ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE Part 5: Boooooring

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the fact that this analysis so far has mostly been plot synopsis. Secondly, please disregard the long lapses between posts. At the rate this ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969) analysis is going, we should be nearing the in-depth treatise on the thematic correlation between Telly Savalas and the joy of Christmas (pictured) by around 2016. A big factor in the length of time between posts is that the upcoming part is totally boring. After the first stage of the film, we go back to MI6 headquarters in London for the usual round of Bonding. Bear with me, now, as we head through this section of the movie (the most boring, as far as Young Dean was concerned, but still great, as far as Current Dean is concerned) on our way to the real good stuff: namely, Blofeld’s hypnotic snow palace of sex.

James Bond (George Lazenby!!!), after being offered gold in exchange for marrying the daughter of a crime lord, travels back to London to receive is latest batch of orders from M. While there, he flirts again with Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell, here wearing strange tartans and with a weird haircut), as is his nature. The scriptwriters here try to recapture the same rapport that Sean Connery’s Bond had with Moneypenny, and the dialogue is fine as usual, but you get the sense they’re overcompensating for Connery’s absence. Bond leaves Moneypenny and heads through the connecting door to M’s office, with Lazenby displaying one of his unique acting techniques – the art of sort of stepping through a door, darting his head around (this time while smiling smugly) and then closing it behind him. What a thesp!

Inside, we get one of the great M scenes. Maybe the greatest. As played by Bernard Lee, M was a really fantastic character, a notion often lost when laymen look back on the series and just gloss over him as a colourless old guy, probably in part due to Robert Brown’s blander take on the role during the 1980s. Alongside THUNDERBALL (1965), this is Lee’s best performance. When Bond comes in expecting a new mission, he is galled to learn from M that he is merely being taken off a mission, i.e. the search for Blofeld. Bond is pissed, determined to at last get his hands on Blofeld, but M won’t budge. Bond storms out of the room (another uniquely Lazenby characteristic – he’s a tad more impetuous than the other Bonds) and dictates a letter of resignation to a shocked Moneypenny.

This is a complete about-face from Ian Fleming’s source novel, wherein Bond, tired of being run all over the world chasing the ghost of Blofeld, actually drafts up his own letter of resignation. The script’s changing of this is kind of appropriate: the point of the film is that Bond is a gung-ho agent of Her Majesty, and we see the terrible toll that this takes on him and those he allows to get close to him. (His wife dies! Spoiler!) If the film has taken the approach that the book does, the disastrous ending would have less impact – after all, it’s not like he wanted to remain a secret agent and have people shooting at his loved ones. On the flipside, it might have been more tragic to have Bond wanting to opt out, only to be drawn back in for one final shot at Blofeld, only to have it all backfire. Oh well. Either way is cool.

Bond returns in a sulk to his office (the only time we see it in the series) and rifles through his desk, extracting mementos of old missions, such as Honey Ryder’s knife-belt from DR. NO (1962), Grant’s garrote watch from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963), and the mini-rebreather from THUNDERBALL. Bond’s removal of the rebreather is sort of clumsily handled, as you can only see glimpses of it off-screen. John Barry awkwardly crams in music cues from those films as further memory-joggers, and it’s a nice idea, but I would assume that it's just baffling to virgin Bond fans.

It should be said that OHMSS is not an ideal Bond film to show a novice Bond viewer. It’s sort of insular, and the tone of the first 30 minutes or so sort of assumes that the viewer knows what’s what. It doesn’t make concessions to explain, and Lazenby’s less intimate screen presence doesn’t allow one into the film in the way Connery’s or Moore’s might have. Stick on the DVD with others and watch how quickly they tune out. This is an aficionado’s film, to be sure - lacking the well-crafted accessibility of the best entries - and only slightly less brilliant for it.

Bond hits the booze at his desk, toasting a small portrait of the Queen on his wall, (“Sorry, ma’am!”). It’s telling in this film that Bond keeps that portrait there. Assuming it’s not service policy to have the Queen plastered everywhere, this implies that Bond is fiercely patriotic, “Her Majesty’s loyal terrier”. This works well for this film and its themes, but doesn’t really jibe with the character as presented previously and subsequently. Connery’s Bond was more of a lone wolf, a Continental man-of-action, who generally went on missions for his own amusement or, at best, on mankind’s behalf. The fact he was on Her Majesty’s secret service was more incidental. Here, it’s his raison d’etre.

Whoah – when you start using French, you know you’re getting too pretentious. I’ll dial it back a notch.

Bond is fucking summoned back to M’s fucking office to have his resignation fucking confirmed. M seemingly does so, without so much as looking up. Bond, understandably offended, leaves the room. In the outer office, he finally learns from Moneypenny why M reacted as he did: she handed M Bond’s request for leave, rather than his resignation. “You didn’t really want to resign, did you?” she asks with confidence. Bond didn’t, and here we see the unspoken rapport between them. She can read him like a book. After all, in the novel From Russia, With Love (1957), Bond wonders to himself why he bothered with all those girls when the loveliest of all was his secretary. In that instance, he was referring to Loelia Ponsonby, but her role in the novels is transferred to Moneypenny in the films, and that thought applies here moreso than anywhere else. Bond, heartened and his dignity intact before the indomitable might of M, takes his leave and buggers off somewhere, after wondering aloud, “What would I do without you?”.

Once Bond has left, M chimes in over the intercom, saying, “What would I do without you, Miss Moneypenny? Thank you.” Get it? M knew Bond wanted to resign, but let Moneypenny act as the middle-man, allowing both men to save face and keep Bond in the job. Not only does Moneypenny know Bond better than he knows himself, but she knows M even moreso. Here, we finally see why she’s stayed in the role as secretary to one of the most important people in the world for so long: she knows her shit. This is Maxwell’s finest hour as Moneypenny, and the character’s best moment. It’s also Lee’s most tender moment as M. What a nice little three-minute stretch of movie. Awwww.

We then cut to scenic Portugal (?), where it is the aforementioned crime lord Draco’s (Gabriele Ferzetti) birthday. His daughter Tracy (Diana Rigg) is on hand for the event, and is sporting a rather bizarre pair of curly girl sideburns. These sideburns freaked me out for a few years in my adolescence, possibly contributing to my considering Rigg unattractive for a time. I came around, of course, but she still looks weird. Like a woodland creature dressed up as a bandolero.

At the party (complete with bullfighting!), Tracy is shocked to discover that Bond is present. It doesn’t take her long to cotton on to the fact that Bond is there on some sort of business – namely, banging her in exchange for information on Blofeld’s whereabouts that only Draco can provide. She gets pissed off and storms out of the party. Bond follows her, and somehow wins her over using this tripe:

“I was always taught that mistakes should be remedied. Especially between friends... and lovers.”
Um, okay. She seems to buy it, and so begins a sun-dappled montage fit only for a Metamucil ad, only it works here because of its sincerity. Bond and Tracy go horse-riding, running on the beach, patting cats, and even clothes shopping! Director Peter Hunt could’ve really got the juices pumping by laying Christina Aguilera’s hit song “What a Girl Wants” over the montage, but he instead fluffed it by putting on the John Barry-penned, Louis Armstrong-sung classic “We Have All The Time In The World”. Bad form, Peter! The song doesn’t do much for me, but it’s a fine piece of work, and has its rabid fans.

At the end of the montage, which shows Bond and Tracy actually falling in love and spans a few months (the longest time covered in a Bond film, bar DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)). By this time, Draco has dug up some info on Blofeld: he has a lawyer, Gumbold, in Switzerland, and thus in his office there is probably a lot of sensitive information ripe for the stealing. Bond is dropped off outside the lawyer’s office by Draco and Tracy, following some baffling and mysterious dialogue about “keeping my martini cool” which I still don’t understand, and then Tracy confesses to her father that she is in love with Bond. This is crucial, because it sets up the stakes between them – this is love, not casual Bond Sex! – before Tracy vanishes from the film altogether. As Rigg won’t be gracing the viewer with her presence for some time (a full hour, no less!), this is a useful bit of exposition.

Bond then strides confidently into Gumbold’s office, breaks into his safe, photocopies a bunch of important documents, admires Gumbold’s latest issue of Playboy, then strides confidently back out, taking with him the documents and Miss December ’69. God knows what Gumbold thinks when he returns to his office after his lunchbreak only to find that some perv has torn out his favourite centerfold, but Bond is a pro, and we are not to question his methods. This also implies that Bond a) intends to masturbate to the centerfold at some point, which is kind of hard to imagine Bond doing, and b) is too cheap or cowardly to buy his own porn. I love it. I also enjoy this scene because it’s just Lazenby in his suit and tie being Bond, with no distractions. It’s a taste of what more Lazenby films might’ve been like had he stayed on in the role.

Man, this Part 5 is looooong. Don’t worry, we’re nearly done. Bond returns to London with the documents and visits M at home. M, the complete pansy, is playing with butterflies. Bond convinces M to allow him to resume the hunt for Blofeld, as the documents indicate that Blofeld is interested in claiming the title of Count de Bleauchamp and is contacting the College of Arms in London to do so. Bond outlines his plan in voiceover, a hitherto unused storytelling device in the series that works pretty well here.

Bond, his mission OKed, then visits Sir Hillary Bray at the College of Arms to discuss the concept of impersonating him, so that he may visit Blofeld. This is another good scene in that it allows us to just follow Lazenby on his day-to-day Bond Business, and has a nice English ambience, what with the varnished wood and burnished leather of Bray’s office. Bray is played by George Baker (his Selection is sadly absent), who as far as I’m concerned has consistently the best run of Bond films, as he also played a Naval dignitary in the glorious THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977).

There was originally intended to be a scene wherein Bond discovers a Blofeld spy eavesdropping on this conversation, so pursues him on foot through the streets and over the rooftops of London, eventually cornering him in a post office, whereupon the spy is killed by an automated mail cart before he can be questioned. This whole scene was actually filmed (photos of it can be seen in various authorized Bond books), but was excised, presumably due to time constraints. I for one would love to see it, at least as a DVD extra, but no dice. Had it been left in the film, it would only have served to pump up the pace further, as this section of film is noticeably devoid of action.

With that, Bond is off to Switzerland to meet Blofeld, and the movie really hits high gear.