Heavy Bondage: Diamonds Are Forever

The picture isn't bad; it's merely tired, and it's often noisy when it means to be exciting ....
- Pauline Kael in the New Yorker (January 1972)

Diamonds Are Forever
Film: 1971
Book: 1956 (4th in chronology)

Irreverent Synopsis: Bond kills Blofeld. No, really, this time for sure! Now he can do some "plain, solid work," which means impersonating a diamond smuggler and ending up in Las Vegas getting tangled in the schemes of a diabolical mastermind in gray with a white cat who is impersonating a reclusive millionaire in order to facilitate his scheme to build a gigantic diamond-encrusted space laser. Honest. I can't make this stuff up.

Major Observations: Given how intrinsically ridiculous this film is, with probably more plot holes per pound than any other, it's amazing how entertaining parts of it still are to me. But it is definitely Bond as self-aware semi-parody; a trend most critics pin exclusively on the Roger Moore era. This film, in some ways, represents the worst of the Moore era before Moore ever got to that point ... which may just mean that the problem is keeping an actor in the Bond role when he doesn't want to do it.

Connery was bought back for the proverbial truckload of money: $1.25 million up front (which he donated to a charity he was helping found); a substantial percentage of backend; a bonus for every week of shooting overrun (reports of the amount vary widely); and a blank check from UA for any two movies he wanted to make as either actor or director.

The first portion of this film is actually pretty good, with the classic setup of a detective having to trace down a chain of "connections" at the same time that the cleanup men are busy killing off every link in the chain. It's only when the filmmakers feel the inescapable urge to drag Blofeld back in that the film goes to hell.

I adore Charles Gray but I don't really consider him a very good actor; on the other hand, it isn't a very good part either, is it? Meanwhile, Jill St. John does a perfectly fine job with the banal role she is given - another case of a woman being written clever and capable at the beginning of the film and descending into bimbodom by the end.

"I'm cooperating, Mr. Leiter, really I am."

Jimmy Dean is fabulous in the few scenes he's in as the real Willard Whyte, and Norman Burton is one of the less objectionable Felix Leiters (despite the fact that, as a CIA man, all his activities in this film, being inside the US, are illegal. Maybe he's acting as a liaison to the FBI here because he knows Bond?)

Connery himself is phoning it in, which may be why this film suffers a notable lack of Gentleman Spy factor; this is Connery at his most natural, which is to say, his most thuggish. (Connery had to work to be suave; Moore had to work to be brutal.) He is obviously uninterested in the routine detective work, but throws himself with vigor into a brutal, glass-smashing elevator fight with the real Peter Franks. The only suave moment in the film worth noting is when he "pops upstairs for a moment" onto the top of the Whyte House's glass elevator, and adjusts his carnation like nothing at all is out of the ordinary.

When I rewatch this, I turn it off once we get to the oil platform. There is nothing further to see here. Interestingly, one of my Bond books criticizes the ending as originally scripted - which would have ended with Bond tracking down Blofeld into either a salt mine in Mexico or a mudpit in South America, depending on who you ask - whereas I agree with original screenwriter Richard Maibaum that anything would be better than "an interminable thing on an oil rig."

That said, any of this is better than the book, which is one of the lesser ones. Even Fleming doesn't seem to think much of his villains, the Spangled Mob - very run-of-the-mill gangsters, despite the name - and the book, which is strictly about the diamond smuggling, does it in a less interesting way than the corresponding part of the film. Tiffany Case's motivations and character are rather more fully developed in the book, but the film version of the character isn't substantially less compelling despite her sketchiness. Oh, yes, and in the book, Leiter has left the CIA to work for Pinkerton's, because Fleming knew where the CIA was allowed to operate, even if the film's writers didn't.

Minor Observations: Pointing out all the holes in this film is as foolish an operation as with Thunderball, but it's more fun here, so let's have a go: Diamonds on the outside of a laser don't do squat; no one calls the real Saxby to send him to shoot Whyte; there is no good reason why Wint and Kidd would seal Bond into a pipe instead of just killing him; and even if we allow the idea of the moon lab in the middle of the desert, there's no reason for the astronauts in the buggy-test sequence to be moving in slow motion (unless the lab is also doing radical work in anti-gravity fields). There are probably many more, but those are my favorites.

Two well-known "plot holes" in this film, though, actually aren't. During the Glitter Gulch sequence, where Bond drives the car through the narrow alley on two wheels, it's true that he does emerge from the alley on the wrong pair of wheels, but this is because of a cut; as originally shot, he goes through the alley a second time.

And the inexplicable appearance of Plenty O'Toole in Tiffany's pool is explained by a cut sequence where Plenty, returning to Bond's hotel room dripping wet and angry at being turfed out, steals Tiffany's address and presumably goes to her house to confront her.

The idea is that Wint and Kidd kill her by mistake - which doesn't solve the problem that they know what Tiffany looks like, having commented on her on the plane. Maybe that's why they cut it.

Speaking of Plenty, Jill St. John auditioned originally for the role, but the producers felt she would be better in the larger part. Lana Wood, who did play Plenty, is Natalie Wood's little sister.

"I didn't know there was a pool there." »

The gangster who throws Plenty out the window and gets one of the best lines in the film is Marc Lawrence, who will turn up playing almost exactly the same character two movies hence.

Sir Donald Munger, who gives M and Bond their brief on diamond smuggling, is played by Lawrence Naismith, who at the same time was appearing with Roger Moore in the television series "The Persuaders!" as Judge Fulton.

Willard Whyte was of course based on Howard Hughes, who knew producer Broccoli, and Hughes gave them shooting access to his properties in exchange for one print of the film.

The cut scene I wish they'd left in is a sequence where Sammy Davis Jr. is in the casino (as himself) complaining to Bert Saxby about his contract with Whyte. I don't care much for Sammy Davis Jr, but he and Saxby make fun of Bond's white tuxedo, which it urgently deserves.

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