Heavy Bondage: You Only Live Twice

The Bond formula has now been run into the ground and only requires a headstone.
- Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard (June 1967)

You Only Live Twice
Film: 1967
Book: 1964 (12th in chronology)

Irreverent Synopsis: Bond goes to Japan to stop space shots from being mysteriously captured by a diabolical mastermind in gray with a white cat. There's a lot of other stuff one could say, but this is the one that takes place in Japan with the villainous headquarters concealed in a volcano crater. Other than "Best Performance By An Autogyro," what else do you really need to know?

Major Observations: This is the first film which seriously deviates from Fleming's novel of the same name. In fact, "deviates" is not really the word; other than the names of the characters and the Japan setting, there is no resemblance. This is largely deliberate. The book came near the end of the Fleming run, when he was tired of Bond and everything else, and it shows.

In the book, Bond is seriously decimated over the death of Tracy in the previous novel, is apparently attempting to drink himself to death, and comes very close to being cashiered, but M decides to give him a very tricky Japanese job on the kill-or-cure principle. In Japan, he finds that the intelligence he was hoping to trade Tiger Tanaka is already known to them, and so useless as a bargaining chip ... but Tanaka will give him the information he wants if Bond will do Tanaka a small favor: Permanently shut down the "garden of death" run by one Dr. Shatterhand, a repository of deadly plants which is becoming a nuisance because of the number of Japanese who go there to commit suicide. When Bond sees a picture of Shatterhand and realizes it is actually Blofeld, he is happy to comply. Bond eventually gets Blofeld, but loses his memory in the process and believes he is actually the simple Japanese fisherman he has been masquerading as for the final third of the book.

The book contains a great deal of Fleming discourse on the nature of the Japanese and their culture, and it is astonishingly racist (even for 1964). Retaining Roald Dahl to write much of the script was a good way to guarantee that a lot of the racism stayed in, and parts of the film's dialogue are painful to sit through. Also, one of the more improbable gimmicks of the book (making Bond look Japanese) was kept, for no good reason, and it works no better here than it does there.

This is the first time we actually see Blofeld's face, at which point we realize that no actual casting of Blofeld can possibly live up to the image created by the disembodied voice of his two previous appearances. Certainly Donald Pleasance is not going to do it. However, in his defense, he was a last-minute replacement; Czech actor Jan Werich took ill near the beginning of the filming.

Ť Jan Werich.

Werich might have been even worse. At this stage in his life, based on the pictures I've seen, he looked like a cross between Colonel Sanders and Santa Claus. Director Lewis Gilbert's commentary on one DVD edition seems to imply that Werich was punted for this exact reason, and not for his health. However, Werich was around the set long enough that there are extant photos of him in character as Blofeld, so either Gilbert is mis-remembering, or someone changed their mind fairly late in the process.

Anyway, best villain this time goes not to Blofeld, but again to a redheaded woman, the kinky Helga (played by Karin Dor).

This is also the first of the truly grandiose bonkers plots (I do not mean that as a positive statement). However, the crater set is an amazing thing, and a model for many spoofs yet to come. In fact, the crater set really is the star of this film.

You can credit Ken Adam for that (see comments under Goldfinger).

Bond's role in this film is once again mostly passive, so analyzing it on the brute vs. gent spectrum is rather pointless. In the same vein, the Japanese women are written so negligently that talking about their characterization is a useless exercise. One exception to this comment: Aki sometimes gives as good as she gets, and her death is truly grim and striking.

Minor Observations: The women playing Kissy and Aki (formerly Suki) were supposed to have each other's parts; the woman playing Aki was supposed to be given the big romantic role, but showed more facility with English, so was given the part with more lines. Strange that they didn't just dub, given the producers' willingness to dub in past films (and in fact, as noted previously, Tiger Tanaka is dubbed by Robert Rietty).

Casting geeks take note: One of the two policemen who find Bond's body during the opening sequence is Anthony Ainley, who played The Master on Dr. Who. One of Blofeld's mission controllers is Bert Kwouk, who appeared as a doomed Chinese liaison in Goldfinger and is somewhere in the mess in Casino Royale, but who is mostly known as Cato in the Pink Panther movies. Teru Shimada, who plays Osato, has appeared in many films, mostly war movies, but if your tastes are like mine and you experience a flash of deja vu when you see him, it's because he is the Japanese delegate to the "United World" headquarters in the movie Batman.

This is the film that really did Connery in. The Bond films were wildly popular in Japan and he was mobbed by fans and media alike from the instant he arrived there. Long since tired of the part, he declared his intention to do no more - most notably, to the Queen of England, at the premiere, when she asked him about it.

Most of the Little Nellie dogfight had to be filmed later in Spain, which is why the scenery looks a bit off. The Japan photography of this sequence was cut short when one of the "SPECTRE" helicopters got too close to the camera copter and nearly severed the leg of cinematographer Johnny Jordan. You'd think they'd have learned; a similar incident cost a camera operator a foot during From Russia With Love.

One reason this film looks so good despite the cheese factor is the director of photography, Freddy Young, who was just coming off nearly back-to-back Oscars for Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia. Sometimes paying for talent is worth it.

Next page: On Her Majesty's Secret Service