Well, up to now, this may be my favourite of the first seven films (only of the first sevecn, though, it will change). I didn’t much care for this Blofeld, I much preferred Savalas - although Pleasance did a better crazy-evil mastermind. Savalas’ Blofeld was more sane.
This time it’s neither as charming or as crazy enough a performance.
The story: Bond is set on finding Blofeld, and ‘finds him’ at a clinic for plastic surgery. He enters disguissed ad a doctor and kills Blofeld, only to learn that it was a copy; after a battle he kills this other one too, and Blofeld seems gone forever…
The scene when the bad guy frisks him to get his gun and finds a mousetrap instead was fun - silly but funny.
Sir Donald, who can give orders to M, wants them to work on a huge smuggling problem. Diamonds, a lot, and “none of the stones have reached the market”, maybe someone is stockpiling; “what concerns us is the possibility of someone either dumping the stones on the market to depress prices or… “ - “makingyou agree to perpetual blackmail”. So of course they want to know who is keeping all those diamonds.
Mr Wint and Mr Kidd are the assassins Bond knows nothing about. They like their job always act together, walk away hand in hand, and like their little jokes : “Curious how everyone who touches those diamonds seems to die” after putting a scorpion insidea man’s shirt and a bomb on a helicopter in South Africa. “Mrs Winter did want some pictures of the canals for the children” aftr the old lady is found dead in the canals of Amsterdam - “how kind of you, Mr Kidd, the children will be thrilled”; “that’s most annoying” after being told to let a man live when they had already killed him, stuff like that.
Of course with Bond they always choose ways more elaborate… I give them credit, their methods almost worked, if it wasn’t for outside intervention, so kudos for that.
When Bond enters the game, the murders had only been in South Africa but M sends him to Holland instead because he says “we’ve had our eyes on a professional smuggler called Peter Franks. He’s due to leave for Amsterdam”. I like M here: “we do function in your absence, Commander”.
So, they get Franks and Bond takes his place, with a fake passport of course. Franks had to meet T.Case so Bond shows up with fake fingerprints on his fingers, Q’s idea, so he passes the test when Miss Case checks. Miss, yes, because “there isno Mr Case, the T is for Tiffany”. Tiffany Case, yes, because she “was born there on the first floor while my mother was looking for a wedding ring”.
She likes to wear and change often wigs, but I like the red hair better. “I never mix business with pleasure” she says… Guess how long that lasts?
Q informs Bond that Franks escaped killing a guard, so Bond hurries to stop him before he can meet Case. They fight on the elevato and Bond exchanges their wallets so Case finds his “playboy club and playboy casino” card and believes Franks jut killed James Bond.
They take the diamonds and put them inside the dead body to smuggle them to America.
Bond meets again “Felix Leiter, you old friend”, the Cia agent.
The dead body flew with them, And then is cremated to get the diamonds back in an urn. Bond gives them the urn and then Mr Wint and Kidd knock him out and almost cremate him too. He’s alive because people realized he gave them false diamonds and want him to give them the real ones. The bad guys saved him here.
At the casino he meets Plenty, a girl who clings to him because he has money, but up in his room the bad guys throw her out the window: “I didn’t know there was a pool down there” says the guy played by the actor that always plays mafiosi.
Miss Case is there to talk about diamonds. They sleep together then she makes him a deal: she’ll help him get out of the Country alive and they’ll split the diamonds. He sends her to a circus, she gets the diamonds but instead of meeting him she completes her first mission and sends the diamonds along. When he shows her that Plenty was killed because believed to be her, Case changes her mind and decides to help him for real - well, we know what won then, Bond thought it was a 50-50: “her devotion to larceny versus my incomparable charm”…
Bond follows the diamonds to Dr Metz’s laboratory, owned by Willard Whyte, and escapes driving a lunar rover. It may not be fast, but it can go anywhere. Tiffany then drives him away then Felix tells him to stay put, they’re not authorized to bother Willard Whyte, so Bond goes anyway but by climbing from the outside. When he arrives, it’s not a surprise and Whyte was waiting for him, only it’s not Whyte, it’s Blofeld. It was another copy that he killed, and even now there’s two of them right there in front of him. He has a machine that changes his voice so people really believe him to be Whyte.
A simple plan: “no one’s seen the man for five years so who’s going to miss someone who’s already missing?”
Bond sees a white cat and he kicks it, then shoots the man the cat went to… only there’s another white cat, and this other one has a diamond collar… “bright idea, mr Bond” - “but wrong pussy”.
Once again Blofeld doesn’t shoot him, but leaves him inside a pipe where people are building a pipeline.
He gets indeed trapped inside it, but all he has to do is break a machine and someone comes to repair it, and he can get out.
Bond uses Q’s machine to change his voice and calls Blofeld to get Whyte’s location, where he meets Bambi and Thumper, two girls who quite acrobatically kick his a++ until of course they have the stupid idea to drown him in the pool, because there they lose their advantage and he is stronger and he is the one who almost drowns them both, until Thumper tells him where Whyte is and he frees him.
Leiter comes too but doesn’t do much.
Q is having fun testing one of his gadgets to win at all the slot machines, although he’s not interested in the winnings.
Tiffany saw a ‘woman’ with a black cat and followed, so she’s taken by Blofeld.
With Whyte they realize the plan: a satellite goes into space and activates a huge laser powered by diamonds. Dr Metz built it, but he’s “a committed idealist to peace” and believes they will just destroy missiles and bring about “total disarmament and peace for the world”.
Blofeld has other ideas, of course. They do destroy missiles, but for power and blackmail. With Whyte’s help Bond finds him; he enters the place and with Tiffany’s help he manages to substitute the cassette tape that controls the laser. Tiffany doesn’t know though, and when he gives her a tape she thinks she has to do it and switches them back. Well, reasonable, since he gave her no hint whatsoever.
Thinking he accomplished his mission, Leiter and co. attack. Blofeld tries to escape on his “bathosub” but Bond takes control of the crane. Somehow the whole base is destroyed
Bond and Tiffany sail for Britain but Kidd and Wint try to kill them still… and in a rather pathetic way. Kidd is set on fire and Wint blows up with his own bomb. When all is done, Tiffany has an important question for James: “how the hell do we getthose diamonds down agaiin?”
The end.
I’d say this line from one of them: “I must say, Miss Case is quite attractive, for a lady” might indicate that Wint and Kidd may be a couple, added to the hand-holding, but this is as far as they go so it’s not definite.
I’d say that Bond was so set on finding Blofeld because of what happened in the last movie, the fact that he killed Bond’s wife, but if we’re continuing that story then Moneypenny’s line that he brings her back from Holland “a diamond, in a ring” is not the light joke-flirting that it could have been before he actually had a wedding.
James Bond is Sean Connery
Tiffany Case is Jill St. John
Leiter is Norman Burton
Wint is Bruce Glover
Kidd is Putter Smith
Blofeld is Charles Gray
Plenty is Lana Wood
Whyte is Jimmy Dean
M is Bernard Lee
Q is Desmond Llewelyn
Moneypenny is Lois Maxwell
ITA agente 007 una cascata di diamanti
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