James Bond Movie Review - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

[Dave Gray]

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Premise: Bond takes on an undercover persona to infiltrate a Blofeld scheme at a research facility in the Swiss Alps.

This is the Bond film that every person who knows and likes Bond should go back to.  I think it's the one that, over time, has had the biggest re-evaluation since it's original release.  In short, it's a much better movie that it's remembered as and Lazenby is better as Bond than originally thought (especially since there are so many other takes on the character and he's not "doing" Connery). Where it gets sticky is that the film is good by itself, but it doesn't really work as a follow-up to You Only Live Twice (1967).  Apart from the tonal shift that we've seen with many other Bond eras, especially during a transition, this movie retains characters.  Blofeld is a fully different character with a different look and demeanor.  Also, having just had it out with him in the last film, a movie where Bond is undercover with Blofeld doesn't make any sense.  This is because the books came out in the reverse order.  The films originally had a solution for that and was going to have Bond undergo plastic surgery (also to explain a new actor), but it was abandoned.  I could also explain this away by just saying that this is a one-film prequel, like how Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) was to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), but apparently that isn't the case either.  Thus, you kind of have to look at this film on its own merits and not hold it hostage by what came before.

The opening sequence does some things I really like and some other things I don't.  It's related to the plot itself, which I like.  It has Bond disappeared and doing his own thing after a previous mission, which is on-brand for the beginning of a Bond film.  It also conceals Lazenby at first.  It shows glimpses of him, his chin, his car -- his face concealed by a spyglass, etc.  But the setup itself is hard to get behind.  Bond sees a woman on the beach which (for some reason) causes him to watch her closely.  She goes into the water, presumably to drown herself, so he goes to rescue her.  And then she's also the daughter of a crime boss so Bond gets attacked by thugs on the beach.  That seems awfully convenient for a super spy to run across that situation while driving.  But the fighting is much, much improved from the Connery era and Lazenby is out there really roughing it up.  Unfortunately, I don't care for the style of the filmmaking in a lot of the action of this movie and there's a strange sped-up quality that is supposed to add to the intensity, but makes it feel like Benny Hill to me.  When it's all over, Bond turns to camera and breaks the 4th wall, which is the only time I can recall that happening in the series and doesn't suit my personal taste, although it's not in the top of my Bond moments that break the immersion.

The Xs and Os of the title sequence are also a mixed bag.  I like the song used over the intro and it's a good action motif throughout.  However, it's not right FOR the intro.  "All the Time in the World" is also the defining song of this movie and should've been used over the opening titles.  The gun barrel is all new.  Lazenby drops to a knee.  It's fine -- it's cool that it's different.  The visuals over the intro are good.  With so many things tonally different, a continuity here to say that we're still the Bond you know and love, but just a new guy taking over -- would've been a better choice.

Aside from the opening sequence on a beach, a quick stint in Portugal, and the London brief with M, the entirety of the film happens in Switzerland.  All of the big action set-pieces are set here and involve cable cars, bobsleds, car chases in carved out snow-banks, and ski stuff.  I think that all of the action sequences are improvements, save for the choppy editing and speedy camera.  There is also a period-specific gripe I have, which is that rear-projection close-ups of otherwise real-life in-camera stunts are just not convincing.  A scene will look great and you can see a real person doing a thing and then it will cut to the actors with an obvious blue-screen backdrop that never matches convincingly with what you're seeing.  I think this is just filmmaking in the 60s.  It was less-distracting when the action was also kind of lame.  But now with Lazenby's increased physical intensity and more real stunts, it sticks out.  Shout out to a scene with Bond climbing on and around some gear-like machinery and a great matte painting to sell the effect.

The biggest disconnect with this film, for me is that it's two good Bond stories.  But they just don't go together.  Tracy is a top-tier Bond girl -- arguably the 2nd best ever.  She is complicated, has agency, gives as much as she gets, and her love story with Bond is the emotional anchor of the film.  It really works and drives Bond to have an arc that we don't see in a lot of these films.  There is also a plot where Bond, under false pretense, beds a whole harem of women while on his mission.  And those two versions of Bond run counter to each other.  It's hard to believe that his love with Tracy is so life-changing that he's going to leave it all to be with her, while also pretending to be someone he's not and revel in sleeping with several women in one day.  There is a scene where Bond insists that Tracy sleep away from him.  It shows that he is trying to keep her an honest woman as opposed to all of his other sexual exploits.  But then, he kicks the cart and she rolls on him and he makes a sly comment.  It shows that he holds her in a different regard than the others, but he's still who he is.  That was sufficient enough to set her apart without discounting the Bond character.

The standout of this film is Moneypenny.  She has two moments and both are terrific.  One involves her disarming a confrontation between Bond and M, by knowing both men better than they know themselves and allowing them both to save face until cooler head's prevail.  It's a perfect show of soft power by a strong woman who knows how things really work.  The juxtaposition of her calm understanding in the face of hot-headed men was very well done.  Also, at the end of the film, Moneypenny has a moving scene where Bond throws her his hat (presumably for the last time) and she has an emotional response that can be read as pride in her friend's emotional progress, but also the mourning of something that might have been but never was...and maybe a realization that Bond had found a way out, instead of dying in the field.  I think that this is my favorite depiction of her character in the entire series.

Less so is Tracy's Dad.  I think that the character means well and we're supposed to see a father looking out for his daughter and sees someone in Bond who can protect her and also handle her.  But instead, he's an encapsulation of an outdated and gross world-view.  It's more than just dated by today's standards -- it feels out of touch even for its time.  He essentially meets Bond and wants him to marry his daughter (which is weird and rushed) and he describes someone needing to dominate her sexually.  Weird.  Later in the film, he is trying to save her from refusing to leave Bond's side (understandable on paper) but he does this by punching her and knocking her out and then downplays it with a quip, "spare the rod, spoil the child."  And at the end of the film, he reminds her "remember to obey your husband in all things".  Conceptually, a father wanting a strong man to challenge the inherent strength of his daughter makes sense.  This film doesn't pull that off.

This James Bond drives an Aston Martin at the beginning and end of the film, but the action-star car is Tracy's '69 Mercury Cougar XR7.  In this more grounded type of story, it really just races from the bad guys and gets tangled up in a derby race.  Bond doesn't drive it (nor does he really do anything but ride as a passenger while he kisses Tracy on the face as she flees.)  It lacks the signature Bond car elements like retro-fitted components or notable stunts.

Blofeld's plan and Bond's infiltration is all there but it's a tangled web and I don't think that this film really asks you to care about (nor did I) and I don't think it has a lot to do with enjoying the plot.  Blofeld has captured young women by offering to cure their allergies at his research lab.  He's also trying to secure a prestigious title as a count.  He plans to use these hypnotized women to release a virus that cuts off reproduction in animal and plant populations -- and he threatens to do this as blackmail for a government pardon.  Meanwhile, Bond's spy persona is an expert on genealogy that's there to assess Blofeld's claim to his title, but that's supposedly not interested in women for some reason, but also not specifically gay.  I don't really have a lot to say about this.  It's not a particularly interesting plot and Bond's role as an undercover spy doesn't really make sense considering he and Blofeld's shared history, but I don't think that's the hook of this film anyway.  The Swiss Alps location does give us a headmistress henchwoman and a pretty good jump-scare that I appreciated.

I want to point out a few things that Lazenby does well that we didn't see out of Connery.  I'd have liked to see Lazenby get more films, because I think the tone shift was apt and he was a good fit for the 70s.  Also, it's nice to see actors grow in the role.  There's a scene early on where Bond kicks a guy's ass in a hotel that's trying to kill him.  And it's a pretty brutal fight.  And then when it's over, Bond stops on the way out and takes a bite of caviar and comments on where it came from.  It gave Bond a sense of cold sophistication without making a joke.  He almost just died, but it didn't shake him.  Later on in the third act, a scientist throws a vial of acid at Bond, but he's behind glass.  Bond shoots the guy.  The acid burns a hole in the glass and Bond does a subtle look back...not quite a double-take, but a realization that the acid could've hit him in the face.  It's just a nice moment that is slightly humorous but without making a joke.  Just acknowledging the circumstances was right, tonally, for this Bond and this film.  All that was thrown out the window for a 2nd stint of Connery and even moreso with Roger Moore through the next decade.

The ending of this movie that, while pretty devastating, is important to Bond lore.  It helps tell who he becomes, explains, if not excuses his lack of ability to commit, and helps you understand his ongoing coldness in the face of the death of those around him.  And it's particularly tragic, not just for his personal loss, but for the seeming death sentence he's in.  This was his chance to get away from this runaway train of a career and he missed his opportunity.

It's a complicated movie and a complicated history with Lazenby -- perhaps the worst advice ever -- his agent suggested he walk away from Bond after one film because the series was irrelevant.  He was dumped on for not being Connery, but I think that his outing is considerably better than the one that came after him (with Connery back in the role) and the varied takes on Bond over the next 50 years make Lazenby much more palatable in retrospect.  I take this version and tone of Bond in pretty high regard and think it's one of the better films.