Goldfinger

In Memoriam, Sean Connery

Movie: Goldfinger

Guy Hamilton, 1964

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James Bond: “Do you expect me to talk?”

Goldfinger: “No, Mr. Bond.

I expect you to die.”

James Bond (Sean Connery) and Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe)

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“If Dr. No (1962) was a sputnik-era Fu Manchu picture and From Russia with Love (1963) a Cold War Eric Ambler adventure, Goldfinger — the third entry in the Harry Saltzman-Albert Broccoli 007 series — marked the point when the James Bond films became their own genre. The rather brutal wit of the earlier movies is modified in the precredits sequence: Sean Connery’s super-agent is first seen wearing decoy duck on his head, then removes his wetsuit to reveal a perfect tuxedo and disposes of a villain through the old electric-heater-tossed-in -the-bath gambit, delivering another of his pointed epitaph epithets (“shocking”).

With a megalomaniac millionaire Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), as the chief villain rather than the Soviet SMERSH of the books or the communist-affiliated SPECTRE of the first films, Goldfinger spins away from geopolitical realities into a comic-book world, albeit one where the Chinese will lend a nuclear weapon to a bad guy in order to cripple the West’s economy. Included in the mix are gold-plated murder victims, impeccably-dressed Korean wrestler minions (Harold Sakata as the bowler-throwing Oddjob), improbably-named heroines (Honorific Blackman as Pussy Galore), high-tech torture by laser beam, and a scheme not to rob Fort Knox but to irradiate it for centuries — thus increasing the net value of the villain’s own gold stocks. All of the vintage 007 ingredients are shaken not stirred here: a belting John Barry theme tune delivered by Shirley Bassey (“Go-o-o-o-ldfinger . . . he’s the man, the man with the Midas touch, a spider’s touch . . .”), the gadget-packed Aston Martin with its bulletproof shield and passenger-side ejector seat (inspiration for the first great best-selling movie tie-in toy), and the vast Ken Adam sets (note Goldfinger’s lair with the model of Fort Knox under glass as a huge coffee table, and the poison gas vents — a big room designed to be used only once). In addition, one finds the residual Ian Fleming suspicion that a person is contemptible if he has a foreign accent and cheats at golf, and the touchingly macho notion that a clinch in the hay with Sean Connery is enough to persuade Pussy to change not only sides but sexual orientation. Ever since, the series has been recycling.” (KN)

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