A Woman Watches Bond: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Psychedelic Bond! He runs, he fights (constantly, in a heightened fashion), he tracks Blofeld (Telly Savalas) and Bunt (Ilse Steppat), he has a wobbly accent (at points, but his dubbed Sir Hilary Bray is top notch), he puns, he skis, he bob sleighs! and he has an Aston. And forget the ‘blonde Bond’ debate, this Bond is an Aussie…
Treading carefully with this much loved national treasure, I was keen to rewatch George Lazenby’s solo Bond outing again. (Thanks Prince Charles Cinema for showing all the Bonds again). It is thrilling — with a cheeky opening about ‘this never happened to the other fellow’…and starts romantically, with Bond rescuing a suicidal woman, getting into a fight and getting ditched by the same glamourous woman. Like Cinderella’s Prince, he’s left holding the shoes.
I’m not sure what the opposite of quiet luxury is *— but this Bond movie is it. It drips with lavishness— in an opulent casino, the embellishment of women’s clothes, European villas, private birthday bullfighting (!) towering Alpine vistas, the way that non-English languages are used as contextual mis-en-scene. It also seems to play with colour hue (quite literally popping as Bond wears an orange polo neck) and with techniques, as the fight scenes are heightened. It feels like a mixture of Steve McQueen’s gritty Bullitt and early Blackploitation.
It’s also the movie where Bond meets his match. It’s intriguing to see how much this influenced Craig’s 2006 Casino Royale and later offerings — the score, the relationship with Tracey, the chases through tightly packed crowds, even the way Bond looks at himself in the mirror. There are several shots which are almost twins of each other, although separated by the years.
And it’s groovy. This Bond is a 1960s hep cat. As well as the luxuriant settings, the costumes are fabulous. Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) wears beautiful clothes, ornate Italian style for much of the time, and has wonderful hair styles. Bond has fabulous frilled sheer dress shirts — and a kilt. He also looks great in a cape in disguise. Like Casino Royale’s sized up tuxedo, this Bond is fashion conscious — and even a dandy. There are some fun moments when Bond is on mission — and creates fashion along the way, borrowing a jacket to hide in a winter fair, and turning pocket inserts into gloves to help him climb to freedom.
The plot is equally wild. Bond is taken off the case from hunting Blofeld — and Casino Royale like, resigns! Only to be saved by the astute Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), who he definitely has a relationship with here. Having encountered Tracey at the beach — and then in self-destruct mode at the casino, Bond is kidnapped to meet her criminal, chess playing dad, Marc-Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti). Having had a fight every time he opens a door, enjoyed an assignation and not so much an interrogation, been seized, now Bond is offered one million pounds to show troubled Tracey what a real man is like by her dad. This is weird, but it’s going to get weirder — cue fight in a shed with enormous cow bells!
Bond is sympathetic to Tracey’s situation — but is no psychiatrist. Caring, he can’t be bought. But he is happy to act on the chemistry he has with Tracey — and they are both hedging their bets. Particularly Bond as he wants to get to Draco’s knowledge of where Blofeld is. But there turns out to be another way in — through the Royal College of Arms. Impersonating Sir Hilary Bray (George Baker), in a Holmesian cape and pipe, Bond is flown into trouble to see if Blofeld is a hereditary Count, namely Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp. What? At the same time, apart from Blofeld and his henchmen, he’s the only man in the room.
Bond forgets about his forced romance with Tracey as he’s on a mission — to find out what Blofeld is up to and promote a love of heraldry — primarily bezants. Curiously the women at the Alpine base are all able to eat things they were allergic to before. As Bond finds out from Ruby (Angela Scoular), part of the healing process includes listening to personalised cassette tape messages — which, alongside flashing groovy coloured lights, are brainwashing all the women on the cure into becoming global agents of death. Through Christmas make-up kits, they will spray deadly chemicals from diffusers at the right time and make everyone and everything infertile. Whilst it’s all nonsense (and strangely like No Time To Dies nanobots), I love the diversity of actresses here, the silliness and the fact that Anoushka Hempel, Jenny Hanley and Joanna Lumley are in the room! Whilst rocking some fabulous ’60s fashions, they also choose Bond — rather than him choosing them, and choose what he’s going to know about them. For this Bond is a great listener.
Noticeably this Bond can’t go anywhere without getting into a fight — or making a pun. This is the only weakness, whilst the puns start off well, over time it feels like Lazenby’s Bond loses patience and conviction with having to reel off a quip constantly — and they fall flat. He lacks the stamina of Roger Moore. But makes up for this in cheek — such as getting a wonderfully large flashy buttoned gadget winched into a law firm office, and making off with a concealed Playboy.
Whilst I remember the cow bell shed fight, there are many other great action sequences. I’d forgotten about Tracey rescuing Bond from being hunted down at a winter fair, having tensely escaped the Alpine base, by driving into a stock car rally! Love how the extras jump out of the way of danger here. The local farmer’s barn gets a battering as Bond and Tracey hide out here, and is then ripped apart by Blofeld and crew. Skiing to freedom with Blofeld in hot pursuit, Bond fights back — with some gory results at points. There’s also bobsleighing! Blofeld creates a savage avalanche — to kill Bond and to kidnap Tracey, who will be used as a pawn to get power and influence from Draco. Like Alec Trevelayn, Blofeld wants what Bond has — which includes Tracey as his consort over his evil empire. I feel Blofeld could have been given more time (as in You Only Live Twice) to fully reveal his masterplan — this part feels rushed. Like No Time To Die’s Safin, we never fully get why he wants to do what he wants to do — there’s no big, complicated large map/plan reveal. But there is a fantastic helicopter rescue mission and a wedding — with a dramatic and heart-rending ending, which still shocks now. If you mixed up Roger Moore’s naval Bond, horse riding and puns, Craig’s emotional, blunt instrument Bond, Timothy Dalton’s Bond on a mission in the snow and Connery’s original, what you get is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. There is so much trailblazing for what you see in later films — though from the trippy opening credits, the producer and director are very keen to reassure us that nothing has changed, this is still the same Bond!
Given what she’s given, Diana Rigg does amazing things with Tracey. Tracey has a painful life — though she’s wealthy, she marries a treacherous and adulterous Count, who dies in a car crash with another woman. Though he obviously cares for her, her father is with someone who’s basically her age, and treats like like another piece of property. Her father’s emphasis on her obedience, indeed domination by men at all times, is creepy , as he seeks to control her emotional life — although this is done tongue in cheek, sometimes. However, at times, Tracey is able to stand up to him — getting him to reveal where Blofeld is to Bond, questioning her father and Bond’s motivations in public and through her relationship with his lover Olympe (Virginia North), which is kind and supportive. At other points, she’s brutalised — Bond slaps her to get information out of her, and her father thinks nothing of punching her to get her to go where he wants, against her own wishes. Her life is full of men who think they know best and for all her wealth, intelligence and beauty, she lacks personal agency outside of relationships with men. Even Bond isn’t faithful to her. No wonder she tries to take destructive agency of herself, feeling constantly bought and sold.
At the same time, this is a movie where both Bond and Tracey are vulnerable — they rescue each other, Bond thinks of Tracey and proposes, he wipes away her tears. Tracey protects Bond when he’s being hunted and uses her ingenuity to get them out of a pursuit. The grace and inner dignity that Rigg brings to this role is amazing, as well as being able to fight, drive, beguile with flattery and poetry recitals and ski her way out of tight corners. Although the script does switch gears at one point and have Tracey go into Stacey Sutton wailing, this is understandable as she’s a civilian in a life and death situation. Though it seems out of character for such a resourceful and robust creation. She also steals the end of the movie as Bond’s tender grief for her fills the screen.
Over the years Lazenby has got a lot of stick — for not being Connery, for being only one Bond. But I think he plays a good part here, although he’s lost some of the intelligence, cultured astuteness and education of Connery’s Bond to endless puns and physicality. At the same time, he is a younger, fitter, leaner version and much more contemporary. Like Dalton and Moore, it’s great to see Lazenby’s Bond on mission with others, and the fun of sparky relationships with Q (Desmond Llewelyn), M (Bernard Lee) and Moneypenny. There’s also the lovely way that Moneypenny is valued by M too. I love Q’s exasperated remark about Bond never respecting governmental property as he lobs his hat to Moneypeny as a souvenir. Back this Bond — and enjoy his background of nuanced acting from Diana Rigg and a terrific and memorable score from John Barry.
Enjoy the fun too — I love how the henchmen of Draco are amiably at his birthday party, on the same table, and turn up later to help rescue Tracey and defeat Blofeld. Also how Tracey and her dad drive Bond from Portugal to Switzerland to drop him off on his mission! And the ACME ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah’ as evil henchmen are toppled to their deaths from the mountainside.
*Sophisticated loud budgeting, apparently*
