He'd already written one more and there were a few short stories still to be published. Those in due course.
I was very much surprised to discover that You Only Live Twice is my second favorite Bond movie. The movie itself is such a mess in terms of narrative and its painful transformation of Sean Connery into an utterly unconvincing Japanese man is more than a little bit embarrassing. All that said, no Bond movie before or since has a more dynamic finale and the utterly awesome volcano secret rocket base is my favorite set in all the history of film. Roald Dahl is credited with the screenplay, but the haphazard nature of the story makes me imagine things were wildly off the original outline.
This movie is really what most people think of when they imagine the movies of super spies. We have a strong heroic lead who tumbles into a bizarre twisting impossible scheme to hold the world in fear and who by dint of strength, skill and a lot of luck defeats the villains in the most bombastic ways conceivable. That's what defines this movie, a series of strange and sometimes confusing set pieces which eventually add up to a plot to destroy the world. The villain too is a bit weak as we finally meet Blofeld, but as portrayed by Donald Pleasance is not as awesome as the character was in the shadows. Karin Dor is lovely and dies much too soon in this story, but then that's the way this unravels.
We get the ironic Bond in this one, the one who realizes there's some absurdity in all this mishegoss, but when the action starts it's full on and the tempo is wonderful. I realized watching it this time that the story itself makes almost no sense, but the pacing is so good that you have little time to realize it. The idea that SPECTRE could build an entire volcano facility with apparently no hint of it to people on the island is bewildering, but then the decision to invade the island by posing as fishermen is equally absurd. It serves to give the viewer glimpses of Japanese culture, but little beyond that.
And finally in a movie in which Bond is supposedly killed to make his secret agent status a bit more secret, he gets found out and attacked with regularity, though of course as usual others pay the freight. All that said, this one is a blockbuster which despite its myriad flaws offers up a thrill ride of a movie that pays off completely. Watching it now, I see the lines and shapes which informed Jim Steranko in his memorable SHIELD work.
I was very much surprised to discover that You Only Live Twice is my second favorite Bond movie. The movie itself is such a mess in terms of narrative and its painful transformation of Sean Connery into an utterly unconvincing Japanese man is more than a little bit embarrassing. All that said, no Bond movie before or since has a more dynamic finale and the utterly awesome volcano secret rocket base is my favorite set in all the history of film. Roald Dahl is credited with the screenplay, but the haphazard nature of the story makes me imagine things were wildly off the original outline.
This movie is really what most people think of when they imagine the movies of super spies. We have a strong heroic lead who tumbles into a bizarre twisting impossible scheme to hold the world in fear and who by dint of strength, skill and a lot of luck defeats the villains in the most bombastic ways conceivable. That's what defines this movie, a series of strange and sometimes confusing set pieces which eventually add up to a plot to destroy the world. The villain too is a bit weak as we finally meet Blofeld, but as portrayed by Donald Pleasance is not as awesome as the character was in the shadows. Karin Dor is lovely and dies much too soon in this story, but then that's the way this unravels.
We get the ironic Bond in this one, the one who realizes there's some absurdity in all this mishegoss, but when the action starts it's full on and the tempo is wonderful. I realized watching it this time that the story itself makes almost no sense, but the pacing is so good that you have little time to realize it. The idea that SPECTRE could build an entire volcano facility with apparently no hint of it to people on the island is bewildering, but then the decision to invade the island by posing as fishermen is equally absurd. It serves to give the viewer glimpses of Japanese culture, but little beyond that.
And finally in a movie in which Bond is supposedly killed to make his secret agent status a bit more secret, he gets found out and attacked with regularity, though of course as usual others pay the freight. All that said, this one is a blockbuster which despite its myriad flaws offers up a thrill ride of a movie that pays off completely. Watching it now, I see the lines and shapes which informed Jim Steranko in his memorable SHIELD work.
Rip Off
No white actor would be allowed to "yellow up" (if that's the correct phrase) in a movie nowadays!
ReplyDeleteThank goodness. It can be fun to enjoy a hammy performance from days gone by, but there's no need to continue such an insulting policy.
DeleteYou could see Connery was tired of the role by this time. In his report back to HQ from Little Nellie, he seems embarrassed and bored at the same time, as if he's merely reading his lines from a cue-card in front of him - lines which he'd prefer not to say. The explosion at the end has got to be the clumsiest, most unconvincing sfx ever seen in a Bond movie, and his time as a 'Japanese' man is something they should have cut from the film as it just doesn't work at all.
ReplyDeleteThere were other ways to play it, to get him inside the society. That I agree with.
DeleteThis was the first Bond movie I saw, on its first release - and it had everything a seven-year-old boy could want. Spaceships that swallowed up other spaceships, secret bases (with their own monorail) hidden inside volcanoes, helicopters with machine guns, helicopters picking up cars and dumping them in the sea, modern-day ninjas...OK, in retrospect it was probably all too silly for words, but it's easily my favourite Bond film.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall reading that Roald Dahl had written an article for Playboy about writing the script; explaining how he was told there was a formula which had to be pretty well followed to the letter, and you can see if it you've seen other Bond films...the girl/colleague who gets killed about halfway through, Blofeld knocking off one of his underlings, Q and his gadgetsplaining...still, at the time, Bond films were considered the apex in commercial hit films, and could do no wrong; the whole rocket thing didn't hurt, since it was the sixties and anything to do with the space programme was eaten up (especially by me).
For sure they knew they had a gold mine and didn't want to screw up the formula. Sadly, we as fans became aware of the formula as well and I always felt badly for any woman who helped Bond in the early parts of a movie. Her life hung by a thread.
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