Post by Eddie Love on Oct 25, 2009 12:15:33 GMT -5
Like the two of you, my father took me to see this in the theater and it was my first Bond picture. For that reason it's long held a place in my heart, but upon more recent evaluation I feel Diamonds Are Forever is the road sign for all that was to become shitty in the worst of the Moore era.
In the first six 007 pictures, all of which I love, there are flashes of wit delivered by Bond -- and by Bond only! It adds to his cool, that he can crack wise in the most dire of circumstances. As soon as other people start to be funny, then that's called a comedy and it's very difficult for the filmmakers to sustain tension around the central spy plot, however contrived. In DAF, you have plenty (and Plenty) of jokes from the other characters (even a wise-ass kid) and it dilutes the whole picture. I lay this on Tom Mankeiwicz the American who was brought in on the first three Bonds of the 70s. He substitutes jokes for wit and these pictures come damn close to the feel of the Flint and Helm pictures, which are hard to sit through today specifically because of the lame humor. Maybe everyone panicked when OHMSS underperformed, but they over-corrected and DAF (I'm with Tom on this) is tough to enjoy today. (One of the reasons I liked Quantum is that it seemed to be mindful of the DAF error and maintained the dramatic tension from the prior film. If only they'd tried to do that after OHMSS.)
I also think that when the films became more comic in tone they necessarily became more sexist, as the humor would inevitably be at the expense of the women in the stories. In all three of the Mankiewitz pictures the women are shown to be girlishly stupid in the action scenes. (Tiffany Case is so inept at firing a machine gun she falls off an oil rig. Don't get me started on Britt Eckland as Mary Goodnight.) In the earlier films the women may have been vulnerable, but in these films they are helpless to the point of being nearly stupid. We don't root for them and think less of Bond when he winds up with them. (I'm really thinking of Jill St John in DAF and less so of Jane Seymour.) This charge of sexism was then tagged on all the Bond movies, and the subsequent over-correction of having the women in the stories be geologists or nuclear scientists got seriously out of hand. Besides, I think a tough, independent, athletic beauty like Honey Ryder as a damsel in distress is more edifying that an astro-physicists named Goodhead.
In the first six 007 pictures, all of which I love, there are flashes of wit delivered by Bond -- and by Bond only! It adds to his cool, that he can crack wise in the most dire of circumstances. As soon as other people start to be funny, then that's called a comedy and it's very difficult for the filmmakers to sustain tension around the central spy plot, however contrived. In DAF, you have plenty (and Plenty) of jokes from the other characters (even a wise-ass kid) and it dilutes the whole picture. I lay this on Tom Mankeiwicz the American who was brought in on the first three Bonds of the 70s. He substitutes jokes for wit and these pictures come damn close to the feel of the Flint and Helm pictures, which are hard to sit through today specifically because of the lame humor. Maybe everyone panicked when OHMSS underperformed, but they over-corrected and DAF (I'm with Tom on this) is tough to enjoy today. (One of the reasons I liked Quantum is that it seemed to be mindful of the DAF error and maintained the dramatic tension from the prior film. If only they'd tried to do that after OHMSS.)
I also think that when the films became more comic in tone they necessarily became more sexist, as the humor would inevitably be at the expense of the women in the stories. In all three of the Mankiewitz pictures the women are shown to be girlishly stupid in the action scenes. (Tiffany Case is so inept at firing a machine gun she falls off an oil rig. Don't get me started on Britt Eckland as Mary Goodnight.) In the earlier films the women may have been vulnerable, but in these films they are helpless to the point of being nearly stupid. We don't root for them and think less of Bond when he winds up with them. (I'm really thinking of Jill St John in DAF and less so of Jane Seymour.) This charge of sexism was then tagged on all the Bond movies, and the subsequent over-correction of having the women in the stories be geologists or nuclear scientists got seriously out of hand. Besides, I think a tough, independent, athletic beauty like Honey Ryder as a damsel in distress is more edifying that an astro-physicists named Goodhead.