| On Her Majesty's Secret Service | |
|---|---|
 On Her Majesty's Secret Service film poster |
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| James Bond | George Lazenby |
| Also starring | Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Gabriele Ferzetti |
| Directed by | Peter R. Hunt |
| Produced by | Albert R. Broccoli |
| Novel/Story by | Ian Fleming |
| Screenplay | Richard Maibaum |
| Cinematography by | Michael Reed |
| Music by | John Barry |
| Main theme | On Her Majesty's Secret Service |
| Composer | John Barry |
| Performer | John Barry Orchestra |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Released | December 18, 1969 (UK / |
| Running time | 136 min. |
| Budget | $7,000,000 |
| Worldwide gross | $87,400,000 |
| Admissions (world) | 62.4 million |
| Preceded by | You Only Live Twice (1967) |
| Followed by | Diamonds Are Forever (1971) |
| IMDb profile | |
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, released in 1969, is the sixth spy film in the James Bond series, and the only one to star George Lazenby as the fictional British secret agent James Bond, 007. In the film, Bond faces Blofeld, who is planning on unleashing a plague through a group of brainwashed "angels of death" unless his demands are met. Along the way, Bond meets, falls in love with, and eventually marries Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo.
This is the only Bond film to be directed by Peter R. Hunt, who before was a film editor or second unit director on every previous film. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.
Plot
The pre-title sequence shows Miss Moneypenny, M and Q discussing the whereabouts of Bond. In Portugal, he is driving on a coastal highway. Suddenly, from behind, a woman in a Mercury Cougar roars up and overtakes him. Soon, he encounters the same car parked at the roadside. Spotting the girl attempting suicide, Bond drives down to the shore, runs into the surf, and carries her from the sea. He brings her to consciousness and introduces himself. After a fight with two thugs, from which Bond emerges the victor, the girl takes Bond's car, drives it up the beach to her Cougar, jumps behind the wheel and speeds away.
Later, in a casino, Bond encounters the girl gambling; she places a bet she cannot pay, and, when she loses, he rescues her by paying it. Tracy invites him to her room to thank him; in her room, a thug emerges behind Bond and brawls with him. After defeating him, Bond returns to his room, there finding Tracy. After Tracy threatens to kill him for a thrill, Bond disarms Tracy, and questions her about the thug in her room. Tracy has nothing to say.
In the morning, she is gone. Later, as Bond leaves the hotel, several men kidnap him — including the thug from Tracy's room — and lead him at gunpoint to meet Marc-Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti) — the head of the Unione Corse, a large European crime syndicate.
Bond recognizes Draco immediately, but Draco reveals that Tracy is his only daughter. Draco reveals more of her troubled past and offers Bond a personal dowry of one million pounds if he will marry her. Bond refuses, but agrees to continue romancing Tracy under the agreement that Draco reveal the whereabouts of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), the head of SPECTRE.
Bond returns to MI6 but is angered to be told he has been relieved from the task of hunting Blofeld, causing him to tender his resignation. After M accepts the letter without objection, Bond learns that as Moneypenny was recording his dictation she changed the wording to request two weeks leave. Realising he can pursue Blofeld on his time off and not quit MI6, he thanks her and heads for Draco's birthday party in Portugal.
At the party, Tracy discovers Bond's deal with her father and strong-arms him into providing Bond with the information he requested. Draco tells Bond that his next line of pursuit should be a law firm in Bern, Switzerland. After a brief argument, Bond and Tracy begin a whirlwind romance.
Bond and Tracy go to Bern with Draco to investigate the lawyer's connection with Blofeld. Searching the man's office, Bond finds Blofeld's correspondence with the London College of Arms: Blofeld is attempting to lay claim to the title 'Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp'. His College of Arms correspondent is geneaologist Sir Hilary Bray. Bond visits M at home and is granted permission to recommence investigation of Blofeld.
Posing as Bray, Bond visits Blofeld, who has established a clinical research institute atop Piz Gloria, an alp in Switzerland.In disguise, Bond meets ten young women. They are patients of the institute's clinic, ostensibly undergoing unorthodox treatments for food allergies and phobias. In fact, the women are being brainwashed to distribute, at Blofeld's command, bacteriological warfare agents throughout their parts of the world.
James Bond's lasciviousness betrays him to Blofeld's henchwoman Irma Bunt, who captures him during a second visit to the room of one of the "patients". Bond escapes imprisonment in the cable-car machinery room of Piz Gloria, escaping by skiing down Piz Gloria despite being chased by Blofeld and his henchmen. He reaches the village of Mürren and there encounters Tracy, who is in Switzerland looking for Bond. After successfully disposing of their pursuers , a blizzard forces them to a remote barn. Bond declares his love for Tracy and proposes marriage to her; she accepts. Next morning Blofeld captures Tracy and leaves Bond for dead in an avalanche of his own creation.
Blofeld holds the world to ransom with the threat of destroying its agriculture, using his brainwashed patients to release bacteriological agents which target vital types of livestock and food plants. His price is amnesty for all past crimes and recognition of his 'Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp' title. Bond contacts Draco at Draco Construction to arrange a "demolition job" of Blofeld's headquarters.
The raid is successful and Bond and Blofeld are the last to escape before the institute is destroyed. The pair engage in a furious bobsled chase down Piz Gloria, with Bond leaping onto Blofeld's bobsled after he destroys Bond's own sled with a hand grenade. Eventually Blofeld is snared in tree branches, ripping him out of the bobsled. The bobsled then crashes but Bond escapes without serious harm.
Bond and Tracy marry in Portugal. They drive away in the Aston Martin, pulling over to the roadside a few kilometres later to remove flowers from the car. As they are talk, a Mercedes-Benz 600 goes past. Blofeld, in a neck brace, is driving, and Irma Bunt, his passenger, fires at the newlyweds. Despite several bursts on the vehicle, Bond is unharmed. He quickly enters the car and then speaks to his wife, only realising that she has been killed.
Vehicles and gadgets
Safecracker — A small (for its time) device consisting of a flexible cable ending in a grapple meant to be fitted on a typical safe combination lock. The machine would then examine the lock, figure its combination, and open the safe. Additionally, the safecracker has an integral photocopier, to copy secret documents, and minimize the chance of the owner's learning of the break-in if the documents went missing. It is implied that the device is slow-working, as it takes an entire lunch hour to crack the safe. As demonstrated in the film, the device isn't very practical; aside from its slowness it requires support to transport the large device to the site and again to remove it after the job is done (in this film, a fellow agent passes the device to Bond using a crane from a neighbouring construction site).
Cast
- George Lazenby as James Bond - A British Secret Service agent
- Diana Rigg as Tracy di Vicenzo
- Telly Savalas as Ernst Stavro Blofeld
- Marc-Ange Draco — Gabriele Ferzetti
- Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt - Blofeld's henchwoman
- Bernard Lee as
M - Head of the British Secret Service. - Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny M's secretary
- Sir Hilary Bray — George Baker
- Desmond Llewelyn as Q
- Angela Scoular as Ruby Bartlett
Production
On Her Majesty's Secret Service was originally to have followed Goldfinger, and early prints of that film even announced this. Later, it was earmarked to follow Thunderball but ultimately ended up following You Only Live Twice.
In 1967, after five successful James Bond films, Sean Connery quit the role. In his place Albert R. Broccoli initially chose actor Timothy Dalton; however, Dalton declined, believing himself too young and Connery too good to replace. Harry Saltzman considered Roger Moore, but he was unavailable, because of his popular television programme The Saint. Saltzman also briefly considered Jeremy Brett — later to become internationally renowned for playing Sherlock Holmes — for the role of Bond after seeing his performance in My Fair Lady. Broccoli eventually chose Australian George Lazenby after the actor arranged an "accidental" encounter with the producer. Lazenby dressed the part, by sporting several sartorial Bond elements, such as a Rolex Submariner wristwatch and a Savile Row suit, (ordered, but uncollected, by Connery) Lazenby recalled in an interview[1]. Broccoli noticed Lazenby as a Bond-type man, physique and the character elements, and offered him an audition.
Diana Rigg later was cast as Tracy Bond because the producers wanted an established actress opposite neophyte Lazenby; before On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diana Rigg was the popular heroine Emma Peel in The Avengers.
When writing the script, the producers decided to make the closest adaptation of the book as possible: virtually everything in the novel occurs in the film. They stayed so close to the book that they caused several continuity errors due to the movies taking place in a different order: neither Bond nor Blofeld recognise each other in this film at first, despite having met face-to-face in the previous film, You Only Live Twice; also, in that film, Bond had a small, portable and quick-to-use safecracking device, whereas here he uses a larger and much slower one. In the original script, Bond undergoes plastic surgery to disguise him from his enemies. The intention was to allow an unrecognizable Bond to infiltrate Blofeld's hideout, and help the audience accept the new in actor in the role. However, this was dropped in favor of ignoring the change in actor, a decision later mirrored with Superman Returns, the Batman series, and the rest of the Bond films.
Filming
Filming began in Canton Bern, Switzerland, in October 1968, and used several locations including the capital city, Berne, itself and various regions in the Berner Oberland including the now famous revolving restaurant "Piz Gloria", and wrapped in Portugal, in May 1969.
Filming locations included London with the historic Pinewood Studios. Bern, Switzerland included several scenes shot on location. The Christmas celebrations were filmed in Grindelwald, Switzerland. Various chase scenes in The Alps were shot at Lauterbrunnen while Piz Gloria and Schilthorn were shown as Blofeld's headquarters in the Alps. Lisbon was used for the reunion of Bond and Tracy and the pre-credit coastal and hotel scenes were filmed at Estoril in Portugal.
George Lazenby did not reprise the role in Diamonds Are Forever. He thought the secret agent would be archaic in the liberated 1970s. He had been offered a seven-film contract, had signed a letter of intent to star in Diamonds Are Forever, and was even paid an initial fee installment (which he refunded) before declining. His refusal to continue with the series may be a contributing factor to the myth of the film's failure.
Music
Release and reception
A belief persists that this film performed poorly at the box office, or that it was a failure, but this is untrue.[attribution needed] It was the second-highest-grossing film, worldwide, of 1969, outgrossed only by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The film grossed $87,400,000 (USD worldwide), $24 million.
A heavily re-edited TV version was broadcast by ABC in 1976 and again in 1980, featuring opening narration (performed by an actor who sounds nothing like Lazenby) and split into two halves. This version of the film opens with Bond's escape from Piz Gloria, and follows that section of the film through to the scene in M's office after the avalanche that results in Tracy's capture by Blofeld. The entire film is then played as a flashback, including the entire ski chase/escape from Piz Gloria sequence, all over again[1].
References
- ^ De 'vergeten' 007. Andere Tijden, VPRO, Nederland 2 20:25–21:25.
External links
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service at the Internet Movie Database
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service at Rotten Tomatoes
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service at Box Office Mojo
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