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"You have what the Greeks call thrasos": Let's discuss... For Your Eyes Only (1981)/ Poll
St_George
Shuttling Drax's lovelies to the space doughnut - happy 40th, MR!
<img src="http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh215/george-in-the-smoke/fyeo_banner.jpg">;
So, another day, another thread... and this one affords us the opportunity to discuss, in as great or as little detail as you like, the twelfth - and Sir Rog's fourth - Bond adventure, FYEO.
What do we all think of this, the first 007 flick of the '80s?
For me, well, there's much to like about FYEO; the action sequences (on skis, underwater, in a helicopter, on a rock-face etc) are all eminently entertaining and the plot, sort of combining those of Fleming's short stories For Your Eyes Only and Risico, is sound, intriguing and generally conceivable. However, while it's admirable on the filmmakers' part to return Bond to <i>terra firma</i> following the excesses of MR and concoct a Cold War thriller in the manner of some of the series' earliest successes and Fleming's writing, for me, the whole really just doesn't come off as taut, tight and compelling as, say, FRWL. There's something of a Sunday-afternoon-movie for me about FYEO. Entertaining, yes, but not outstanding.
So, your thoughts, folks...? :)
![http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh215/george-in-the-smoke/fyeo_banner.jpg">](http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh215/george-in-the-smoke/fyeo_banner.jpg">){kind=link}
So, another day, another thread... and this one affords us the opportunity to discuss, in as great or as little detail as you like, the twelfth - and Sir Rog's fourth - Bond adventure, FYEO.
What do we all think of this, the first 007 flick of the '80s?
For me, well, there's much to like about FYEO; the action sequences (on skis, underwater, in a helicopter, on a rock-face etc) are all eminently entertaining and the plot, sort of combining those of Fleming's short stories For Your Eyes Only and Risico, is sound, intriguing and generally conceivable. However, while it's admirable on the filmmakers' part to return Bond to <i>terra firma</i> following the excesses of MR and concoct a Cold War thriller in the manner of some of the series' earliest successes and Fleming's writing, for me, the whole really just doesn't come off as taut, tight and compelling as, say, FRWL. There's something of a Sunday-afternoon-movie for me about FYEO. Entertaining, yes, but not outstanding.
So, your thoughts, folks...? :)
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Comments
Maybe Glen could have trusted himself to deliver some longer dialogue scenes without fearing he may lose his audience. Colombo and Bond's first meeting is a case in point. This is the pay-off about who the villain acutally is, and it is an important moment. Topol and Moore look comfortable and play the scene beautifully. Why not crank the tension up and lengthen the scene a little?
FYEO has so much to admire but it remains uneven and occassionally infuriating.
Otherwise, a very good outing.
But lets focus on what's great about this cinematic masterpiece, you have a great balance of beautiful locations...admittedly they are all very Mediterranean based, but even so you have lovely snowy northern Italy sandwiched between sunny Spain (well Corfu really!) and sunny Greece (Corfu to be really precise) and even a trip to darkest Albania (yep Corfu again!).
The action sequences are fairly original takes on staple formulas and really enjoyable to watch with John Glen's trademarks of filling the screen with both interest and humour. I love the 2CV chase and consider it to be the BEST car chase in the entire series! But this film is packed with great action sequences, you have car chases, ski chases, big battles, small battles, underwater battles, battles on ice hockey fields and you can almost forgive them for forgetting to put the obligatory battle in at the end of the film.
The mix of beautiful girls are great, you have lovely Bibi who is far too young even for Roger's Bond, sexy Melina who must be almost a year or so older than Bibi so just perfect for Roger's Bond, posh crumpet Countess Lisl for the more mature appreciating viewers and even Jacoba Brink for those with a penchant for the older ladies...
The villains while not as fantastically eccentric as your standard Blofeld's, Drax's and No's, manage to bring and air of genuine menace and ambiguity to their performances and as for the legend that is Hector Gonzales, well Scaramanga may of been the worlds greatest assassin but it doesn't matter how long he soaks up the sun on his little Red China Island he'll still never manage to get that deep, oily, mahogany tan effect that adorns Hector like a shinning, greasy force-field.
Roger gives his best ever performance as Bond and it's great to see him being pushed into attempting some drama rather than just smirking, though I do wish they had given him some suitable clothes rather than just popping into old peoples favorite 'The Edinburgh Wool Company' for his entire wardrobe, sorry but for me a body-warmer and a thick woolly jumper doesn't scream out sophisticated James Bond.
It sounds like I despise this film; I don't. There are some good things going for it: some of the action shots are nice, like the ski sequence in particular, the locations are superb, Melina is a convincing Bond girl, and Columbo is a worthwile adversary. But the whole did not equal the sum of its parts.
The warehouse raid is one of the best big battles in the series. And Moore kicking glasses boy off the cliff goes down as one of the best moments for both his run and the character in general. It is a well made film and one I look forward to watching when I do a marathon.
@saunders I agree with you wholeheartedly about the locations (or, as you say, Corfu ;) ); it's pretty damn stunning. Mind you, Greece and its ancient culture really is something of a must with me.
Plus, @saunders and @The_Reaper, the 2CV chase is rather wonderful, isn't it? Played for laughs at times, but containing quite brilliant stunt driving all the same. There really wasn't anything like the Julienne team back in the day. And, yes, the cliff-climbing sequence genuinely is tense stuff - easily one of the most effective sequences of its kind in the series. Kicking off the flick's finale, in my eyes, it really does elevate, er, Eyes.
And @The_Reaper: 'glasses boy'? Love it... :-))
FYEO was the first Fleming story I ever read, a week after which I was taken to a double feature screening of FYEO & MR (shown in that order, for some reason).
The weeks wait seemed like a month- I remember that I made a little tear-off James Bond countdown calender and each morning before school I'd tear off another page....(I was only 8...)
The movie didn't disappoint- and for me it still doesn't. (And thanks to my Uncle, I still have the double feature poster from that actual screening... can be seen on the Bond Collections thread...)
Yes it's not got the tightest direction, the best pacing, or the most fitting score.
But, it has got some cracking good scenes- all the scenes with Moore/Glover/Topol are great.... the assault on the warehouse.... Bond's pursuit and elimination of Locque is up there amongst Bond's finest kills (the reverse angle of Moore holding the Dove pin is one of my fav Moore scenes..)
Also, if anyone ever wants to do a good bit of easy Bond location hunting, then FYEO is a good place to start. All the Corfu locations are easily accessable to the public and still look exactly as they did in the movie (well, when I did it back in 2000....)
I think Glen eventually gained confidence in the longer dialogue scenes - especially in the Dalton era, case in point TLD and Bond & Pushkin in the hotel room or LTK and Bond & Sanchez's plot-building converstations.
As a fan of the more Flemingesque Bond films, I enjoy that the plot is more serious, that Bond is more pragmatic, and that the action is less over-the-top in FYEO. Some scenes of a more escapist and pointless nature do exist (hockey thugs, Bibbi Dahl) but Glen films everything with a fresh and enthusiastic style, FYEO is a visually brilliant film and not just because of the locations; and Richard Maibaum makes his welcomed return to the series a thrilling one and adds a dab of Cold War poignancy with an example of true detente.
The quality of FYEO leaves an impression on me as one of the bests of the series and its entertainment value places it ahead of some of the fan-deemed classics FRWL & GF (sometimes).... Mark it down as a 9/10 from me.
FYEO certainly showed Moore could play Bond straight but I don't think this style was his ideal niche. Moore himself would probably say he isn't a particularly ruthless person. I remember him commenting in an interview that the car kicking scene "wasn't very Roger Moore Bond". I don't think he was particularly happy about it looking back.
It wasn't the first Moore film that I saw - I saw OP in theatres when we couldn't get in to NSNA! So I had a bit of an idea of what to expect from a Moore film. So, my reaction? Umm...good, but not great.
My first reaction was really? This film? THIS was the film that everyone was raving about? I then I realized that this had come out after MR. So at the time there would have been a huge "Oh thank GOD!" factor for the fans of less silly and over-the-top Bond. But the film wasn't as huge of a return to form as I had expected.
Two things really hurt the film to me. The first was the silly humour. It felt like the studio got nervous at the last minute and thought that if FYEO was TOO serious that they'd lose some fans. So the Thatcher scene at the end and the "hockey goon" scenes made me cringe - they were that terrible. The opening with Blofeld was also atrocious. Terrible use of him, no sense of how important a figure he was and..."a delicatessan in stainless steel"? WTF?
The other thing that really hurt it was Moore's age. I think he could just barely pull off being credible as an action hero and romantic lead, but not by much. I felt a little embarassed watching him and Melina, and as romantic and beautifully shot as the skinny dipping scene was at the end once you think about it it's fairly icky.
But there were a lot of things to like. Stunning scenery, a lovely and capable Bond girl, and two nicely understated performances in Topol and Glover. The plot was good, and the ending of "That's detente" was a great touch. I also quite like the title song - a great addition of a 'modern sounding" song that doesn't seem dated or over-the-top. And if you're going to include a singer's face in the opening credits Easton is a good choice... ;-)
One final thing - the terrible "underwater" shots during the film. I know from the commentary that the woman playing Melina was terrified of the water but...there must have been a better way (perhaps recasting?). Took me right out of the film and that was on a smaller TV - I can't imagine how bad it must have looked on the big screen with a much sharper and more clear image.
Alot of it has to do with the Greek flavour and the Cold War atmosphere. I We'd had since OHMSS one bloated SFX fantasy after another and suddenly the horns were pulled in and we had a character driven story. This was an interesting character piece where each of the characters had a little bit of backhistory to flesh them out. This hadnt happened in MR or Spy. In FYEO we had Greek archaeologists, Cuban hitmen, old wartime resistance adversaries, treacherous Olympic coaches, Belgian assassins. It seemed so mature compared with what had gone before.
The character of Melina Havelock was a world away from the bikinied bimbos we had pressing big red buttons with their posteriors we had in the seventies. She was a career woman but had family ties. The revenge theme was tied in with Greek mythology - Electra avenging the death of Agamemnon. The imagery of the striking Carole Bouquet picking up a crossbow and going after her parents murderers is a strong one.
I like the low key finale. The tension is there as we know what will happen if the Soviets get the ATAC. The Cold war had started up again in the early eighties and both sides were sabrerattling again.
I wonder if those who have come to it via DVD or Sunday afternoon repeats really get the times and context of FYEO.
My two main gripes are about the style and direction. For style I don't care for the look and feel of the film. The cinematography is pretty unattractive compared to what we've had before--it just lacks a unique quality the earlier films had. I really loathe the music in the first half of the film and I especially detest Sheena Easton's singing. The whole film has a dated early 80's feel to me, which I don't find attractive. However, style is a personal preference--I enjoy the early 70's mauve tones of LALD and TMWTGG. So to each his own.
The other problem I have, is that while I appreciate the backstory and the whole revenge theme. I feel like it's a bit forced. The problem is too much of the middle part of the film is padded with the tired formula of the villains chasing Bond and Bond tries to get away for scene after scene. This was the exact same problem in Moonraker and I see it again in FYEO. More time could have been devoted to actually developing the character traits and the relationships further.
Those of us who lived through the early 80's - especially at a young, impressionable age - can never make real to a younger generation just how terrifyingly real the concept of global nuclear war was. We were literally laying awake at night in fear of the entire human race being wiped out - some vapourized, some living a hell of months of pain and suffering. Whereas the earlier Bond films played the cold war as a bit of a game, it was frightening to live through the time of The Day After.
Another aspect of context is all the excitement that is built up around a film. Now, you can rent a Bond film anytime you want, although you probably own it. Back in the day you could only see it in a movie theatre during first run, or maybe a re-release a couple of years later. If you missed it on TV you'd have to wait for the next airing. Films in general were much more special in the past. And although Connery seems like an icon now, the films and actors were talked about on TV, in magazines, and on the playground constantly. There was a time when all the old Bond actors were constantly re-inforced in the minds of people as big stars in the same way that someone like Brad Pitt is today. Take any film released this summer - there was as much media coverage for every Bond film, or more. That really added to the aura of excitement when you saw the film on opening weekend. With a DVD of an older film - nothing.
But the flip side of that is the charm of the older films being "retro" which can add to their appeal. When I first saw GF and DAF at age 11 I was already into "old" films. I now realize that part of it was being raised in a very conservative household where we were taught that the "present"(at the time, 1980) was a terrible time and that the world was going to hell in a handbasket. According to my family the past was this amazing paradise where everything worked and people were good - until the godless hippies wrecked everything in the early 70's and introduced drugs, violence (!), and pre-marital sex into the world (part of being young is not questioning what your parents tell you, otherwise I would have asked about all the violence and sex in a 1964 Bond film!). So I think that I subconciously was drawn to older films because the represented a time that I wished I could have lived in. But in addition to that, when a film is from before your time there's an exoticness and surreal aspect to it - you just can't imagine what it would be like to walk around in 1964 when you're a kid in 1980. So that added layer of "otherworldliness" helps to make the more fantastical elements (like the laser beam in GF or the satellite in DAF) go down easier.