I Watch Films: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

 

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

James Bond, British secret agent, has been recast as Australian model George Lazenby. On a beach he saves a woman (Diana Rigg) from drowning herself, is then beaten up by a bunch of men while she flees. Later seeing her at a casino, she makes a large bet, then claims she can’t pay; Bond covers the loss. Going to see her in her room he meets a man who he fights. He finds her (Tracey aka Countess Teresa di Vincenzo) in his room, offers to help her; they have sex and in the morning she’s gone and has left a casino plaque to cover his costs.

Following this Bond is kidnapped by Marc-Ange Draco, head of the Unione Corse*, the second biggest criminal organisation in Europe, and Tracey’s father. He puts a proposition to Bond; Tracey is self-destructive and, he reckons, needs a man to put her right, that man being James Bond. If they get married he’ll give Bond One Million Pounds. Bond turns this down, but Draco does have something he wants – the location of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Bond’s nemesis from You Only Live Twice and head of Europe’s biggest criminal organisation SPECTRE**.

The film is very normal about how relationships work.

Arriving back in London Bond’s boss M takes him off the Blofeld case, despite the possibility of this new lead. Bond threatens to resign but M’s secretary Moneypenny substitutes a request for two weeks leave. Bond attends Draco’s birthday; Tracey realising something’s up makes Draco spill the beans, telling Bond about Blofeld’s lawyer in Switzerland. Tracey storms off crying; Bond comforts her and they start a whirlwind romance.

Breaking into the lawyer’s office Bond discovers that Blofeld is trying to be recognised as the Comte de Bleuchamps. He impersonates Sir Hilary Bray***, gains access to Blofeld’s mountaintop secret base and discovers his weird plot.

An odd one out in the Bond franchise, with Lazenby’s only film. We previously had a hidden Blofeld, and then followed up with Donald Pleasance as scientist Blofeld. Here Blofeld is Telly Savalas, a much more imposing physical presence, and one who gets on skis and shoots at Bond when needed.

“Same old James – only more so,” says Moneypenny in a slightly annoying sequence when he decides to grope his boss’s secretary. And that’s something that Sean Connery’s Bond might do, though on second thoughts maybe not, he’d keep her at arm’s length. That Bond might do some of what Bond does in this film – but not other bits. So for example putting on a kilt and going undercover as a (implied) gay man to Blofeld’s laboratory, no, but then immediately seducing two of the women patients, yes. And this pulls against the James Bond who not only likes women (or one woman, Diana Rigg) but will try and help them without thinking about what this will get him. A film in two minds about who James Bond is. And it never gets a chance to decide, as Lazenby quit after this film.

Watch This: Bond on skis, falling in love, doing some real spy stuff
Don’t Watch This: Odd Bond out, Lazenby not a good actor and many fight sequences terribly edited

* Real, and behind the French Connection heroin smuggling
** Special Primary Extensive Criminal Transport Removal Executive
*** To the extent that while posing as Bray, his voice is dubbed by Bray’s actor George Baker, who we’ve recently seen as Tiberius in I, Claudius