On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Actor Character
George Lazenby James Bond
Diana Rigg Tracy
Telly Savalas Blofeld
Ilse Steppat Irma Bunt
Directed by Peter Hunt
Original Running Time 2 hours and 22 minutes
Sean Connery shocked the world and announced that he was leaving the role of James Bond after You Only Live Twice. Who was to take his place? A long and extensive search was done and the filmmakers decided on unknown Australian George Lazenby (the highest paid male model in the world at the time). It was especially jarring since had no acting experience at all. How did he get the part? Apparently the producers of the Bond films saw a commercial with him and thought that he looked like "a Bond". Another reason was becasuse of how much he impressed everyone with his fight scenes during a screen test. When he accidently broke the nose of a stuntman that weighed nearly 300 lbs and knocked him out, Mr. Lazenby was hired on the spot. Little did everyone at the time know that he was in fact a black belt in karate (he would later study under a guy named Bruce Lee). Sure, George Lazenby was tough as nails, but would he be able to handle the role of James Bond?
After the gunbarrel sequence we get a very short conversation between M and Q (still played by Bernard Lee and Desmond Llewelyn) about how radioactive lint can be put in a pocket in order to keep track of 007. I believe that this was put in at the beginning just to prove to people this was still a "real" Bond picture and that they needn't worry. Next we hear the familiar Bond theme playing while watching an Aston Martin drive down the coast of Portugal. We only see segments of the man's face, but we know that he is in fact 007 because of the theme song. He spots a lady speeding by him that drives onto the beach. The beautiful young woman walks into the ocean and tries to drown herself. Bond saves her from the ocean and is immediately attacked by three men. We are treated to a great fight scene which shows how good in fact Lazenby was at this sort of thing. After fighting the men off, we witness the young women's car speeding off. Bond picks up her shoes, looks at the camera, and says, "This never happened to the other fella." This breaks the fourth wall and while many might not like it, I thought that it was a good way to start the movie. It gets the fact that this isn't Sean Connery out of the way immediately.
The titles of the film are great. We see a silhouette of Bond running and next we see him hanging from the hour hand of Big Ben. The clock is turned back and we see scenes from the previous five Bond films in a martini glass. It shows us once again that this in fact the same Bond series that we know. During the wonderful title we hear the spectacular theme song which is an instrumental (I'm surprised none of the following movies have tried this approach). The score to the movie is extremely varied and in fact my favorite in the series. Not only do we get this, but we also get a love song by Louis Armstrong(!), and a Christmas song. All of the incidental music in On Her Majesty's Secret Service is also top notch and in this reviewer's opinion is the height of John Barry's career.
Bond drives to a Casino up the coast and sees the car of the lady that he pulled out of the ocean. He asks the man at the desk who the car belongs to and he tells James that it owned by Contessa Teresa Di Vicenzo (Dianna Rigg). Bond goes to play baccarat and Teresa shows up across from the table and promptly loses. Unfortunately she can't pay up so Bond does it for her. Next, he tracks her down and she tells him that she will "pay him back". Also, she tells him that she prefers the name Tracy since Teresa was a saint and that she is not. After a night together with Tracy, 007 finds his bed empty. As he is leaving the casino, he is forced to get into a car by three men at gunpoint.
Our favorite spy is brought into the office of Marc-Ange Draco (Gabrielle Ferzetti) . Bond knows him as the head of the Union Corse, the biggest criminal organization in Europe, which uses the legitimate business called Draco Enterpises as a front. Draco explains to James that he also is Tracy's father. He talks about Tracy's troubled past which includes her marrying an Italian Count who died in a car accident. He also says that he saw everything that Bond did with Tracy and that it worked as a sort of therapy. Draco offers him a million pounds to marry her. Bond refuses, but Draco says that he might have information on Blofeld for his future son-in-law. Tracy eventually hears of this and bribes her father in to giving him Bond information by saying that he'll never see her again if he doesn't. Draco gives James a lead but instead of being satisfied with this, Bond still pursues and starts to woo Tracy since he genuinely is interested in her.
After following the lead, we find out that a man named Comte Balthazar de Bleauchamp is trying to esablish his title as a Count. It turns out Bleauchamp is a Franch form of Blofeld. Bond goes undercover as Hillary Bray, a British herald from the British College of Arms in order to meet with Blofeld about establishing whether or not he is in fact a count. Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) meets with Bond posing as Bray and they go up by helicopter to Blofeld's center for allegy research which happens to be up in the Alps in Switzerland. On the way up we see a ski lodge and a bobsled run. Hmmm. When Bond first arrives at Blofeld's Piz Gloria he is given a small tour and introduced to ten gorgeous women who all are having their allergies cured by the Count. He bores everyone to death with lectures on geneology and pretends to be a homosexual since Hillary Bray is in fact one.
Soon afterward Bond is introduced to Blofeld (played by Telly Savalas this time). This scene is a bit bizrre since Blofeld doesn't recognize him. There are two possible explanations for this. One is that the script follows Ian Fleming's book word for word. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is in fact the first book that they meet. The other and more likely explanation is that there was a scene originally in the film that was removed showing Bond plastic surgery to look different. Anyway, Telly Savalas plays Blofeld like a snobbish ass that demands that he gets his title while the representaitive from the College of Arms says that he needs more proof. Blofeld says that he will get it and asks that Bray stay for a while. During his stay, Bond seduces several women until when he finds Irma Bunt lying in his bed. It has never been determined whether it was her hideous appearance or the blunt object to the back of the head that made Bond pass out. After Bond wakes up, Blofeld informs him that he made a minor mistake in their dicussion and that Hillary Bray woudn't have seduced all of those women. He goes on to explain that his allergy research is actually being used to make bacterial warfare that systematically could kill off all cerials and livestock. He decides to keep Bond alive because he is going to use him as a way to inform the authorities that he has the means to do what he says. Bond soon escapes and finds out that the ten girls that were being cured are actually also being brainwashed through audiotapes in their sleep. They are going to be the ones to spread the bacteria through a sweet make up set that Blofeld gave them all as a going away Christmas present.
Next, the movie gives us probably the greatest ski chase scene in cinematic history. Bond is chased by several of Blofeld's men with machine guns. The cinematography during this scene is astounding. The camera work was done by former Olympic skier Willy Bogner Jr. Shots are captured by him skiing backward as fast as the stuntmen can go forward and also by him going downhill full speed with the camera actually being held betweeen his legs. During this sequence Bond gets one of his skis shot off and has to ski down a mountain with one ski. I have no idea how the stuntman swooshes back and forth between several trees with one ski, but he does it somehow. After narrowly escaping to the village below, Bond is chased once again by Bunt and several of Blofeld's men. Just when it appears that he's done for, Tracy skates up to him. She explains to Bond that her father told him where he was. James tells her that he needs to get out of the village and she leads him to her car. They get chased out of the village and actualy drive into a car race in order to try to evade the nefarious Irma Bunt. It turns out that Tracy is as good a driver as Bond is. They escape and find a barn to stay in for the night.
Next comes the scene that no one could have ever thought would happen. Bond proposes to Tracy not because of a million pounds or anything else, but because he actually wants to. He admits that he has fallen in love with her and wants to spend the rest of his life with her. She says yes. He also says that he's going to quit his job as soon as this mission is over. In the morning they are happily in love skiing down the mountainside when Blofeld and his men catch up to them. Bond and tracy ski over houses and jump over the bobsled run. The egomaniacal bald headed jerk intentionally starts an avalanche under which Bond is buried. Tracy is found and brought back to Piz Gloria.
Bond survives and returns to London to explain everything to M. M informs Bond that Blofeld wants amnesty for all of his prior crimes and his title as a Count. The government is going to give it to him. Bond asks if he and some men can go and save Tracy. M says no. Bond decides to go against orders and raid Piz Gloria with Draco and his men. Tracy is eventually rescued and Draco's men set off a bomb in the control center which is in contact with the young ladies that Blofeld brainwashed earlier. Blofeld escapes to the bobsled run and chased by 007. This action sequence is phenomenal. We have high speed chase/fight on the bobsled course which has a thrilling and brutal finish.
Just when you think that this film is over, it isn't. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that when it looks like things are going to end happily ever after that something horribly tragic happens. Let's put it this way, it's okay for a man's eyes to perspire at the ending...
Now that I'm done talking about the film, let me put some common misconceptions that people have about this fim to rest. Many people said that Lazenby was fired after this movie. The truth is that he was offered a deal to do the next seven Bond movies immediately after On Her Majesty's Secret Service was finished. His wonderful agent told him to turn it down becuase he thought that Bond would be irrelevant in a few years and would ruin his acting career. It also has been said that producer Albert R. Broccoli spread around that Lazenby was impossible to work with and no one would hire him for this reason. Another thing that's often said is that the movie flopped. This is far from true. The movie had a budget of $7 million and made $87 million. While it wasn't the biggest Bond film, it did a lot better than let's say The Man With The Golden Gun.
In the end, I would like to say that this is actually one of my favorite Bond movies. I would go as far as to say that it probably would be my favorite if it starred Sean Connery. Speaking of which, Lazenby isn't bad at all. Of course he isn't as good as Connery, but I could say that about Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig as well. I actually think that he was very good in the action scenes and I wonder what could have been. This film actually gives Bond more character development than the rest of the franchise. Also, Diana RIgg is great as Tracy and one could see why Bond would fall in love with her. She is intelligent, humorous, sexy, and tough.
5 out of 5 - Great for a Bond movie. There hasn't a more recent Bond film that I have enjoyed more. It's all downhill from here. If you have never seen this movie, I suggest that you do so.
Cool things to know:
Willy Bogner Jr. not only did the cinematography during the skiing sequences for this movie, but also would return as Bond's stuntman during the skiing sequences in The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, and A View To A Kill.
When Bond visits Hillary Bray and is shown the Bond family crest, the Bond family slogan is The World Is Not Enough. Hey, that would make a good name for a Bond movie, wouldn't it?
James Bond will return next week in Diamonds Are Forever.
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