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To me it has always come across like its primary purpose is the call-backs to previous Bond adventures, with the film desperate to tell you that this really is an official 007 movie despite not having Connery in the role. The opening credits with the clips of all the previous Bond girls gives me the same impression.
But yes, I think it's one of the scenes where Lazenby's lack of acting experience shows through.
That's true. The effect for me is so strange though. On the one hand it's meant to be dramatic - oh no, Bond's quitting MI6 - and on the other you have Lazenby's extraordinarily wooden delivery. It got to the point for me that it took a few times to actually process some of Bond's lines, most of which are well written. "Kindly present it to that monument in there", him stumbling when answering the phone as 007 initially before just going with 'Bond' etc. Lazenby just can't put any sort of intonation on it that conveys anything in them, much less Bond's frustrations.
Lazenby was fine at conveying the 'big' emotions, but anything subtle he was useless at. I love this film, but moments like this make me understand why audiences seeing it for the first time might not have taken to it.
In his "defence" (not that he needs any), the previous five Bonds hadn't asked for a lot of subtlety from 007 either, at least in the emotion department.
To some extent that's true, but I'd also argue emotionality (at least in the sense I'm thinking of) and subtlety can be different things. Like I said, Lazenby was fine at big emotions. He looked terrified when the flash goes off during the village chase. He was apparently able to cry in at least one alternative take of the ending (although the decision to get him to underplay that moment in the finished film is better, and I suspect a directorial decision).
But arguably that sort of stuff is easy because it requires the actor to convey only a single emotion. Lazenby's acting falls flat when, for instance, he's posing as Sir Hillary in the helicopter and he starts to look uneasy. If Connery were performing this scene he'd have given a little look towards the window, flick his eyes in a certain way, change his expression for a moment - essentially he'd have done something to let us know Bond is not actually queasy and is playing a role. Lazenby can't handle this because it requires that extra layer to the performance. He can look suitably uneasy, but this is not necessarily what the scene requires. Either he couldn't act this out or he didn't have the instincts as an actor to even comprehend this idea, but it's very much the sort of thing Bond is expected to do as a character. I'm surprised they didn't try to something in the editing room with that particular scene. Most of the stuff he was being given wasn't a million miles away from what had come before in that sense.
I agree with Lazenby being weak with more mundane dialogue, but I think he did the extra layer of Bond pretending quite well by mostly ignoring it. I think Sean's approach (I agree with your prediction) would not have been as good. I absolutely adore Dr No, but Sean does some of this in that movie. His falsely ingratiating behavior toward Prof Dent is a bit OTT. In OHMSS, Sean would certainly have constantly signaled to the audience that he's pretending. George made Bond a decent actor.
To each their own. An issue I have with OHMSS is that I feel Bond as a character gets a bit lost when we get to the Piz Gloria scenes. It doesn't help that Lazenby was dubbed, but it feels strangely as if Lazenby is playing a different character altogether, which in essence he is as you said. I just think in order for it to work and to feel the right amount of tension, the audience must get a sense that Bond needs to play this part, and one wrong move could cost him. Again, Lazenby's inability to convey that sense in his performance doesn't quite work for me, so it's a bit like we get half an hour of Sir Hillary sleeping around before Bond reappears.
The Connery with Dent comparison is actually interesting, because I'd say that's a very different dynamic. Bond can afford to be falsely ingratiating and rather ironic (Connery plays this so well) because he's not trying to trick Dent into believing he doesn't know that he's a part of Dr. No's organisation. On the contrary, he wants Dent to get the message. He has the upper hand. Again, Connery conveys that wonderfully, working well off of Anthony Dawson's shiftiness. His acting decisions enhance the scene and give it these extra dimensions. A weaker actor might have played this scene more straight and have not necessarily given that sense of Bond's process/the dynamic between these characters.
Not saying Connery was the man for OHMSS, but just imagine what an actor like him could have done with the first Blofeld and Bond meeting in that film. A better actor would have brought a bit more to those scenes, especially alongside a performer like Savalas. Certain lines would have been said differently, we'd have gotten perhaps a sense of Bond weighing up his approach in how to interact with Blofeld. It certainly may have felt as if Bond was coming face to face for the first time with his 'white whale' whom he'd been hunting for the first half of the film. I never really get any of this from Lazenby in that scene. Anyway, as much as he has his moments in that film, he's still a weak actor in my book.
Yeah, but when he's alone and says 'Hilly, you old devil' to the mirror, he's Bond again. Of course, it's also actually his voice, but there is a difference in his physical performance as well as he snaps back to Sir Hillary mode upon seeing his surprise visitor.
Obviously it is 'to each their own', yeah. I just feel it respects the audience more to not practically break the fourth wall and remind the audience, 'hey, it's still me!' Which is not to say George made a choice here: I don't know that he could play a guy who's sloppily playing another guy anyway!
Yeah, there's that little moment, but like I said I think to get the required tension out of the premise we need to feel that Bond is still Bond, even if he's keeping up a pretence. Again, a wrong move could get him killed. I never quite feel that during these parts of the film. I don't think the voice dubbing helped, but it's a case where I think Lazenby exaggerates the way he plays 'Bond playing Bray' rather than going with the scene. It didn't need to be obvious, actually I'd even say it requires a more subtle performance. Lazenby's acting is simply too one dimensional as are his instincts as an actor to do justice to this.
That said, perhaps some blame has to be put on the direction. Obviously the dubbing was not Lazenby's idea, and I don't even think he knew about it until late into post-production, and again it has an impact. Or perhaps they did this to emphasise this idea that Bond is 'getting lost' in the performance as you said to accommodate the way Lazenby approached those scenes... who knows.
I don't recall if Bray is gay in the book but Maibaum/Raven/Hunt made a clever decision here in having a straight man trying to maintain a gay cover around a bevy of beautiful women.
Compare Craig's line upon meeting Silva in SF. We're, thankfully, in a different era now.
But we're off topic.
@echo Thing is if you listen to Sam Mendes in the skyfall commentary he said it wasn't at all bond was gay same with the writer on skyfall who is gay said it had nothing to do with bond being gay.
Also accessibility. In the US OHMSS wasn't available for viewing outside the ABC-TV re-edited version. Then home video started being offered in the 80s.
Simply being able to view the film in question can extinguish circulated failure myths.
Like SP in ten years from now? 😉
OHMSS was a great film waiting to be discovered as such. SP is a poor, badly scripted Bond film. So there's nothing to discover...😁
I always assumed Bond was alluding to being "strapped to a chair" in CR.
Says the contemporary fan. ;-)
Seems unlikely. Craig does not read the line that way.
He actually does.
During the encounter, Bond says of M, "She never tied me to a chair."
"Her loss," Silva says and then goes on to mention the training Bond must be trying to remember, given this predicament: in a chair, at the mercy of the man who's put him there.
"What's the regulation to cover this?" Silva eventually asks. "Well, first time for everything."
And to that, Bond says, "What makes you think this is my first time?"
The line is delivered perfectly.
Yes, there are homosexual undertones...but then again, so was the encounter with LeChiffre. In my mind, that torture scene with LeChiffre was exactly what he was alluding to here.
Yes, this is my take as well. I don't think Bond is referencing Casino Royale when he says "what makes you think this is my first time", but everyone is going to have different interpretations. I think he's just responding to/combating Silva's advances, which are likely intended to put Bond at unease.
Really?
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/09/james-bond-refused-studio-cut-skyfall-gay-scene-1234663130/