The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Dir: Lewis Gilbert
Back on Track
By Jay Maronde
Director
Lewis Gilbert and Set Designer Ken Adams teamed back up again—and after
extensive delays, seemed to re-work their “You
Only Live Twice-magic” into the Blockbuster smash The Spy Who Loved Me—and saved the entire James Bond Franchise.
This film is widely regarded as Roger Moore’s best Bond work (not necessarily
by me), and he is more than adequate in this film in which James Bond’s ability
to seduce women literally ends up saving his life while dealing with a Soviet
spy. But the real star of this film is Ken Adams’ completely insane sets (which
earned him on Oscar nomination) and the brilliance of Gilbert’s special effects
team.
First
though, let’s start with the problems, which were once again legal, and once again
caused by the Franchise’s early dealings with one Kevin McClory. Litigation is
nothing new in Hollywood. People sue other people all the time—in fact, the
producers had to buy at least one other litigant’s film treatment to avoid being
sued by him—but Kevin McClory takes the all-time cake. From my research it
seems as though McClory sued the James
Bond Franchise for almost 50 years. He even went to so far as to produce a
non-authorized Bond in the 1980’s. I personally feel that he got his what for during
the production of this film.
The
Spy Who Loved Me was, and forever will be, the only Bond Film that occurred
in the same order as the book from which it drew its title: the 10th
book became the 10th film. Coincidentally, and partially because of
McClory, the film draws almost nothing from the book besides the title and part
of the inspiration for its uber-famous henchman: Jaws (played famously by
Richard Kiel). TSWLM was supposed to
be another film in which Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE were the villains.
McClory had already won the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE in earlier litigation,
so when he heard this new film would include Blofeld, he sued again. The producers had his number this time and
almost immediately rewrote the entire script to no longer include any mention
of BLofeld or SPECTRE, and instead created a villain extremely similar to
Blofeld, except named Stromberg. AHHH HAHAHAHAHAHA Kevin McClory had to learn
the expensive way that he didn’t have the exclusive monopoly on fictional
villains. (Sorry, I just like it when
Bond’s enemies get theirs).
Anyways
legal problems aside, Gilbert (who had actually been chosen after Steven Spielberg
refused, having just completed Jaws
and stating that he “wanted to see how these fish movies turn out”) began work
on a Bond to really outperform the others, and in this effort went to some amazing
extremes.
First off, over 1 million dollars
of this production’s budget went directly towards the building of an all-new
world’s-largest-ever-soundstage built at Pinewood Studios and named the 007
stage. The first job for this stage was the interior of Stromberg’s super-evil
nuclear-submarine-swallowing super tanker The Liparus (the water tank inside
the stage actually held more than one million gallons of water to enable this
footage). The new stage was so incredibly large that a super-secret consultant
was brought in to aid with the lighting: Stanley Kubrick. A Shell corporation
executive and golfing buddy of Producer Albert Broccoli had volunteered a real
Shell supertanker for the film, but the production team had been forced to pass
as the insurance which would have been required would have been outrageously
prohibitive. The outside shots of the
supertanker were filmed with an almost 70 foot long model.
Another favorite special effect is
Bond’s white Lotus Espirit turbo coupe which converted to a submarine when
driven into water. This car is easily one of my favorites throughout the series,
because it is super cool, which is exactly why after the film’s release the
waiting list for a new Lotus suddenly grew to over three years. Another aquatic
effect in this film is Bond’s use of the world’s first jet ski. The “water
motorcycle” (as it was at the time called) ridden by Bond during the latter
part of the film as he assaults the evil villains lair, literally sprouted an
entirely new watersport.
Gilbert’s
two other smashing successes with this film came from two shockingly different
angles. First there was Jaws, cast perfectly with the actor Richard Kiel, who
in real life is actually over 7 feet tall, and still works with the Bond Franchise
doing Bond events and promotions. Jaws was immediately popular with Broccoli—so
popular, in fact, that Broccoli had the script rewritten so that Jaws could
live and escape and therefore possibly reappear in a later Bond adventure.
Screener audiences loved Jaws so much that they gave the film a standing
ovation when Jaws escaped. Over the years, Jaws has become one of the most
recognizable and beloved Bond villains.
Gilbert’s
other success was even more important: he singlehandedly re-envisioned the
entire humor of the franchise. Gone were the slapstick shtick and vaudevillian
humor; gone were silly southern sheriffs and stunts corrupted by penny
whistles. This new Bond was smooth as ice, and when he does make a joke it’s in
an extremely pithy, very British, overly-sexualized-and-yet-not-quite-skeevy
manner. My favorite Bond zinger comes at the very end of the film after Bond
has escaped from the villain’s destroyed fortress in an escape pod with the lovely
Soviet Agent XXX (played well, but not too memorably, by the very pretty
Barbara Bach, who is actually currently married to none other than Ringo
Starr). The two have escaped, and the girl is about to make good on her oath to
kill Bond once the mission is over. Bond then seduces her in a scene which
couldn’t have been more perfectly written for Roger Moore. As Moore handles
Bond’s favorite business, the escape pod is recovered by the British and when M
(again played by the classic Bernard Lee) asks Bond what he’s doing, Bond
replies: “Keeping the British end up, sir!”
This
movie was wildly popular and easily made up for the lackluster financial performance
of The Man with the Golden Gun. The
theme song “Nobody Does it Better” went gold, even though it was the first Bond
theme song not to be titled the same as the film, and has been covered by
numerous artists over the years since it was first recorded by the ethereal
Carly Simon. On a strange note: this film ends with the classic “James Bond
will return…in For Your Eyes Only.”
Moonraker would actually be the next Bond film to be produced as the
management team would seek to capitalize off other space movies such as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, but also to parlay the audience’s love of the character Jaws by
having him reappear in the successive film. It is of little concern though, as Gilbert had saved the longest running
film franchise. Were it not for his
excellent direction of this film and re- direction of the entire series, one
truly wonders if we would all so eagerly be awaiting next
month’s Skyfall.
No comments:
Post a Comment