On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) Since this is our all time favorite Bond film and this is the fourth time we've posted on it.......it's the perfect spot to pause our Autumn Bond-Fire, until sometime next week, when we'll re-review the previous four Daniel Craig Bonds and newly review the 5th, No Time To Die.....
So what else can we possibly add to our undying passion for OHMSS?
We've done a post on the film's spectacular winter action scenes (still unsurpassed in precision of editing and staging)....(see 2/18/18)....and a post on its Christmas holiday vibe (see 12/19/16).....and a few years back, we fondly wished the film a happy 50th Anniversary.....(see 11/29/19)......
What's left to say......other than we love, love LOVE OHMSS to pieces.......
In making this post tie in to our Autumn Bond-Fire, anticipating the imminent U.S. release to 'No Time To Die', we have to thank Mark Monahan, a reporter for "The Telegraph" for a superb article he posted today ("Why "No Time To Die" is really remake of the greatest Bond film of all....")
We couldn't have put it better ourselves.......and there's most definitely a spoiler alert in composer Hans Zimmer heavily referencing John Barry's sweet, sad OHMSS theme ("We Have All The Time In The World" in the No Time To Die score......
For us, OHMSS was the culmination of the groundbreaking cinema that Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman's Eon Productions had perfected through the first five Bond films with Sir Sean Connery.
Peter Hunt, the editor of the five previous films, took over directing the 6th and every frame of the film shows the propulsive, rapid-fire editing style and distinctive pacing that made each Bond film a major event. Even with rank amateur, male model George Lazenby, who bullshitted his way past Broccoli and Saltzman to become the new Bond. Hunt created the most fully realized visualization of Ian Fleming's Bond Universe.
Lazenby rose to the occasion and the film gifted him with the all time greatest Bond girl, Dame Diana Rigg.....as skilled an actress whoever played a Bond girl and a goddess to watch in action. No wonder this would be the first girl to leave 007 utterly smitten......(until Daniel Craig fell for Eva Green in "Casino Royale")
........which is why OHMSS, over the decades, is now thought of as a near perfect Bond film and revered, copied and paid homage to by filmmakers like Christopher Nolan.
And the film truly did serve as a farewell to the first 'Golden Age' of the Eon Bond films, since the next one, the slack, silly and arthritic "Diamonds Are Forever" ushered James Bond into a clumsy, clunky period of low energy, dumbed down Bonds like "Live and Let Die" and awful "Man With The Golden Gun".....
That's why, for BQ, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" stands forever and always as a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.
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