Anyone who knows their behind-the-scenes Bond trivia knows that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is considered by many a fan to be the very best entry in the series. I hadn’t seen the film in ages, and the last time was on a muddy, cropped VHS tape in the early '90s. Hazy memories led to a complete lack of understanding as to what the fuss was all about.My oh my – what a difference the immediacy of a clean, crisp widescreen DVD can make. Now I get what those people have been talking about all these years. I hesitate to make bold claims as to what the best Bond movie is (differing as it does from person to person) but OHMSS must be Top Five material for any die-hard fan of the franchise. The film is littered with all kinds of “firsts” and “onlys” -- both in front of and behind the camera -- but the most obvious is of course…
Bond, James Bond: It’s tough to place George Lazenby in even the same arena as Timothy Dalton, whose Bond stint is nearly as forgotten as Lazenby’s one-off outing. Fittingly, Lazenby, much like OHMSS itself, belongs in a category of his own. In the Live and Let Die entry, I jokingly referred to OHMSS as “the one with the lame guy playing Bond”. Now even when I wrote that I didn’t think of Lazenby as lame, and after viewing the movie I sorta regret making the joke at all.
Unlike Roger Moore’s first entry – a calculated distancing act - the producers here go the opposite route: great pains are taken to ensure the audience knows this is the same man played by Sean Connery. Between a clip-heavy opening credits sequence (crammed with bits from Connery’s films) and a trip 007 takes to his desk and rummages through various props from the previous flicks, it’s hard for Lazenby to assert his own character in the movie’s first half hour. (There’s even a brief scene of a midget janitor [!?] whistling the theme from Goldfinger.)
As if all that wasn’t disadvantage enough, there’s a lengthy stretch where, in order to infiltrate Blofeld’s lair, Bond impersonates Sir Hilary Bray – at which point George Baker (who played Bray earlier in the movie) dubs Lazenby’s voice! (One of most bizarre artistic decisions I’ve ever seen in a film of this ilk.) There just doesn’t seem to be much faith in Lazenby, which is somewhat understandable as he had zero acting experience and was cast for his looks. Throw in what’s undeniably one of the strongest supporting casts in Bond film history, and the poor guy often seems so damn out of his element. By the time the Australian-born Lazenby prances around in a kilt – after the real Scot has exited the franchise – one wonders if anyone ever had any faith in him at all? (On the DVD supplementary, most – especially director Peter Hunt – seem to look back at Lazenby with an immense amount of affection as well as disappointment at the fates conspiring to make him a single-shot 007.)
And yet despite all this artistic adversity…Lazenby is never really any sort of detriment to the goings-on, which is noteworthy for a Bond film that’s far less reliant on James’s one-liners and Q’s gadgets and more centered around plot and character.
Bond does not feel nearly as front and center in this outing as the rest of the series. If this is due to Lazenby’s somewhat less than gripping screen presence or rather because everything else is just so damn ideal, I can’t quite pinpoint. But never once did I miss Connery or feel his presence would’ve made for a better film; indeed, Connery may well have overshadowed the picture’s strengths. Probably the one area where Lazenby actually outperforms Connery is in fight scenes and his all-around handling of physical action; the guy just looks good swinging punches and knocking around the bad guys – arguably more so than any other actor before Daniel Craig. (His one-liner delivery, however, sucks.)Due to numerous factors -- including the actor’s own admission that he thought Bond would be irrelevant in the ‘70s and wasn’t all that interested in reprising the part -- Lazenby did not return as James Bond. He also confesses (on the supplementary disc) regret at not returning for at least Diamonds are Forever. I think that had that happened, the general public would view George Lazenby’s Bond much differently than they do today (as in "they might be aware he existed"). I’m forced to ponder that if he had, and if Diamonds had still been successful, might the series have grown into a much different animal?
Les Girls: Blofeld’s Swiss hideaway, Piz Gloria, stockpiles quite the cache of babe-alicious flesh – including a very young Joanna Lumley as well as the lovely Catherine Schell. Odd then that James zeroes in on the homeliest looking one of the bunch, Ruby Bartlett (Angela Scoular). But then again, OHMSS is also that rare Bond flick wherein James falls in love, and perhaps going for the runt of the litter was the only way for him to rationalize cheating on his beloved Tracy.
Yes, the only real Bond girl in OHMSS is Contessa Teresa di Vincenzo --Tracy for short -- played by Mrs. Emma Peel herself, Diana Rigg. And if James Bond is going to fall in love, it had damn well better be with a dame the caliber of Diana Rigg. I can picture Cubby and Harry sitting around issuing variations on, “We need someone like Diana Rigg”…until finally realizing they’d best just get Diana Rigg. Tracy steals Bond’s heart in the film’s first 45 minutes and then disappears for the next hour, only to come out of nowhere and rescue James from his predicament high up in the Swiss Alps. When she finally Peels out, it’s the moment every Avengers fan has waited for the entire film. And when she’s murdered moments after trading “I do’s” with 007, it’s heartbreaking to see James cradle her lifeless body in his arms. I wonder what kind of shock this must have been for Bond fans back in 1969?
Zee Villain: Of the three Blofelds whose faces appear onscreen in the official franchise, Telly Savalas (like the rest of OHMSS) seems the least remembered. He’s also the only one of the three to deliver a remotely realistic performance, which may be part of the reason he doesn’t resonate in the public consciousness. We like our villains larger than life, do we not? His look is not as iconic as Donald Pleasance, nor is his portrayal as camp as Charles Gray, yet what he brings to Ernst is cold and calculating -- an essence of true villainy. His plan is not to blow up shit, but to hypnotize Hill’s Angels into releasing a bacterial agent into the world’s agricultural supply or receive some sort of amnesty for past crimes from world leaders. Weird, huh? But it makes a nice change from holding the world hostage for one-meellion dollars…
Blofeld’s biggest blunder here is his inability to recognize Bond (the Bray disguise owes more to Clark Kent than Lon Chaney). Yes Bond has a new face -- but Bond recognizes Blofeld, even though he too has a new face. Yet as far as I know, neither is supposed to have a new face within the storyline itself.
Come Diamonds are Forever, this whole “getting a new face” thing is weaved into the plot, yet they can both recognize one another despite one having a new face and the other having gone back to his old face. Somebody really needed to take a hint from Doctor Who back in the day and just make them all regenerative Time Lords – it’s a hell of lot easier to understand than all this crap.Zee (Les?) Henchwoman: Ilse Steppat’s Irma Bunt is a nasty piece of work and OHMSS’s biggest misstep -- a thinly veiled lesbian caricature and a true embarrassment to the Bond series. She owes a lot to Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love, but lacks her jolly sense of humor. And she pulls the trigger that kills Tracy. What a bitch.
Tuneage & Credits Sequence: Since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was quite the mouthful, John Barry opted to compose an instrumental piece for the opening credits, and it’s a rousing, classy bit of work. If not for its lack of lyrics, I suspect it would be considered one of the all time greats.
More famous than the title tune, however, is "We Have All the Time in the World", sung by Louis Armstrong and written by Barry, with Hal David behind the lyrics. This little ditty -- which plays over several scenes and may as well be called “James and Tracy’s Love Theme” -- has oddly never been one of my favorites, but that’s probably got more to do with a lack of love for Louis than anything else. Sorry!! Crucify ‘im! Crucify ‘im now!!
As previously mentioned, the credits sequence largely consists of a montage of clips from the previous films. That minor trip down memory lane aside, the graphics that frame the clips are outstanding and bleed with eye-popping color -- wholly indicative of the film to come.
For whatever minor drawbacks OHMSS may sport, its biggest strength is the film itself. Being Peter Hunt’s sole outing as a helmer in the series, it strikes me as a massive shame that he, like Lazenby, only lived once. I’m quite sure there’s never been a Bond film so ideally structured, filmed and edited. It's a gorgeous work just to look at, with color bursting from every beautifully framed shot. On top of its visuals is a genuniely engrossing plot; thank you Ian Fleming -- OHMSS is one of the few to closely follow Fleming's original text. Add in every glorious set piece and each thrilling action sequence (the raid on Piz Gloria in the third act is one of the most engagingly staged & sequenced pieces of action in the series), and you’ll swear off even your precious Goldfinger. This is one for the books, kiddos. It isn’t your manly Connery of the sixties, your goofy Moore of the seventies & eighties, or your paint-by-numbers Brosnan of the nineties. The film exists in its own near-perfect little bubble, which leads me to my biggest quandary...
Having long been aware of the mechanics of OHMSS and also of its near-forgotten status, I had been proclaiming for quite some time that it’s the one and only Bond outing primed for a remake. After seeing Casino Royale, I was certain that OHMSS should be set aside and rejiggered in the form of Daniel Craig’s final film as James Bond (whenever that may be).
Now, after viewing it all these years later, it’s difficult for me to imagine any remake that could possibly top the original…and yet I don’t wanna back down. The material here is so strong, and would be so at home in Craig’s universe, that it'd be a shame for his Bond’s tenure to not end with James holding his deceased bride in his arms -- this story needs to be seen by more people. Clearly, as it’s been within arm's reach for as long as the rest of the canon, it seems destined to exist in its little bubble 'til an actor whom the public considers the embodiment of Bond can occupy its center. But assuming the odds are against the above happening, if you are a fan of Daniel Craig and Casino Royale, there is no other Bond film that can be more highly recommended for your viewing pleasure.
