"Do you expect me to talk?"

"No Mr Bond - I expect you to DIE!"

Glittering, gleaming and gigantic "Goldfinger" is the Bond series as it's creative, critical and box office peak. This is the highwater mark of the series - the film that all the others would be judged against. It moves at a fast and furious pace and is a perfect blend of the real and the fantastic. In many ways it is the representative film of the series - that perfect blend of suspense, sex, intrigue, wit and satire - and all polished so as to glitter and shine. It is also the most iconic film of the series with it's set pieces now part of film folklore - and it carries a central theme of greed for gold.The golden colour seems to permeate the film from start to finish.

While it's two predecessors "From Russia With Love" and "Dr No" were extensibly spy stories with fantastic elements thrown in - "Goldfinger" became really fantastic and the box office benefited. This was the first true Bond global blockbuster matched with an inspiring merchandising and advertising campaign. Bondmania really took off with "Goldfinger" and if you hadn't seen it by the end of 1964 when it was realeased you risked real social exclusion.. It was just bigger and more fantastic then those which came before it. In many ways it's pacing and humour transformed the film industry, audiences demanded that kind of action and humour. The lighter touch in "Goldfinger" is due to a change in director, Guy Hamilton, who brought a fresher lighter style. He also brought a rhythmn to the film and one of the reasons for it's success is that there is "cause and effect" in the story as Bond speeds around the world after the worlds most deadly gold smuggler.

This is seen in the opening sequence, while the one in "From Russia With Love" is dark and eerie - this one could stand as the best in the series. In the first two minutes of the film Bond is seen emerging from the sea only to peal off his wetsuit to reveal a white dinner jacket, he sets a timed explosive in a South American poppy factory and while waiting for them to go off spends his time seducing a flamenco dancer. A thug tries to break up the dalliance and the fight that ensues he tosses him into a watery bathtub. Quick as a flash 007 tosses an electric heater after him - the man fries to death.

Bond mutters, almost to himself.

"Shocking. Positively shocking."

And brings the house down. The opening sequence shows the strengths of "Goldfinger" and is an exercise in style, eroticism, action, intrigue and sophisticated humour.

It's difficult to gauge now what an effect "Goldfinger" had on the world back in 1964. Along with Kennedy and the Beatles this is one of the icons of the decade. It's not perfect, it won't win any Oscar's but as an example of the world's most successful film series it holds up well. Alot of the plaudits must go to Paul Dehn and Richard Maibaum for a simply sparkly script. In fact I will go as say that the film script actually improves on Ian Flemings fantastic book. The book is brilliantly written but a little implausible in parts. Why would Goldfinger take Tilly and Bond to America with him to be his secretary in "Operation Grand Slam"? It makes more sense in the movie where Tilly is killed early on and Bond is taken to Kentucky as a prisoner. And while in the book they only get to the railway sidings of Fort Knox with the nuclear weapon - in the film we see the Fort Knox interior where the nuclear bomb is taken and where Sean Connery is handcuffed to it's sides.

And of course there is the story. A story so clever dreamt up by Fleming that it was repeated again twenty years later in Roger Moore's pedestrian swansong "A View To A Kill". The British secret service becomes aware that serious gold smuggling is going on within it's borders. The Bank of England has pinpointed one man - Auric Goldfinger, a very wealthy industrialist and his Korean manservant Oddjob - as the culprits. 007 meets up with him socially on the golf course then follows him to Switzerland where it is apparent that Goldfingers vintage Rolls Royce silver phantom is in fact made of solid gold. But it becomes a grudge match betweent the two men, previously Bond encountered Goldfinger at Miami's Fountainebleu hotel where he intended to cheat at cards - Bond stops him and steals his companion Jill Masterson. Goldfinger punishes her by painting her body in gold paint - she suffocates.

While visiting Goldfingers factory he runs into Jill's sister, Tilly Masterson, who is out for revenge and is also killed by Oddjob. The odds are against him and he ends up being captured by Goldfinger. Goldfinger realises he is a security risk and his death might bring others to investigate so he takes him with him to his horse stud in Kentucky. While there it becomes apparent that more is afoot and with a convention of American gangsters he plans to rob the great gold repository of Fort Knox. He intends to knock out the Fifth Army around it with poison gas flown by his personal aviator Pus*y Galore, break in using an industrial laser, and leave a nuclear bomb inside.

The director said the problem with Goldfinger is "how to make the ridiculous real..". For the most part he accomplishes this but the ace up his sleeve has to be Sean Connery. By now he fitted the role of James Bond like a Savile Row suit. There is a confidence about Connery in this role. He still had another one ("Thunderball") before he would get bored and in many ways he personifies "cool" as he prowls around the film like a predator, quietly knowing the opposition doesn't stand a chance. And yet the performance never borders on the smug and assured. Gilbert keeps him on his toes. My favourite Sean moment occurs within the famous golf game. Connery, somehow, gives Bond an innocent exterior while, we ,the audience, know he is conning Goldfinger out of five thousand pounds. The way Connery toys with Goldfinger is an absolute delight.


Gert Froebe as Auric Goldfinger

"Man has split the atom...sent men to the moon....succeeded in every field of human endeavour...except crime!!"

Prize for best Bond villain ever goes to Gert Froebe as Auric Goldfinger. Froebe fits Fleming's description to a tee - "the first thing which strikes Bond about Goldfinger is that "everything is out of proportion". This mountainous man had a tiny head attached to an enormous body a painful looking tan, piggy eyes and slight red hair. But for all his ridiculous appearance Goldfinger is a chilling villain and was recently voted by EMPIRE magazine as one of their top ten screen villains of all time. The reason for this is his perverse love of gold, as he says to Bond who is strapped to a table menaced by an industrial laser.

"I am in love with it's colour, texture, it's divine brilliance. I will do anything to increase my stock, which is considerable.."

This obcession with a precious metal is his strength and weak point. It is strong enough for him to risk an assault on the gold depository of Fort Knox. And yet when 007 throws a gold bar down during the golf game at Stoke Poges it is enough for him to miss the stroke. There is a controlled madness about Froebe's Goldfinger. And it is only when he loses at golf or cards that we see the mask slip and that great red face of his seethes with anger. His love of gold also seems to extend to the bedroom - his killing of Jill Masterson by covering her with gold paint is highly perverse.

One of the best castings in the entire series is Gert Froebe. A European character actor who had only been seen in 'The Longest Day' Froebe was a shock to the producers who had been assured by his agent that he could speak English. In the end his voice had to be dubbed by Michael Collins. But Froebe works because he sticks so closely to the interesting villian developed by Fleming and they give him such a good script with so many classic lines. The result is probably the series' most memorable baddie.

The Aston Martin DB5

The most famous car in film history?

Unless you count 'Herbie' or 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' - yes, it probably is. In actuality the Aston Martin DB5, despite being beautiful, handles like a tank. A huge great metal coffin of a car which steers heavily and nowadays costs a small fortune. But for James Bond it becomes a sleek British sports car laden with Q Branch gadgets. The love affair between the British car industry and the James Bond films started with this one. They provided the film-makers with several cars they could play with and in the film it is equipped with machine-guns behind the headlights, a chariot scythe protruding from the hub-caps, a radar tracker, revolving numberplates, and most famously an ejector seat.

It was this ejector seat which garners all the attention and was made from an old fighter aircraft. When one of Goldfingers guards is shot into the air the audience roars with laughter. Some have judged the films tendency towards silliness, taken to the ultimate in the Roger Moore era, from this scene. Whatever people think - there was no going back, James Bond went in an entirely different direction from this moment.

Honor Blackman as Puss* Galore

"You can turn off the charm Mr Bond....I'm immune.."

Adding to the already sterling casting ensemble is the delectable Honor Blackman as Puss* Galore. The name itself is enough to make censors blush and the character is one of the best Bond girls in the entire series. Puss* Galore is one of the most enjoyable Bond staples - the bad girl who turns good. She is Goldfinger's personal aviator and the brains behind the successful 'Puss* Galores Flying Circus' which is used to good effect on the assault on Fort Knox. But this is no wimpish pawn of the villains - she is a criminal in her own right and plans to enjoy her share of the spoils. She also plays hard to get, fending off 007 advances with clever put-downs. The novel's Puss* Galore was rather implausible - she was the leader of a set of lesbian gangsters called the 'cement mixers'. But even she succumbed to 007's machismo in the final pages.

In the film this is toned down although the 'tomboy tendencies' are there for all to see. I find it mildly offensive and rather egocentric that James Bond can 'straighten out' gay people - even if it is in the interests of winning them over to the other side. I like to think that Puss* realised that Goldfinger had lied to her, was shocked by the innocent deaths he would cause and realised she wouldn't be paid because the gold would have gone up in a puff of smoke. It would be good to think this is why she switches sides and informs the CIA of the plans.

Honor Blackman, herself, gives a wonderful performance. Slightly mocking and tongue-in-cheek she allows that honeyed husky voice of hers to win the audience over to what essentially is a villainess. Ms Blackman has been actress for fifty years starting in British rep after WWII, she is one of the most accomplished actresses to grace the Bond screen at the age of 37. She is still going strong at the age of 70, I watched her on a British medical drama the other night - as a jobbing actress there are none better then Honor Blackman who has every type of drama and sit-com to her credit. And her chemistry with Sean Connery is perfect, she described him as 'the sexiest man she had ever met..'

Operation Grand Slam

I've been doing some calculations of my own....to remove 15 billion dollars worth of bullion weighing 10,500 tonnes would take sixty men twelve days using two hundred trucks...I'd say you'd have two hours, tops, before the army, navy, air force move in and make you put it all back again...

The writers are putting their own thoughts into James Bonds mouth in expousing that Goldfingers original plan - a robbery of Fort Knox - is utterly impractical. When you think about it - it is..- there is no way that Goldfinger could get away with that much gold before the American authorities caught up with him. The book put alot of effort in making it feasible but wizely stopped it going any further then Fort Knox railway sidings. In the novel Goldfinger gets nowhere near the bullion repository.

But to add to the drama and a fitting climax - they needed to end inside Fort Knox. So the story was changed from a robbery to a scheme to destroy America's gold with an atomic weapon to send up the value of Goldfingers own stock. This works better especially when the backers behind the scheme are revealed to be the 'Red Chinese'. Communist China was a powerful maverick in 1964 and it is perfectly feasible that she would embark on a scheme to cripple the west financially. After all, as Goldfinger says, the gold will be radioactive for 58 years.

The production team could go nowhere near Fort Knox so it was left for production designer Ken Adam to come up with his own creation. The result is one of the best interior "sets" in the series history. A gleaming gigantic affair with gold bricks stacked to the rafters and where everything rings and echoes with a metallic sound. It provides a good arena for the final battle between Bond and Oddjob where gold bricks are hurled around like candy bars by the Korean manservant.

Harold Sakata as Oddjob

Oddjob, along with Jaws in 'The Spy Who Loved Me', is generally considered the best henchman the series ever produced. He is a wrestler crammed into a suit and bowler hat who exudes menace and the fact that they make him silent, with the occasional grunt, makes him all the more sinister. The Oddjob of the book was even more eerie, Fleming created a background story of Goldfinger finding him breaking bars in Korea and trained him up to be his butler/manservant and he had a predelication for eating cats. Of course he is famous not only for his appearance but the steel-rimmed bowler hat - it's decapitation of a marble statue and Tilly Masterson were some of the films most memorable scenes.

They found a man called Harold Sakata to play him. He was a Hawaiian wrestler called 'Tosh Togo' and you can see where his wrestling experience came into play - Sean Connery looks particularly battered taking him on. There is no doubt he performs an eerie double act with Gert Froebe and when Oddjob smiles at you - a shiver runs down your spine.

Classic Bond scene: The death of Jill Masterson

There were plenty of iconic moments to choose from this glittering masterpiece - the golf game, the laser scene, Puss* Galores and Bonds tussle in the hay, the briefing to the gangsters etc, not to mention the superb pre-title sequence. But the one which made the cover of TIME magazine has to be 'the golden girl'. This is very striking and faintly disturbing imagery - death, beauty and gold all mixed in together.

The scene is just as chilling as it was in 1964. Shirley Eaton played Goldfinger's escort Jill Masterson who helps him with his card scam in the Fountainebleu hotel. As a petty victory, after an afternoon of lovemaking with James Bond he spitefully gets Oddjob to kill her by painting her body with gold paint. Not a spot is left for the skin to breathe and she suffocates. The direction, music, dialogue and imagery in this scene are one of the most memorable scenes in the entire set of movies.


So this was the one where everything came together perfectly - villain, plot, henchman, car, locations, girl, music and script. Some of the aforementioned have become iconic over the years. And who can forget the soundtrack to this film. For the next forty years when an artist is announced to helm the next "Bond song" they are automatically compared with Shirley Bassey's rendition and found wanting. La Bassey is the ultimate diva singing the ultimate diva's song - a song which is still popular over forty years later. It hit number one on both sides of the atlantic - and propelled La Bassey into superstardom. I like the way it is integrated into the film where it gently compliments the action. The John Barry score for this film is top notch - probably bettering his other good efforts such as 'You Only Live Twice' and 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'.

Is there anything bad about it? Is it a critic-proof film?

Only one thing I can think of - there is more emphasis on humour then in either of the two previous efforts which were straight spy films. This was the start of the "Bond silliness" which would reach ridiculous proportions in the Roger Moore era. This one is aimed at the family and cleaned up at the box office. The gamble paid off, and this became the 007 flick that all others were judged against. It was the pride of the fleet for Broccoli and Saltzman and they would try and replicate for the next forty years. This is the blueprint James Bond film.

It generally deserves the praise and accolades lauded upon it. I'll leave the last word to James Bond..

"My apologies Goldfinger, it's brilliant!"

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening