Goldfinger (1964) - film review

James Bond is enjoying a well-deserved break in Miama when he is requested by his superiors in MI6 to look into the activities of a wealthy businessman named Auric Goldfinger.  Although Goldfinger has done nothing illegal, his recent acquisition of gold bullion is beginning to worry the British and American governments.  Bond trails Goldfinger to Switzerland, hoping to discover how the businessman manages to smuggle such large quantities of gold into the country.  Bond solves this mystery by breaking into Goldfinger’s headquarters but he is captured by his opponent’s henchmen before he can escape.  Rather than kill Bond there and then, Goldfinger decides to take him to his other base, a stud farm in Kentucky.  Here, Bond makes a discovery that is so fantastic he can hardly believe it.  Goldfinger intends to break into Fort Knox and detonate an atomic device, rendering the entire gold reserves of the United States worthless...

Everyone knows the old Greek legend.  In return for a good deed, King Midas of Pessinus was given a fabulous gift, the ability to turn everything he touched into gold.  Unfortunately, this was not the boon Midas had imagined, since every living thing he touched was killed, frozen immutably into the shape of a beautiful but lifeless ornament.  This is more or less what happened to the James Bond movies in 1964 when Goldfinger burst onto cinema screens across the world.  The film was such a colossal money spinner that no producer or director would dare to change the winning formula and the format of the Bond movie was pretty well frozen forever.  Goldfinger may have established one of the most successful film franchises in history, but artistically it was the kiss of death for Mr Bond.  

It is not hard to see why Goldfinger was such a hit.  With a budget of three million dollars (more than that of the first two Bond films combined), it was the first Bond blockbuster, a spectacle of thrills that would seduce any audience.  Director Guy Hamilton (in the first and best of his four Bond films) went for maximum impact and ensured that every last penny was visible on the screen.  With its lavish action sequences, exotic locations and expansive sets, Goldfinger rivals any comparable Hollywood blockbuster thriller of the period, setting a very high benchmark that all subsequent Bond films would have to match, if not exceed.  

For his third Bond outing, Sean Connery still seems to revel in the part, although a whiff of self-parody is just starting to creep into his portrayal of agent 007 (the fact that the actor fell out with the producers over his pay mid-way through the making of the film is the first indication that he was starting to lose interest in the role).   Gert Fröbe is an inspired choice for the part of lead villain.  Although Auric Goldfinger is the classic Bond baddie – a neurotic megalomaniac with a dodgy foreign accent - Fröbe makes the part real, exuding genuine sadistic malice rather than the camp pantomime-style nastiness that we would see in many of the later Bond villains.  Like all good criminal masterminds, Fröbe comes equipped with a nice homicidal sidekick, this time the mute Korean with the lethal bowler hat, Oddjob, memorably played by the Olympic weightlifter Harold Sakata.

No Bond film would be complete without a Bond girl, and this one offers three, in the shape of Shirley Eaton, Tania Mallet and Honor Blackman.  The latter gets most screen time, a reward no doubt for quitting her role in The Avengers.  The film’s producers had difficulty getting the name of Blackman’s character – (wait for it) Pussy Galore – past the censor and had to resort to skulduggery.  Thus begins another tradition of the Bond films, the use of sexual innuendo to inject some humour – clearly an attempt on the part of the producers to get their own back on the Carry On team for their evil parody of the early Bond films, Carry On Spying (1964).  If you can’t beat ’em, plagiarise ’em.

Goldfinger’s two most iconic moments are Shirley Eaton being revealed coated in gold paint and Bond narrowly being sliced in two by a laser beam.  The latter gives us the most famous exchange of dialogue in any Bond film: "Do you expect me to talk?" asks 007 as he anticipates the loss of his fringe benefits, to which artful Auric replies:  "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!"  Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 makes its first appearance, equipped with such essential accessories as an ejector seat, built-in machine guns and revolving number plates (but incredibly no airbag or Sat Nav).   And then there’s the Shirley Bassey theme song which could hardly fail to be a hit single (not after it had been written expressly for that purpose).

Despite its daft plot and some rather pointless running around, Goldfinger is indisputedly one of the best of the Bond films.  Guy Hamilton’s direction includes some truly inspired touches – such as Bond seeing his attacker reflected in a girl’s eye in the (shocking) pre-credits sequence.   The action scenes are pacy and riveting, avoiding the fantastic superhero excesses that would prevail in later films.   This is a slick and exciting spy thriller that bristles with style and energy, much darker in tone and far less complacent than the subsequent Bond films. This is as good as it gets - the gold standard you might say.

With such a seductive concoction on offer it’s hardly surprising that Goldfinger was a huge commercial success.  Grossing 125 million dollars worldwide, the film recouped its entire production cost in two weeks and broke box office records in several countries.  Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli really had struck gold.  Bond had not only become an essential part of the fabric of British cinema, successfully luring audiences away from their television sets, he had taken his place in movie history – and would remain there for a very long time yet.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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