The same was true in 1963. Interviewed for Life Magazine,
John F. Kennedy was asked for his 10 favourite bedtime reads, and one of them
was From Russia with Love. The response was inevitable. Sales of the Bond
novels skyrocketed in the US, and when the film was released later that year it
proved to be a smash. The American market was clearly ripe for 007, and the
next entry in the series would take full advantage.
Goldfinger begins with the same gunbarrel sequence as its
predecessor, but the teaser then opens out into new surroundings. The opening
shot glides across an industrial complex of some kind, over a wall and then
settles on a quayside where a duck is floating limply towards the shore. Of
course, this is no mere duck, but James Bond in a wetsuit and wearing an artful
duck hat. He uses a grappling-hook-firing gun to scale the wall and then in one
of Peter Hunt’s speed-edits tackles the sole guard.
As Bond sneaks through a hidden passageway and starts
setting explosives, it is clear that this is mid-mission – the first time we
have joined him in the midst of the action. Having set his timers, he sheds the
wetsuit to reveal underneath an immaculate white dinner jacket. Only a few
minutes into the film, we are brushing away the semi-realistic trappings of
From Russia with Love in favour of more heightened fantasy. The image of
Humphrey Bogart swims to mind as Bond casually lights a cigarette in a dive bar
as the background explodes into a wall of fire.
 |
| Orson Welles as Auric Goldfinger. "Choose you next witticism carefully, Mr. Bond. It may be your last." |
With his mission over, Bond has time for a little rest and
relaxation before the next flight to the United States, so he joins an
acquaintance for a quick one before he’s away. Inevitably, it’s a trap, and a
brutal fight breaks out with a henchman after Bond catches his reflection in
his conquest’s eye. Thrown into the filled bath and fumbling with Bond’s
pistol, the henchman meets his end as Bond slings an electric fan in as well.
Then, easy as you like, he picks up his gun, puts on his jacket, tosses off a
witticism and leaves. This is how icons are forged.
This cuts straight to the opening crash of John Barry’s
theme song and the matching thunderclap of Shirley Bassey’s vocal – the first
title song for the series. Robert Brownjohn again uses the image of projections
against women’s bodies, but this time elects to use scenes from the film rather
than the captions themselves. There is also the minor detail that all the women
are painted gold. Given the title, this is likely to be relevant. The overall
effect is one of a perfected slickness and style, superseding Terence Young’s
approach as Guy Hamilton takes over.
That final crash from the pride of Tiger Bay and the
glazier’s friend opens the film onto the skyline of that thrilling city, Miami
Beach. A very impressive, and surely highly expensive helicopter shot, bears
down on the Hotel Bloemfontein, and finally the camera settles on a middle-aged
man in an unseasonably heavy suit watching the dancers on the indoor ice rink.
On the sun deck, he approaches Bond, still enjoying R&R whenever he can get
it, getting a massage from a blonde in a bikini. It transpires that the man
expecting snow is Felix Leiter, seemingly having aged ten years since we last
saw him in Jamaica. The real reason for the change was simply that Cec Linder’s
predecessor Jack Lord wanted both a big raise and joint billing with Connery,
while the two actors were close enough in age to make one wonder what horrors
Linder endured.
The decorative blonde is sent on her way with a slap on the
bottom and an excuse that Bond and Felix are to discuss “man talk”. It’s good
to know that Bond is still his usual appalling self. Leiter informs Bond that
he has been assigned to keep an eye on Auric Goldfinger, a guest at the hotel
and a hugely wealthy metallurgical magnate. Leiter doesn’t waste time offering
a reason why Bond should do this, nor does he question why Goldfinger has a
German accent when he’s apparently English. The film actually ran into trouble
when released in Israel, when it emerged that Gerd Froebe, who is dubbed throughout
the film due to his thick accent, was a member of the Nazi Party. However, it
transpired that he had actually used his position to shelter a family of Jews
from the SS, and was later honoured by the Israeli government for his bravery.
Goldfinger takes his place at his usual table with his usual
opponent for a few hands of gin rummy, and Bond notes that he gets very lucky
very quickly, particularly when facing into the sun, so that his skin can take
on a lovely golden hue. A rapid deduction later, Bond is pinching keys from a
maid’s waistband to let himself into Goldfinger’s suite. There he finds, laid
out not unlike a smorgasbord, yet another semi-clothed woman, making his third
in the film’s first 12 minutes. Jill Masterson introduces herself, and as Bond
responds with that introductory line, his own theme music starts, because
that’s what happens when he’s around.
Jill is watching her employer’s opponent’s cards and tipping
him off through the unnecessary hearing aid he’s wearing, and this appears to
offend Bond’s oft-demonstrated sense of fair play to such an extent that he tells Goldfinger over
the radio to start losing or he’ll get the cops onto him. With Jill now having
nothing to do, Bond is clearly keen to play his ace.
Hours later, with Bond and Jill having repaired to his room,
Leiter calls and suggests he and Bond meet for breakfast for a semi-formal
briefing. Jill has other things in mind, so he postpones to later in the day.
Bond slips out of bed for another bottle of champagne, apparently paid for by
the taxpayer, and adds to the mood of superior luxury by stating that drinking
it at the wrong temperature is “like listening to the Beatles without
earmuffs”. If there was a single line to date the film, it’s this. At the time,
the Greatest Band in History were still not much more than a rhythm and blues
covers band that had attracted a noisy teen following with a few hit singles. A
Hard Day’s Night was yet to come.
As Bond continues to grumble about those young people and
their pop music and how it’s all thump-thump-thump and doesn’t even have a tune,
not like in his day, a figures approaches him from behind and strikes him
unconscious with a single blow. Never underestimate the long reach of Brian
Epstein.
 |
| Imagine if she'd been wallpapered to death. |
Bond returns to London for his meeting with M, and it is
fairly clear that he is on thin ice after the mopping-up needed in Miami, not
least because Bond was yet again on the job when he should have been on the
job. M tells him to report to the Bank of England for dinner, and even grumpily
instructs him to avoid the ‘customary byplay’ with Moneypenny. This may a sign,
only in the third film in the series, that matters are in danger of becoming
routine. That there is already an awareness is, creatively speaking, a good
sign, and it also functions as symbolic that Bond is becoming known to his
audience and they know what to expect from him.
Dinner at the Bank of England with M and a gentleman we must
assume is the governor, and who hopefully stopped on his way to feed the birds,
tuppence a bag, sees the gold standard being explained to the audience,
presumably for those who don’t understand, or people in the 21st
century who are scared stiff of any sum of money greater than £100. Essentially,
it allows the relationship between the pound sterling and the American dollar
to be determined by the volume and value of gold both hold. Bond appears to
know all about this, as well as the details of the brandy they’re drinking,
which M furtively sniffs as Bond describes its ancestry. This is the first, but
far from the last, time that he is a world expert on a given topic.
At this point, we and Bond become aware of what is so
interesting about Goldfinger to the authorities. He is suspected of smuggling gold overseas to
where the price is higher, and thus increasing its value while also damaging
currencies. Bond is to encounter him socially and lure him out with a brick of
Nazi gold, worth an astonishing £5,000. Almost enough to buy Swansea.
Visiting Q Branch to collect his car, Bond takes a tour of
various realistic-looking test items, such as a bullet-proof vest that can
repel machine-gun fire, before Q hands over his new issue. The gadgets with
which Bond is issued are surprisingly mundane, from a latter-day perspective,
essentially being two GPS trackers. Bond’s Bentley, last seen with its
carphone, has been forcibly retired and replaced with a new car: a gleaming
Aston Martin DB5, unveiled with no ceremony of any kind. The relationship
between Bond and Q is almost antagonistic as he demonstrates the tracking
abilities of the car, and the amount of pointing on display makes one think of
an instructional film. Q almost addresses the camera when he warned Bond not to
touch that little red button that fires the passenger seat into the sky.
Goldfinger arrives at the golf club for his game, but having
been told that his usual partner is unavailable is introduced to another
gentleman. He might not recognise his face, but Goldfinger certainly recognises
his voice, and they agree to a small wager across the 18 holes. Sean Connery
developed a liking for game over the course of shooting the match, which is
outlined by Fleming in fastidious detail in the novel. Accompanied by his mute Korean caddy Oddjob, Goldfinger
performs well but cheats when he seems to lose a ball. Nevertheless, Bond
out-cheats him, helped by his own caddy standing on Goldfinger’s ball and Bond
switching the one Oddjob ‘finds’ for another that turns up in the rough. This
is a smart move, since the wager has already been upped by Bond showing off the
Nazi ingot and promising Goldfinger more if he wins.
Bond is altogether more pro-active and creative during these
scenes than we have previously seen him. Perhaps it is the consequences of
being removed from the presence of women – and where better for that than the historically
all-male environment of the links?
Goldfinger takes the final hole, winning the match, but Bond notes that
he has been playing with the wrong ball, and thus forfeits the hole and the
game.
As Goldfinger packs to leave, Bond places one of the radio
homers in his Rolls-Royce with a moderate degree of stealth. Goldfinger is clearly
suppressing his anger, and remarks coolly that he knows Bond was the man in
Miami and that he should hope they do not meet again. To underline his mild
threat, Oddjob throws his hat at a nearby statue, neatly slicing off its stone
head with the metal brim. Another iconic image to add to the pile.
 |
| Ooh, snow. |
Goldfinger and Oddjob stop at a roadside stall to stretch their
legs and get some refreshments, as Bond watches from further up the mountain.
Further up from him, however, the pretty girl is watching all of them, and uses
a sniper rifle to take a wild shot. Narrowly missing Bond, she whizzes off but
he gives chase. Using another of those wonderful toys supplied by Q, he extends
revolving blades from his own wheels to slice up hers, sending her careering
off the road. Coming over as a concerned motorist, and feigning complete
ignorance as to anything that might have happened, he approaches her and offers
his help.
She tartly accepts his offer of a lift to the nearest
garage, and Bond makes pleasant conversation on the way, noting that the
monogrammed case she carries doesn’t match the name she gives him of Tilly
Soames. What must be the biggest red flag to Bond is that she doesn’t show him
even the slightest flicker of interest, but he drops her at the garage as
instructed before heading on.
He arrives at Goldfinger’s Swiss plant and keeps watch, noting
the number of Chinese guards in the area, who have kindly dressed in as
stereotypical a manner as possible. Sneaking in, he sees Goldfinger’s Rolls-Royce
being disassembled and melted down, as the man himself explains to Burt Kwouk
in a Chairman Mao suit that the bodywork itself is smelted gold, allowing his
smuggling to hide in plain sight as he drives through customs, as well as
mentioning something called Operation Grand Slam.
Returning to the woods, Bond almost literally stumbles over
Tilly, the barrel of whose rifle sets off an alarm. As she reveals, the M on
her case didn’t stand for Soames after all, but Masterson – she is Jill’s
sister, and wants Goldfinger dead for what he did to her. They flee to the DB5
as the Chinese guards pile into Mercedes-Benzes to give chase. As Bond uses the
various fixtures and fittings of the car to elude his pursuers, the mood of the
film changes rather sharply. This is no longer a game, no longer Bond out for a
drive with a beautiful girl in the passenger seat. This is for real.
Cornered, Bond tells Tilly to run for it, but Oddjob’s hat
has other ideas. Her neck broken by the impact of the milliner’s nightmare, she
is dead before she hits the ground. The truly starting moment is when Bond runs
to her side. There is clear anger visible at her death, adding another tally to
the list of Goldfinger’s victims. Bond’s increased concern for others is a
sudden change from the casual perpetrator of mayhem in the previous film. One
could imagine that, having written his report over events in the Balkans, he
has read it back and realised what a horror he is. Bond is rarely as cruel and
callous as he is in those first two films, and though in production terms it
may simply be a mellowing of the character’s presentation, within his fictional
world it could well be Bond seeing that he might only be a few steps removed
from Red Grant after all.
Taking a few moments to mourn Tilly’s death has cost Bond
his freedom, and he is bundled back into his own car to drive down to the compound.
Alfred Hitchcock, on seeing the film, found this to be his favourite sequence,
where the guard on the gate is shown to be a sweet little old Alpine lady, who
smiles benignly at a bemused Bond. Passing towards an uncertain fate, Bond
makes use of that little red button Q warned him about and leads the guards in
a merry chase around the buildings – if they are buildings given that there is clearly
a roof over the connecting alleyways.
Finally, Bond finds himself heading towards another car, its
headlights dazzling. Bond tries to hold his nerve, but the other car keeps
coming. At the last moment, the DB5 swerves and collides with a building.
Oddjob emerges from the pursing car and looks up at a mirror – the approaching
car was a reflection of Bond himself – as he opens the door and an unconscious
Bond tumbles out.
Describing the next scene is almost a waste of effort, such
is its fame. Having already noted several points where memorable images have
been crafted to lodge in the viewer’s mind, the sight of Bond strapped to a
table with a large gun-like apparatus pointing down at him is clearly going to
be another. Goldfinger strolls into the room, all smiles and bonhomie, casually
letting Bond know that he knows all about who he is and that the reason for
their previous meetings is now clear. In return, he offers him a demonstration
of his latest technological toy, a laser beam, in particular its ability to
slice in half lengthways the slab of gold to which Bond is tied. Goldfinger is
interested only in having the debt between them settled, as well as acquiring
more gold and increasing its value.
 |
| I could just stop writing here. This is all you need to know. |
“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die.”
Such a simple exchange, but again, one that has passed into
legend, summing up everything that captures the imagination of the appalling
fate awaiting Bond. He now has only his wits to rely on. He’s a dead man. He
tells Goldfinger that killing him will make no difference, since 008 is already
fully briefed on everything he knows. Goldfinger confidently asserts that Bond
knows nothing.
“Operation Grand Slam, for instance?”
Goldfinger’s face goes pale very, very quickly. The laser
beam is getting very close to Bond’s equator. The seeds of doubt have been
sown, but Goldfinger maintains that Bond can have no idea to what it refers.
Sweat pouring off him, Bond asks if he can afford to take that chance. Three
inches left. Two. One. The laser shuts off. Goldfinger has decided that Bond is
worth more alive. And then a man walks over and shoots him.
Perhaps understandably, when Bond wakes up he expects to be
in heaven. The sight of yet another beautiful
woman smiling down at him might confirm that, or simply that it’s another day
at the office. Pussy Galore introduces herself as Goldfinger’s personal pilot, explains
that they are on their way to Goldfinger’s range in the US and also expertly
shoots down Bond’s pick-up lines. He’s really having to make an effort this
time, even as he stares at the bottom of the flight attendant. Pussy is very
much presented as an equal yet opposite to Bond, but not so much an antagonist,
as Red Grant was, but more a counterpart. It is almost as though Goldfinger
wants Bond to see he already has one of him on his staff already.
Bond is able to excuse himself to change into more
appropriate attire for his arrival. The attendant mentions that his attaché
case has been ‘lost’ en route, perhaps suggesting that a couple of guards went
for the sovereigns and got a faceful of stun gas. Nevertheless, Bond activates
the homing device hidden in the heel of his shoe and emerges in an immaculate
three-piece suit. Pussy points him the way to his seat with a revolver, but he coolly
notes that shooting him would also blow a hole in the fuselage and kill
everyone on board. Who said these films weren’t educational?
As the plane touches down at Goldfinger’s private airfield,
MI6 picks up his signal. They know that he’s with Goldfinger and alive, so they
allow him to continue with Felix supervising. Connery really comes into his own
as Bond disembarks, his easy charm and smoothness concealing the coiled spring
and cunning of a tiger. He even finds time for a quip at Oddjob’s expense
before being loaded into the back of a waiting car.
Pussy’s own sideline arrives at this point, being a
selection of perky young female pilots in long socks. The presence of so many
attractive young women around Pussy is rather more bluntly presented in the
novel, in which she is explicitly characterised as a lesbian. Her
violet-coloured eyes are a clear indication of strange ‘otherness’, an
attribute she shares, oddly enough, with Hannibal Lector. Tilly also survives
until much later in the book, and her antipathy to Bond is explained by her too
being one of those inscrutable man-hating creatures who count such cruel and
callous examples as Sue Perkins and Ellen DeGeneres among their number. As well as being faintly distasteful in
covering a subject about which he clearly knows nothing, Fleming also manages
to write himself into a corner later on.
The motorcade arrives at Goldfinger’s ranch-cum-racetrack,
which very nearly has Duelling Banjos playing on the soundtrack as Bond is politely
shown to his cell, all the easier to keep him under lock and key rather than
risk another fully-briefed agent on the loose somewhere. Goldfinger, meanwhile,
is attending a conference of crime lords in his game room. Having already
managed to assemble such a selection of presumably deadly rivals in one room
and found them playing pool, he explains that he already owes each of them $1
million in gold for services rendered – or he can pay them $10 million tomorrow
when his bank opens. One of the hoods remarks that banks don’t open on Sundays,
and this is one of the few openly dated remarks in the film, as the three
customers Metro Bank has in the UK are fully aware.
Having clearly enjoyed playing with the extras in Bond’s
car, Goldfinger shows off his own gadgetry, revealing the first BIG MAP of the
series and using a pool cue as a pointer. Ken Adam has more than earned his
keep already with the production design on the film, but creating a game room
for Goldfinger that neatly converts into a carnival lecture hall complete with
revolving tables is a real stamp of intent.
 |
| How did he explain all this to his decorator? |
Bond scrambles to make notes as Goldfinger outlined his
scheme to use Pussy’s pilots to spray a nerve gas on the entire area, but one
of the guests is having none of it. Bond wraps his note around the mini homer,
labels it for CIA attention and pockets it for later as he’s attacked by another
assailant, who is of course Pussy herself. She frogmarches him upstairs to see
Goldfinger, just as Solo is having his payment loaded into the back of a car.
Meanwhile, the remaining conspirators get to see firsthand what the gas is
like, when it released into the game room.
This is a rather neat means of tying up loose ends,
gathering all those who knew about Goldfinger’s preparations and taking care of
them at a stroke, only one day before the operation to limit any degree of interference
or reprisal. Goldfinger has clearly thought this “Everest of Crime” to the last
detail, and there is a project manager of my acquaintance who would probably
offer him a job.
The extremely light gold bars, which judging by the exertion
on the face of the guard might easily be novelty bags of brown sugar, are
safely stowed, as Solo is heading for a very pressing engagement. Bond manages
to slip his note into Solo’s pocket before he goes, as Pussy tells Goldfinger she
found him under the model. Story of his life.
Oddjob misses the turning for the airport, much to Solo’s
distress, since he really likes those cheesy snacks you get in the executive lounge,
while Leiter and his partner follow the homer. Oddjob neatly pulls up in a side
street, shoots Solo through the heart and then drives on to a scrapyard where
the car is crushed and the fresh cube is loaded onto a pick-up driven away by
Oddjob. All of which is going to make Bond’s note rather tricky to read, while
the signal to the homer has already been lost.
At the ranch, Goldfinger appears to make something of a play
for Pussy, but she isn’t interested in him either. Honor Blackman was cast largely
on the strength of her performance in TV action series The Avengers, in which
she broke the mould for female characters by giving as good as she got – taking
equal billing with her co-star, fighting male characters on screen – and Pussy
is clearly an extension of this self-sufficient characterisation of a woman who
does not need the validation of a man, but might enjoy having one around.
Goldfinger notes that the CIA will be watching, so it is a
good idea if Bond is seen, so orders him brought from his cell. The security arrangements
are rather different from earlier. The door is now wide open and five guards
are sharing the cell with Bond. He joins Goldfinger on the terrace, where all
is good cheer. Bond notes that, firstly, the nerve gas he intends to use is
fatal, meaning that the game room will be off limits until the cleaners get
there. Secondly, there is no way Goldfinger can steal more than a tiny fraction
of Fort Knox’s gold before the armed forces arrive and ask him to put it back.
Goldfinger, however, intends to leave the gold exactly where it is. With a
flash of inspiration Bond puts it all together – the services rendered by the
various mobsters included another of specialist items needed for the construction
of a nuclear bomb. Goldfinger doesn’t want to destroy the gold, merely make it extremely
inaccessible by detonating a dirty bomb – apparently the first in fiction – and
seeing him own stockpile skyrocket in value, while his Chinese paymasters enjoy
causing economic chaos in the Decadent West. Any interference from Bond’s
allies will see the plan aborted and the bomb set off in any appropriate venue
that springs to Goldfinger’s mind.
Fleming’s plans in the book are rather different. Goldfinger
does try to steal the gold, with the intention of transporting it by train on
behalf of the Soviet Union. He barely even leaves the station, let alone near
the repository, before the army swoops in. The screenwriters’ decision to fill
this hole in the story was a smart and elegant solution to an author who’d clearly
got a bit bored and wanted to wrap things up in a hurry.
Oddjob arrives back with Goldfinger’s new cube, and as he
starts trying to separate the shiny bits from the other shiny bits and the bits
with blood on, Pussy links her arm into Bond’s and suggests they go somewhere a
little more comfortable. The play for the cameras works, with Leiter having
returned to watch at the ranch’s boundary and satisfied that Bond has
everything in hand. In a barn, Bond tries
to get her on his side, and a good-natured fight starts where they takes turns
throwing each other into piles of hay, assisted by some trick editing. Inevitably,
Pussy succumbs to Bond when he effectively forces himself on her, although she
seems to enjoy it after a moment, so that’s all right then.
Next morning, Pussy’s pilots set off and are accompanied by
some impressive aerial photography as they spray the military facilities around
Fort Knox. The sight of thousands of soldiers instantly dropping dead in the
middle of drill, driving trucks or just doing some harmless jumping jacks is
rather alarming and unusually dark for any film of this type or era, let alone
both. Worst of all is a sight by the side of the road as Goldfinger’s gas-masked
convoy approaches the repository – Felix is among the casualties.
The electrified gates are blasted open, and the door to the
building itself is opened with another of those lasers Goldfinger keeps for
such an occasion. This provides a neat, plot-relevant use of an item that could
have easily been just a gimmick for the earlier scene. The bomb is carefully
wheeled out and activated as a whistle sounds in the distance. The army, to a
man, sit up and look angry. Felix lives. The entire gassing was faked.
As Goldfinger’s men engage the US Army in battle, Bond is
handcuffed to the bomb and the group taken into the vault, giving Goldfinger
the opportunity to say “Goodbye, Mr Bond.” There is another example of the jump
editing as Goldfinger runs to a door in one shot and then is already through in
the next, as Oddjob and Bond are locked inside the vault with only a few
minutes until the bomb detonates.
 |
| Just to reiterate - this is a set. |
With only seconds remaining, Bond breaks open the casing
for the bomb, revealing a massively complex mechanism. He is close to panic as
his hands pass over the many and various moving parts, finally grasping a cable
and preparing to tug it free-
When a hand reaches in, swats Bond out of the way, and turn
the bomb off. Bond looks up to see the US Army in attendance, accompanied by
Leiter and an expert in nuclear bomb switches. He looks more than a little
ruffled as he asks “What kept you?” Pussy sold out Goldfinger after all, thanks
in part one imagines to Bond’s special skills, and allowed the replacement of
the nerve gas with something more harmless. Goldfinger’s men are being rounded
up, but the man himself has vanished.
Some days later, Bond is being accorded very special
treatment. With the mopping-up work almost complete, he is to be flown to the
White House by special private plane for lunch with the US President. En route,
however, he is joined in the cabin by a gun-toting Goldfinger. Bond barely
seems surprised that he is there, and politely asks if he is having lunch at
the White House as well. The inevitable ensuing fight ends when someone pulls
the trigger on Goldfinger’s gun. As we know from earlier, doing so in a plane
is poorly advised, blowing out a window and defenestrating Goldfinger.
In the cockpit, Pussy struggles with the controls and Bond
tries to help, but ground radar shows they are dropping quickly. Suddenly,
someone seems to bail out from the plane moments before it hits the ground.
Later on, search and rescue are scouring the area, and Pussy is trying to
attract their attention, but Bond suggests that they have a little catching up
to do, and pulls the parachute on top of them both. This marks an odd change to
the novel, since Tilly dies during the gun battle at Fort Knox Junction,
leaving Pussy as the only female character with whom Bond can assert his
manhood and cure her of her terrifying lesbianism. The only alternative option,
which might have been less palatable at the time but might be challengingly
edgy today would be ending the book with Bond masturbating. This might,
however, be something of an anti-climax.
I ought to put my cards on the table at this point. I had
been dreading watching Goldfinger again. I last saw it 10 years ago when I
first bought all the Bond films on DVD and found that overfamiliarity from
countless ITV repeats had dulled the film’s appeal to me. Seeing it with fresh
when preparing this article, I found myself falling increasingly into its web
of sin, and the laser beam sequence was the clincher. The scene is a
masterpiece of tension, with one man locked in a battle of wills against
another, desperate trying to talk his way down from the gallows.
The strong story and deeping of Bond’s character throughout
the film show that this is the moment that the true cinematic Bond is born,
stepping out from the shadow of Fleming’s background at the Special Operations
Executive in World War II or the hunted wrong men of Hitchcock and into a new
world where every location has a certain exoticism, every woman carries a
certain promise and where every man carries a certain type of firearm. With
success at the box office assured, Bond has conquered the world, so where else
to go but into a man’s own fantasies?
