Tag: Lewis Gilbert

HMS Defiant (1962)

Interpersonal conflict on the high seas, in this serviceable romp upon the high seas

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Alec Guinness (Captain Henry Crawford), Dirk Bogarde (Lt Scott-Padgett), Anthony Quayle (Vizard), Tom Bell (Evans), Murray Melvin (Wagstaffe), Maurice Denham (Dr Goss), Nigel Stock (Mdspman Kilpatrick), David Robinson (Mdspman Crawford), Bryan Pringle (Sgt Kneebone), Richard Carpenter (Lt Ponsonby), Peter Gill (Lt D’Arbly)

HMS Defiant, despite what its poster suggests, isn’t really non-stop rollicking adventures on the high seas. Instead, it’s about internal conflict: between officers and crew, between captain and first officer, between sailors and admiralty. In 1797, Britain is sailing into war with Napoleon and the press gang is seizing sailors off the streets. But no-one is getting paid fairly, something a proto-trade union of sailors led by Vizard (Anthony Quayle) is determined to sort out even if that involves mutiny. Mutinous thoughts abound on his ship Defiant, as stoic Captain Crawford (Alec Guinness) is engaged in a battle of wills with his ambitious and vicious first officer Lt Scott-Padgett (Dirk Bogarde), with Crawford’s son (a young midshipman on board) caught in the middle and paying a heavy price.

Interestingly, both of its two leads would probably have preferred it if the film had sunk to the bottom with trace. Guinness considered it one of the worst films he was involved in, while Bogarde saw it as little more than a pay cheque with sails, the sort of box-office he needed to do to pay for films like Victim. That’s harsh on a perfectly serviceable slice of Forrester-inspired nonsense, the sort of film that has become a staple of Bank Holiday TV. There is nothing wrong with HMS Defiant (God knows you’ll see a lot worse) and if it’s not inspired, it’s also not a disgrace.

It’s competently assembled by Lewis Gilbert, who ticks off the various nautical boxes with aplomb. Over the course of the film we get multiple floggings, a man falling from the yardarm (an all-too-obvious dummy), sails puffed with wind, cannon-firing action against the French, an amputation, cutlass-shivering feuds, grumbling below decks and a parade of fists slammed into hands behind backs. Everything you have grown to expect from Hornblower is here, all put together with an assured professionalism that means you are never anything less than entertained.

The action, when it comes, as ship goes against ship, is actually less interesting than the complex inter-personal dynamics on board. It’s perhaps one of the most interesting films in presenting a Naval ship as an insular little world, a sort of boarding school on the seas, with head boys and scroungers. At its heart is the clash between two potential headmasters: Alec Guinness’ decent Crawford, who leads through a sort of unimpeachable example of British reserve, and Bogarde’s Scott-Padgett a charismatic bully who is basically a sort of Flashman of the Seas.

They both have very different ideas of what the boat should be. Crawford sees it as a tool to deliver the Admiralties orders, with everyone fitting perfectly into their assigned role and never for a moment thinking outside it. Scott-Padgett sees it as an opportunity for social climbing, who feels since he’s uniquely special the rules shouldn’t apply to him and will go to all manner of petty ends to get what he wants, not giving a damn who gets hurt. Crawford would govern with a firm but fair hand, letting a cross word communicate his displeasure. Scott-Padgett walks around deck with a coiled rope in his hand to literally whip the sailors on, handing out thrashings like their going out of business.

He’ll also pick on the vulnerable, roping bullies like Nigel Stock’s ageing senior midshipman (a man who reeks of failure) to hand out beatings to those who can’t protect themselves. And, like the sort of unpleasant reader of men he is, Scott-Padgett works out the Captain’s pressure point is to line up Crawford’s son for as many beating as possible and subtly threaten more unless he basically gets his way on the ship. It’s a sort of under-hand dealing that the decent Crawford is totally unprepared for, a complete disregard for form and rules of conduct that’s outside of his experience.

It’s telling that Crawford has more in common with Vizard. Anthony Quayle, in the film’s finest performance, is cut from the same cloth: a reasonable man with a sense of fair play who feels a petition and a careful argument placed to the Admiralty will get everything he wants with no chance of violence rearing his head. It’s not that much of a stretch for the audience to guess he might be wrong, not least because his number two is the increasingly bitter, class-conscious Evans, played with a surly mean streak by Tom Bell. Not least since the quick to anger Evans is also happy for other men to take the rap for his actions and never considers anyone’s needs but himself. Vizard’s number two shares more than a few characteristics with his bête noire Scott-Padgett (one of many ways Vizard and Crawford are alike).

It leads to an inexorable show-down, with Bogarde’s patrician contempt and self-satisfied assurance like a red rag to everyone he encounters. (You could say HMS Defiant is an interesting warm-up for Bogarde before he tackled the satanic butler in The Servant). Guinness fares less well, probably because he has a much less delicious part, all to clearly struggling to raise any interest in the character he’s playing (HMS Defiant is one of the best examples of Guinness on terminally-bored autopilot, rarely stirring himself to do anything other than go through the motions).

But it’s still an entertaining film, in a Sunday afternoon sort of way (the exact time I watched it). There is something endearing about the sailors’ naïve plans to win their rights, just as there is something wonderfully pantomimically hissable in Bogarde’s odious lieutenant, a lovely embodiment of upper-class entitlement that literally makes every situation worse. Sure, nothing is re-invented, but as a vessel for some interesting character beats and some serviceable naval action, it more than holds water.

Reach for the Sky (1956)

Kenneth More fights disabilities and the Gerries in Reach for the Sky

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Kenneth More (Douglas Bader), Muriel Pavlow (Thelma Bader), Lyndon Brook (Johnny Sanderson), Lee Patterson (Stan Turner), Alexander Knox (Dr Leonard Joyce), Dorothy Alison (Nurse Brace), Michael Warre (Harry Day), Sydney Tafler (Robert Desoutter)

There are few stories of the Battle of Britain that captured the public imagination than Douglas Bader, fighter pilot ace whose exploits in the battle – and later in Nazi captivity – were all the more extraordinary because he had no legs. It’s one of the best examples around of good old fashioned British pluck helping overcome something – and Bader is without doubt a stirring hero, whose inspiration was so great he still frequently pops up in longlists of Greatest Ever Brits.

At least part of that continued inspiration is probably connected to this film. In fact Bader himself said his own public persona had been almost completely consumed in the public perception by Kenneth More’s performance of him. Needless to say Bader’s foul mouthed real personality (which left the briefing room littered with f-bombs) and abrasive difficultness (he refused to watch the film for almost ten years after a trivial dispute during its making about whether he would be allowed to double for More in long shots) was largely forgotten.

Indeed, the real Bader is washed away in Reach for the Sky by Kenneth More at his most charming, rogeuish and light. More (by his own admission) was not the actor with the greatest range in the world, but he was perfect for the sort of maverick, plucky, never-say-die Brit Bader was presented as in the film. Reach for the Sky ticks all the boxes of the events in Bader’s life as you might expect. From initial accident, to learning to walk again, to getting back in the sky, More plays it all with a brash bonhomie and British character that makes Bader charming and engaging – rather than the difficult egotist he reportedly was in real life. So much so that you kind of forget that Bader’s initial accident is largely caused by his own arrogance and stupidity attempting a dangerous manoeuvre to show off to a range of new pilots.

But then that’s because Bader’s ruthless determination to get back in the sky is inspiring. Reach for the Sky isn’t the film that’s going to make you question anything to do with the war or the dangers or costs of the work we do. Putting it simply, this is practically an advert for the British war effort made ten years after the war finished. It actually feels a bit odd that this film hit the cinemas and because a smash hit in the same year as Suez showed Brits that all the Empire-first, Britannia rules the wavesness the film celebrates was a pile of outdated guff.

But that isn’t to say that what that this film tries to do, it does badly. It lacks the sense of narrative adventure as stuff like, say, The Dam Busters or the importance of working together like Ice Cold in Alex or the bitter cost of war like The Cruel Sea. But as a portrait of a maverick doing his own thing and keeping the British end up its pretty much bang on. There isn’t really room for any other characters in the film’s narrative. It’s nominally narrated by a training colleague of Bader, but he’s barely a presence – the film zeroes in on Bader alone.

It makes for some decent scenes and there is a fair bit of inspirational feeling from watching Bader persevere – while never losing his temper – with walking again or taking up golf with a bullish determination. More’s Bader never shows a flash of anger or bitterness at things that have happened to him, instead carrying on with a jolly “Britain can take it” matey-ness. It makes him an entertaining person to follow around, even if the film itself isn’t particularly dramatic and offers a fairly safe version of an age-old “overcoming all odds” plot. Certainly enough to explain the films continued popularity and lifespan on Sunday afternoon TV.

And it touches a nerve because, even if he was a fully paid up member of the awkward squad in real-life, what Bader did – and the force of personality required to do it – were extraordinary, the sort of thing only 1 in a hundred could even consider doing. To not only walk again having lost both legs, but to fly – and to become a decorated war hero – is way beyond (thankfully!) the imagining of almost everyone watching the film. And, for all the weaknesses of the film, you can’t ignore or disregard the fact that Bader is an inspiration. More is excellent in a lead role tailored completely to his strengths, and the film has a charming boys-own adventure feel to it. It’s not a smart film, but it’s a crowd pleaser and nothing wrong with that.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Bond finds himself in another pretty pickle in The Spy Who Loved Me

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Roger Moore (James Bond), Barbara Bach (Anya Amasova), Curd Jürgens (Karl Stromberg), Richard Kiel (Jaws), Caroline Munro (Naomi), Walter Gotell (General Gogol), Bernard Lee (M), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Geoffrey Keen (Frederick Gray), Robert Brown (Vice-Admiral Hargreaves), George Baker (Captain Benson), Michael Billington (Sergei Barsov), Vernon Dobtcheff (Max Kalba), Nadim Sawalha (Fekkesh)

Roger Moore had made two Bond films before he made The Spy Who Loved Me – but this is the one when he finally hit upon the formula that works for him. It’s also probably the moment where the Bond films became – once for all – comedy adventure capers. It was but a few more degrees from here until Bond was telling a tiger to “sit” or racing past a double-taking pigeon in the middle of St Mark’s Square. And the public loved it. For better or worse, Moore’s Bond here helped define the franchise for a whole generation.

Anyway, the story. It’s eerily familiar in many ways to Thunderball and You Only Live Twice: a power-crazed lunatic (Karl Stromberg) running a secret organisation wants to destroy the world. His plan? To capture one American and one Soviet submarine and use them to fire nuclear missiles at the nation’s two capitals, to kickstart a nuclear war, leaving only his underwater kingdom intact. Just as well then that an over-keen Stromberg (Curd Jürgens) first captures a British sub, meaning James Bond (Roger Moore) is called in to investigate. Bond will work with the USSR’s finest agent – Anya Amasova, Triple X (Barbara Bach) – to find out what’s going on and why.

TSWLM is a lot of fun, possibly the ultimate expression of what a lot of people think Bond is. It’s hugely silly, rather exciting and has almost no connection with reality whatsoever. Moore goes through the whole thing with his eyebrow forever arched, tipping the wink at the audience – “You do know, dear boy, this is all dreadfully silly stuff”. Sometimes in Bond this humour gets a bit much – but here it’s pretty much pitched perfectly. And Moore looks like he is having the time of his life.

The film is crammed with action set pieces in striking locations: the Alps! The pyramids! A converted oil tanker base! Nothing is left to the imagination, and everything is thrown at the screen. It gets the sense of excitement right from the pre-credits sequence, with Bond’s high-speed ski chase across the alps from Russian would-be hitmen. Fools – what chance did they have? I don’t know what I like most about this scene: is it the wild ski stunts? The way music and camera action combine so well? The fact that it’s crystal clear Moore probably spent precisely zero days on location for this sequence? What am I talking about, it’s got to be that insane parachute jump at the end – with the camera leaving it just long enough for you to start to think “is Bond going to get out of this one?”. (Spoilers he does.)

That’s almost nothing compared to the famous Lotus-turned-submarine car chase, which pretty much set the standard for all the car-based action (not to mention gadget filled cars) that would follow in the franchise. The idea of a car that turns into a submarine: it’s both brilliant and so overwhelmingly silly that, like Bond at its vibrant best, it seems to transcend class and logic into a higher plane of excitement.

And all this with a plot that is almost staggeringly stupid. Jurgens has a lot of arch, naughty fun as scheming monomaniac (with subtle webbed hands) Stromberg, a pompous arsehole and a great villain. Of course he wasn’t a physical threat – hence the invention of Jaws, surely the most popular henchman ever invented for Bond. Jaws is a lunking, vicious but strangely endearing brute – it’s hard to put your finger on why he’s strangely likeable, maybe it’s just the totally absurd idea of a hitman whose killer tools are metal teeth. Maybe it’s because Richard Kiel has such a dorky sense of humour – and is as good at the glance at the camera as Moore himself is.

Of course it is a dated film – and it’s always the women that show it. If this set a lot of good Bond archetypes, then it also helped to cement a few bad ones. Anya Amasova is (allegedly) the greatest agent Russia has. Not that you would know it, as she stumbles in this film from moments of staggering incompetence and stupidity to victimhood and damsel-in-distress. There is a hint of character development – Bond offs her boyfriend in that alpine chase literally without a backward glance – but that’s soon forgotten by the end under Bond’s charms. The poor woman can’t even drive stick (“That’s reverse, let’s try again shall we” says Bond with smackable smugness) and by the end of the film she’s bikini-clad and being rescued by Bond. It says a lot when the strongest thing about her character is that her name isn’t an innuendo.

But you can let it go, because the rest of the film is such good fun. Everything is nonsense of course, and you could steer a submarine through the plot holes. If Stromberg only needs two submarines to start his evil plan, why on earth does he grab a third one at the start of the final act? (Just as well he does, of course, as otherwise Bond would never get on board his base.) Stromberg is ruthless enough to eliminate three underlings and to set up a nuclear war to wipe out the world – but those captured submarine crews he keeps alive, imprisoned, with a small guard, next to the armoury on his base. Ooops. His plan is almost effortlessly undone with a radio message from Bond. But never mind. It doesn’t matter.

The point is that this is all great fun and basically set the tone for the next ten years of Bond films – until Dalton shifted gears. Moore is really good in it, as a sort of ringmaster of silliness – and he’s clearly enjoying it wildly. The Spy Who Loved Me is his best film – and for all its dumbness, its leaning into cheap humour, its ludicrous plot and sexist attitudes, it’s still up there at the top of the franchise. Because for a lot of people, all those negatives are exactly what they now expect from Bond.

Alfie (1966)

Michael Caine excels as amoral cockney moralist lothario Alfie

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Michael Caine (Alfie), Shelley Winters (Ruby), Millicent Martin (Siddie), Julia Foster (Gilda), Jane Asher (Annie), Shirley Anne Field (Carla), Vivien Merchant (Lily), Eleanor Bron (Doctor), Denholm Elliott (Abortionist), Alfie Bass (Harry), Murray Melvin (Nat)

Is there a more “swinging Sixties” film than Alfie – the story of a cockney wideboy interested only in “birds” and having a good time? On the surface it captures the attitude of the 1960s, with free love, thumbing your nose at authority, and having the sort of fun the wartime generation frowned on. But it’s a more interesting film than this, which criticises the emptiness of the 1960s by showing us Alfie’s selfishness and loneliness. Sure he has a good time now and again – but would anyone really want to live like this forever?

Alfie (Michael Caine) is a handsome chauffeur with a never-ending stream of affairs, commitment constantly avoided. The film follows these entanglements, starting with his needy girlfriend Gilda (Julia Foster), the mother of his child, whom he constantly cheats on. When Gilda finally leaves him – and Alfie loses touch with the son he has become fond of – a medical condition ends up with him in a convalescent home, where his affairs include the wife of a fellow patient, Lily (Vivien Merchant). Later relationships with a young hitchhiker (Jane Asher) and a rich American woman (Shelley Winters) similarly lead to disappointment.

The main thing that makes Alfie last (possibly the only thing) is Michael Caine’s sublime performance. Caine is on screen the whole time, and the film is spotted throughout with his casual direct-to-camera addresses. Caine’s charm and likeability work perfectly for this device, winning the audience over. But Caine never falls for Alfie – even if many audience members clearly did. Caine’s constantly demonstrates Alfie’s hypocrisy, shallowness, meanness and selfishness. Sure he recounts his actions with wit, but most of these actions are extremely shitty. But right from the start there is a charismatic, lothario swagger to him – and a cheeky charm – that makes you like him.

But his general shittiness is more obvious today than back in the 1960s. Then the amount of sex probably shocked viewers the most. Today it’s Alfie’s inability in to refer to women as anything but “it”, like some smooth Richard Keys. His attitude to women is appalling – he describes Jane Asher’s hitchhiker like some sort of floor-cleaning, bed-sharing car. Alfie avoids any sort of emotional connection at all with his conquests, and the film makes clear that this has left him empty and lonely, feelings he buries deep down.

In fact, the film is most telling at the moments when Alfie doesn’t turn to us with that confident grin and place a self-serving spin on what just happened. Seeing his son being warmly embraced by Gilda’s new husband (at the christening of their new child), Alfie can only skulk quietly at the back of the church – as scared to meet our eyes as he is those of this family he could have had. His love for his son is something Alfie refuses to accept himself – but his feelings are all too clear at his physical collapse on losing access to his child, and his later tear-stained reaction to Lily’s abortion.

Ah yes the abortion scene. Probably the highlight of the film – if only because its intense seriousness is so different from the rest of the film, and Alfie’s wheedling weakness and whiny self-justification become all the clearer. His complete lack of principle in sleeping with his only friend’s wife (“Well what harm can it do?”) of course results in her pregnancy. And Alfie is all at sea, firstly with Vivien Merchant’s expert portrayal of distress, pain, shame and guilt as Lily – and with Denholm Elliot’s perfect cameo of grimy, resentful disillusionment as a struck-off doctor turned back-street abortionist. Just to bang the nail on the head, Alfie leaves Lily alone after the operation (telling the audience that there’s nothing he can do anyway, right?). He may be horrified later at what he has done, and may feel moments of empathy – but has he really learned anything?

The film is full of these moments where we are invited to understand that Alfie is not leading a life for us to aspire to, but one we need to avoid. It’s left Alfie alone, miserable and abandoned. For all the jaunty 1960s vibe, and Alfie’s charming cheek, he’s not a happy man but a desperately shallow one. And he’s even got a shelf life for this way of life: “He’s younger than you are” one of his lovers tells him late in the film, as she leaves him. Because what has Alfie got in his life? When he runs through a checklist in the film’s closing monologue (“a bob or two, some decent clothes, a car. I’ve got my health back and I ain’t attached. But I ain’t got my peace of mind”) the emptiness of his life is all too clear.

Caine’s brilliance is to make this tragic, empty, selfish man seem attractive and exciting – while also never losing sight of what a complete shit he is. It’s a great performance and he dominates the entire film. He plugs perfectly into the hip, light touch that Lewis Gilbert directs the film with, and the entire film has a layer of cool on it that works rather well. What makes the film last today though is its shrewd analysis of the empty, soulless, coldness that underpins living your life like this – and how the sort of shallow, no consequences, no emotional investment bouncing around Alfie has just leaves you alone and growing old.

“What’s it all about?” You can argue the answers are buried in this film – but Alfie never spots them.

Moonraker (1979)

Roger Moore is James Bond…IN SPACE!!!!

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Roger Moore (James Bond), Lois Chiles (Holly Goodhead), Michael Lonsdale (Hugo Drax), Richard Kiel (Jaws), Corinne Clery (Corinne Dufour), Bernard Lee (M), Geoffrey Keen (Defence Minister), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Emily Bolton (Manuela)

After The Spy Who Loved Me, the Bond producers had finally found a format that suited Roger Moore’s take on the role: a comedic, tongue-in-cheek style, with Moore leaning on the fourth wall, winking at the audience. In fact, SWLM made so much money that this one feels almost like a remake rather than a new film – it’s got the same basic concept, the final sequence is pretty similar, the opening sequence again revolves around a daring parachute stunt, even Jaws pops up again. For a film that heads into truly unchartered physical territory for Bond (space!), it’s as familiar and derivative as Bond gets.

Bond (Roger Moore) investigates Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), a shady businessman whose operations are expanding into space. After a string of exotic locales (a chateau in France! Venice! Mexico City! Brazil!) an evil scheme to destroy the world from space clicks into place. Bond has to take to the stars to take down Drax. Despite the criticism that will follow, this is probably near the end of Moore’s high point in the role – and in none of his future films was he quite as debonair and dashing as he is here.

If you ever needed evidence that the James Bond franchise looked at whatever was popular in the cinema at that moment in time and then ripped it off as quickly as possible in their next film, then it’s Moonraker. Surely never in anyone’s lifetime would they expect to see a film that could be tagged “James Bond…in SPACE!” but after the success of Star Wars that is exactly what they were served up. The idea is so completely silly that people wonder if you’ve made it up.

But, sigh, that’s what we get here. And it is beyond silly. The film climaxes in a space battle between the NASA Marines (don’t ask) armed with laser cannons (yes you read that right), duking it out with Drax’s own personal guard also armed with cannons (it really is as silly as it sounds). All this against a backdrop of Drax’s own personal Death Star. Afterwards, Bond has to shoot down three deadly missiles that will wipe out the population of the Earth. Naturally, his targeting computer doesn’t work for the final one, so Bond has to basically “use the force” to target and shoot it down. Star Wars in all but name right? Had the producers no shame?

It doesn’t help that Moonraker amps up the already jokey tone of SWLM to an overbearing degree. At least it was a formula that works with Moore, but so little is treated seriously that when they do something violent it sticks out tonally like a sore thumb. This is probably the only film I can think of in which a woman is ripped apart (off screen) by a horde of hounds, followed shortly afterwards by a pigeon performing a comic double take after an amphibious gondola sails through the middle of St Mark’s Square (don’t even ask). It’s a film that has no discipline, no control and no real consistency. It dances all over the place with no logic at all. It gets the balance wrong and instead of being tongue-in-cheek often comes across as overblown, heavy-handed and ludicrous.

In fact the plot, such as it is, is hard to follow because it’s almost an afterthought. It’s effectively a reheat of SWLM (repopulate the planet with a chosen elite), while the space battles are similar to the slow motion fights of Thunderball. Bond moves from location to location with only the barest logical links. Drax identifies Bond as a threat early on – but then continues to pull out a series of bizarre and unreliable schemes to eliminate him. The action sequences feel like versions of previous films in the series – and don’t get me started on the fact Bond still hasn’t learned that punching Jaws in his metal mouth is a bad idea (he does it three or four times in this movie). Everything moves forward with a restless momentum that never allows us to connect with anything that happens.

There is some decent potential here. The fight on the ski lift is pretty good. Michael Lonsdale has a psychotic chill about him that, in a better film, might have made him a memorable villain. In fact, Lonsdale is so grounded as a villain he feels wrong for a film that’s so silly. And it’s all the more surprising he has such an outlandish scheme – or that he hangs around with such a pantomime villain as Jaws. Jaws clearly returns due to popularity – and has been thoroughly neutered as a threat here. Even before he falls in love with a girl with pigtails and switches sides, he’s already an almost comic buffoon – even bashful about knocking off a Bond aide in front of witnesses.

It’s a film that can’t decide if it’s a thriller or a comedy. It probably leans more towards comedy – which is a shame as it’s not that funny. The hideously overplayed gondola sequence tells you everything you need to know about the film’s lack of wit. Its comedy is as overplayed and heavy-handed as some of the action can be – more likely to get you rolling your eyes than holding your sides. Saying that, it does have possibly the best final punchline of any of the films (“I think he’s attempting re-entry sir”) – the sort of joke you probably didn’t get when you first watched the film aged about 10. Other than that it’s like a series of gags told by people who aren’t really that funny.

Moonraker is the sort of bizarre freak of nature that you almost can’t believe exists. Leaving aside its amping up of the tongue-in-cheek formula into the realms of the bizarre, it’s basically a bit too stupid and unbelievable for even this franchise to pull off. Lasers? Space-stations? Space marines? Bond in space? I mean really? As a rip off of Star Wars it leaves a lot to be desired – and so long as these films take place in a world that is even vaguely linked to our own, plots like this just have the stench of bullshit.

You Only Live Twice (1967)

I feel Connery’s attitude to the film comes across well in this image…

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Sean Connery (James Bond), Akiko Wakabayashi (Aki), Mie Hama (Kissy Suzuki), Tetsurō Tamba (Tiger Tanaka), Teru Shimada (Mr. Osato), Karin Dor (Helga Brandt/No. 11), Donald Pleasence (Ernst Stavro Blofeld), Bernard Lee (M), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Charles Gray (Dikko Henderson)

James Bond films: always fun, even when not that good. You Only Live Twice is probably the prime example. For many, many reasons, it isn’t actually very good but still remains strangely enjoyable just because, well hell, it’s Bond.

Anyway YOLT revolves around naughty super villains SPECTRE nabbing US and USSR space missions, hoping to provoke a nuclear war between the two superpowers. Apparently they will profit handsomely from this – but how they see that happening in a nuclear wasteland isn’t clear. Anyway, James Bond (Sean Connery) fakes his own death and heads to Japan to investigate. Events peddle around Japan for ages, giving filmgoers the chance for some vicarious sight-seeing, before culminating in an all-out attack by Bond and a gang of ninjas on the hollowed-out volcano base of SPECTRE chief Blofield (Donald Pleasance).

YOLT is the moment Bond started to head full tilt towards the Moore-era of overblown, fantasy silliness. The plot is total bobbins (despite being repeated in The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker etc.) with both Russians and the US naturally continuing to suspect each other, even when each side loses a spacecraft (though I did like the fact that the actual astronauts together in captivity are shown to have far more in common than not). There is no logical reason for them to behave like this, even at the heart of the Cold War.

There is plenty of other nonsense here. Bond’s death is faked early doors for no reason (only the hopeless SPECTRE is in any way fooled). Bond meanders around Japan with even less subtlety than usual, with a series of clashes, fights and chases that make little real narrative sense at all. Later, again for no reason, (and almost unbelievable to watch today) he disguises himself as a Japanese man (PC alert ahoy, as Bond cuts his hair with a bowl and tans his skin. At least he doesn’t tape his eyelids back…). He also finds a kindred spirit in Tiger Tanaka, both of them treating a host of female servants as a shopping list for rumpy-pumpy.

As per many Bond films, the franchise clambers on top of a current fashion to feel hip and cool (but actually manages to feel fusty and stuffy). This time it’s the samurai craze, as Bond joins a sword-swinging, ninja training school. Yes, you read that right. But of course Bond also needs to get married before the attack: again why? His wife is of course offed seconds later, and Connery just about manages to look put out at this coitus interruptus (more on Connery later…)

SPECTRE themselves are hilariously incompetent. They are hoodwinked like children by Bond’s ludicrous faked death. They practically signpost their location by bumping off anyone who gets within about five miles of the place. Later, poor Blofield not only carefully talks Bond through the self-destruct button for his rocket, he also lets Bond take back his clearly gadget-concealing smoking case, blows away two sidekicks (one right in front of Bond) rather than eliminate Bond himself, then caps it all with sending the base itself to kingdom come. SPECTRE’s agents are equally useless, with Brandt too attracted to Bond to finish him off (and then deciding to tie him up in a plane, detonate a grenade in it and then parachute out to leave the plane to crash with Bond in it – needless to say Bond lands the plane with ease).

The terrific volcano set

The volcano base, however, is a triumph of production design – it’s staggering to think that everything you see on screen was built for real. It’s huge and iconic – and the battle scene between the aforementioned ninjas and SPECTRE goons that fills the final act of the film is hugely exciting, despite almost every single thing making virtually no sense. Incidentally the final battle’s structure is lifted almost completely for a similar sequence in The Spy Who Loved Me.

The problem is that everything else leading up to this feels like all involved are going through the motions – as if there wasn’t really anything fresh left to do or say in the Bond-verse. Need a glamourous location. Never been to Japan have we? Need some scuffles – not sure we‘ve done a roof top fight in long shot, let’s chuck that in. How about we kill Bond off for a few seconds – yeah never done that before. A super gadget needed? Bring on suitcase-assembled helicopter, Little Nellie. The final reveal of Blofeld is fun, but when you come back to watching the film you realise he’s as bland and identikit as Largo or Dr No – a pompous windbag who fucks everything up.

Stumbling through all this is a clearly bored Sean Connery. By this time, Connery was sick of the part (“I’ve always hated that damned James Bond, I’d like to kill him” he was to later say), and money was the only thing tempting him back. Connery coasts through the whole movie with the air of a man who would rather be anywhere else. There is no sparkle at all, just a weary going through the paces. He can barely raise a smirk, let alone a glimmer of interest in the events around him.

Bond turns Japanese. No they really did do this.

It’s the atmosphere of the whole film. Roald Dahl (yes that Roald Dahl) did the script – but he felt the book was pretty awful (one of Fleming’s duller efforts) so spiced it up with some new content. Problem was the suits basically demanded a certain quota of set pieces and a certain number of Bond girls. Trying to deviate from this template too much was far too difficult a challenge. Lewis Gilbert’s direction is professional but pretty uninspired: it sums up the whole movie.

Most of the acting is pretty non-descript. Donald Pleasance at least deserves some credit for making Blofield’s appearance iconic and for doing a nice line of whispering menace. Charles Gray is pretty good fun as a camp British contact (“That’s stirred, not shaken. Is that right?”) – though SPECTRE (true to form) confirm all his suspicions by knocking him off after less than minute or two on screen. Everyone else blends into one.

So, anyway, YOLT is really nothing special – a tired entry into a tired franchise, with an all too obviously disillusioned star and action beats that largely feel like retreads of things we’ve seen before (done better) in the series. But yet, but yet… Somehow enough of the old Bond magic keeps you watching. Sure Connery is indifferent and the action more a travelogue than a thriller – but the final sequence is exciting, Blofeld (for all his ineptitude) makes a decent enough villain, and while no-one really gets het-up about it, the stakes do feel fairly high. Stretches of the film are dull – but others work very well. You may only watch twice, but it will be fun enough.