A Woman Watches Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me
He’s smart, so she’s! Lewis Gilbert’s Bond looks wonderful against huge settings, battles villains naval style and ski’s for Queen and Country. Noticeably Richard Maibaum and Christopher Wood’s script features an array of really well-written female , deep characters. (Apart from one area where they venture into sex trafficking, which will be discussed later).
Utilising Bond’s naval Commander background and the Cold War, this movie features East and West joining together (reluctantly) on the same mission. Like From Russia With Love, there’s a train compartment fight sequence. Unlike From Russia With Love, the female agent is a Major and a resourceful spy, not just a distraction, and very much her own woman.
Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) is a wonderful character. I love, that from the beginning, East and West, best of the best spies are pitted against each other. We see them at play, Bond (Roger Moore) killing Anya’s lover as he’s pursued across snowy mountains by a hoard of gun-toting skiers… The dramatic moment where Bond steps into M’s office (past Moneypenny in some fake ancient Egyptian ruins) only to encounter his Russian equivalent is spine-tingling. We see Bond wrong-footed, caught off guard, shocked. Then surprised when M appears from the shadows and explains the mission. Equally delightful is a lot of Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and an underwater equivalent of Little Nelly— another portable and build it yourself gadget!
She is very much a woman in a man’s world, a Bond woman in a Bond world. Again and again, she shows, in her dealings with Bond and others, that she doesn’t put up with sexist rubbish and put downs, is not afraid to show her intelligence and challenge/correct her male peers comments, to show her knowledge, and to push on through against an endless tide of mocking, derogatory bilge to get the mission done. She was marvellous fighting against Bond’s criticism and mockery, and the gears of a dodgy van, to dispatch Jaws. No matter what she stuck to her plan of what she was going to achieve — and did it successfully. She’s also not afraid to play Bond at his own game — playing on his sexuality, gullibility, assumptions and her own charm, to simple knock him out with a puff of her special cigarette and exit with the secrets.
Unlike her counterparts, she doesn’t end up running around the exploding base in a bikini — she gets atleast gets trousers! Nor does she become foolish, cowering and simpering, but stays thoughtful, resourceful and dignified throughout. When her cap is wrenched from her head, she defends her dignity by punching back — she won’t be disrespected or mauled. The villain Stromberg (Curt Jürgens) has to tie her down to keep her with him — there’s no way she’d stay otherwise or let him treat her as a pet. Or ominously, consort of his new empire.
I love that we have a Major and the best spy in the East, Triple X, as a female role model. Thoughtful, considered, grieving and revengeful, her relationship with Bond is complicated and she doesn’t tolerate his sexism. He admires and respects her, protecting her as a colleague, as well as a woman. How inspiring! She even takes a Bond line and makes it her own, pronouncing the ‘shaken not stirred’ line for herself. She’s funny too, and encourages Bond into consent, rejecting his offer of champagne to pass their train journey together. And unlike many of the previous early Moore Bonds, he respects her too — finding another use for the champagne later on!
In this movie, the blondes are not dumb. Whilst we start off with a blonde woman simpering ‘oh James, I need you’ in an Alpine chalet, she does indeed prove herself as she is a secret agent, instigating an attack on Bond down the slopes. Even the bikini clad representative of the villain is a qualified helicopter pilot (Caroline Munro), out to shoot Bond down and charmingly stop him. Nor is she there to simper, telling Bond to hurry up as she doesn’t have time for banter and dalliance. They need to get moving!
This Bond has got his brain back. In a welcome return to the style of Connery’s urbane and educated, highly cultured Bond, Moore’s Bond infiltrates the Pyramids, skitters round ancient ruins, speaks Arabic, and can interpret a blueprint. He can also spot some helpfully unstable architecture! and turn his car into a submariner version.
The only deviation from this is a lurch into Carry On where we encounter a ‘Arab sheikh’ trope and his ‘harem’ and he indulges in some casual sex trafficking, by gifting Bond one of his women. Played for comedy, this is a grim moment, and undermines the suaveness of Roger Moore’s Bond a moment before, as he demo’d his cultural understanding and gift for languages.
As an aside, the cinematography around the Egyptian ruins is simply wonderful too, playing with the big scale of the pillars alongside the smallness of the evening-clad duo hunting Jaws. They also get to walk through the desert in a Quantum of Solace moment, Lawrence of Arabia style. Equally wonderful is the underwater photography, leading to an attack on the villain’s sea-straddling Tripod-like lair, Atlantis. Curt Jürgens as Karl Stromberg makes a credible villain, instigating nuclear war from his fine art clad new civilization. The denouement with the submarine crews leading a heroic attack on his base from within is masterful.
Playing with Tut-mania, Agatha Christie, the Poseidon Adventure and other disaster movies of the era, vampires, and sharks (Jaws/’Jaws’), as ever this Bond movie has a solid sense of the cultural heart beat of the times, mixed with a lot of fun and action. However, in focusing on the naval side of Commander Bond, It also gives us a smarter, sleeker, refined version of Roger Moore’s Bond and intelligent Bond women alongside.
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