Recommendations of the Editorial team
Some describe the penultimate James Bond film, “Skyfall” from 2012, as a complex portrait of the secret agent; they praise James Bond’s self-awareness as an alcoholic, physically damaged person, especially as someone who has to deal with childhood trauma – and accepts that his parents’ house will be reduced to rubble.
Daniel Craig in the role of 007? Nobody was ever better! Such biographical expansions seem necessary, as the James Bond episodes in which the Secret Service man reveals the least about himself are the weakest. This includes, for example, all films with Pierce Brosnan in the lead role. The previous Bond producers around Albert “Cubby” Broccoli were already trying to give their agent depth.
“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” from 1969 shocked many viewers. James Bond (George Lazenby) falls in love for the first time. The first half of the longest work in the series to date, at more than 140 minutes, revolves around the liaison with Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg). We see the two of them ice skating, and Bond has melancholic conversations with his future father-in-law. The Australian George Lazenby, blessed with a stronger physical presence than Connery, would never play double zero again.
The illustrated book “The Blofeld Files”
The illustrated book “The Blofeld Files” (Edition Bleuchamp) is dedicated to the filming of the film around the summit station of the cable car on the Schilthorn in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland, famous for its revolving restaurant Piz Gloria – the station of Blofeld (Telly Savalas) and inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s storming of the fortress in “Inception”.
Switzerland isn’t necessarily sexy, but director Peter Hunt and his cameraman Michael Reed, who shot in Panavision, have staged a decidedly erotic film, with Bond girls from all nations, a score by John Barry in top lounge form including a Luis Armstrong ballad, and Willy Bogner was responsible for the action scenes on skis. The result is a work that, respectfully coded by fans as “OHMSS” (original title: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”), can now be found in the top 5 of almost all Bond lists.
The year 1969 was culturally and politically significant: the moon landing, Woodstock, Altamont, Vietnam, “Space Oddity” and the aftermath of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” Space Age. In the isolation of Piz Gloria and the tourist ski paradise, James Bond set a harsh, European counterpoint.
The Bond film poster, after all, proclaimed, in the language of its time, “Far Up! Far Out! Far More!” Blofeld’s “Angels of Death” were intended to pay tribute to this new freedom of movement. Twelve friendly women from all over the world who are put into a trance by the villain and then help distribute bioweapons around the globe. In the film, the “angels” appear like employees of a harem, and Bond can still show off his early 1960s macho charm. From today’s perspective, you could imagine him holding the final door open for “Mad Men” Don Draper.
Blofeld’s “Angel of Death” and the era of permissiveness
Many of the 700 images from the wonderful “Blofeld Files” are unknown: Today one can no longer believe that “OHMSS”, framed in time by the silly Connery Bonds “You Only Live Twice” and “Diamond Fever”, was not recognized as a classic of its time. Few climactic effects and explosions, and also the villain Blofeld, previously played by Donald Pleasence, was no longer an involuntary comedian and cat lover, but became by Telly Savalas to the sober psychopath. With Diana Rigg as Teresa, Bond also had a playmate for the first time who was not only much more mysterious, but above all more intelligent than the secret agent.
George Lazenby as human Bond
“This never happened to the other fellow” is one of the most striking sentences in the history of the Bond franchise. It was also one of Lazenby’s first lines in the film, after in the prologue – one of the best photographed in the entire series – he first stops Teresa from committing suicide by drowning and then takes out a killer, only to watch as the woman speeds away from the beach in a car. “That never happened to the other guy” – the defeat that Connery would never have allowed only makes the new Bond more human.
George Lazenby was hired to write the book’s sunny foreword. “I don’t regret any of the decisions I made back then – everything happens for a reason,” writes the 86-year-old, who was unable to continue his career after his suspension as 007. “Becoming Bond was never my end goal. Living life on your own terms is much more fulfilling. I am the original individual; I defied expectations and wrote my own story. ‘The Blofeld Files’ is part of that.”
The Blofeld Files, Edition Bleuchamp, 368 pages.