Goldfinger - 1964

This is the one that sees James coming by water, putting a bomb in someone’s drug lab then taking off his scuba suit to reveal a white tuxedo underneath, perfectly dry and everything, he even adds a perfect red flower…

This happens before the credits which are rather peculiar because things are projected on the face and body of a girl in gold.

This is also the movie that really set the trend: no more Bentley but the Aston Martin full  of gadgets and Q asking him not to ruin it - he will, of course. The bad guys killing every one else without batting an eye but never Bond, he’s always given the time to free himself or get someone else to do it for him.

Other things were there from the start: the Martini, shakes not stirred, the fact that Bond treats women like ‘little girls’ who can’t compete with the work of the big men, that he chases every girl he sees and is supposedly so irresistible absolutely no one can resist and nobody press charges… same old same old.

it wa 1964, but things haven’t changed all that much in my opinion, only superficially :-/

The song: Shirley Bassey sings Goldfinger.

Bond is told to keep an eye on Goldfinger and what he does is: make him lose money and steal his girl… Goldfinger likes to win so he had Jill spy on his opponent’s cards and tell him. Bond stopped it, told him to lose and took Jill to his room where he’s knocked out and wakes up to see a dead girl on his bed.

She’s completely covered in gold so to cause suffocation.

Bond is scolded because of this and admits to be “aware” of his “shortcomings”, meaning that he wants every pretty girl he sees, the greedy bastard. Let’s not even talk about when he met Leitner aain - same character different actor - so he slaps his girl of the moment on her behind to tell her to go away because “men talk”, not for a girl’s ears…

Jill’s sister Tilly comes after Goldfinger but is killed too, by his loyal servant Oddjob, a very strong Korean who uses his hat lined with metal (la tesa del cappello). It can behead a statue but the girl is simply dead with no visible injury whatsoever.

Bond is tied to a table but not killed right away, he’s left waiting for a laser to reach him, giving him time to convince Goldfinger that he knows of “operation Grand Slam” and be freed. The lines “do you expect me to talk?” - “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die” were cool enough, but ruined by the context, since he’s the one to free him. 

Of course a third girl appears, Pussy Galore, Goldfinger’s personal pilot, who declares to be immune to his charm. Of course she won’t be.

She is a trained pilot who trained her own squadron of girls. Bond will start asking “just how personal” she is, happy that she’s not sleeping with Goldfinger, and he’ll end up basically forcing himself on her, but since he’s Bond we’re shown that his kiss indeed charms her and that supposedly makes it ok…

Goldfinger kills quite a number of criminals - here it’s not clear why they mae the scene to kill one with a gun and have him crashed inside the car into a metal cube - and without a single droop of blood - since the others were killed too, with the gas…

The Master Plan is to attack Fort Knox. The planes will spread the gas all around it, so every soldier around will be killed - and it’s thousands we’re talking about - and then he’ll make a bomb explode near the gold, an “atomic device” that will render the gold radioactive for decades, so the gold he has will have much more value.

Our blond pilot is not moved in any way when Bond warns her that Goldfinger “kills little girls like you” but a kiss manages to convert her, so near the end we learn from Leitner that she called Washington and “she helped us switch the gas in the canisters”. We saw all the soldiers fall down but it will turn out they were faking it and once they were inside the soldiers came forward to fight. A lot of shooting, a lot of dead  on either side. Once again Bond was not killed, Goldfinger left him handcuffed inside the vault, giving him the time and chance to free himself; Bond kills Oddjob by electrocuting him. - thanks to Oddjob himself whose hat had cut some cables; Bond looks helplessly at the bomb and is about to do something at random when luckily one of the good guys arrives in time to switch it off.

It seems the end, but Goldfinger escaped wearing a military uniform, and Bond finds him on his plane. They fight and Goldfinger shoots - he has a golden gun, of course. Not a wise thing to shoot a plane’s window, he’s pushed out but somehow not Bond. He reaches Pussy and they crash in water… the plane blew up but they’re both ok, not even a small scratch, and of course Bond stops her from signaling the helicopter looking for them, because “this isno time to be rescued”… as usual.

James Bond is Sean Connery

Pussy Galore is Honor Blackman

Auric Goldfinger is Gert Frobe

Jill Masterson is Shirley Eaton

Oddjob is Harold Sakata (Tosh Togo)

M is Bernard Lee

Leitner is Cec Linder

Moneypenny is Lois Maxwell

Q is Desmond Llewelyn

Well, with a name like auric goldfinger of course he was obsessed with gold, it was his birth destiny…

Once again the ending credits tell us that this is “the end of Goldfinger” but James Bond will be back in “Thunderball”