Diamonds Are Forever
1971, USA, Guy Hamilton
Diamonds Are Forever is unique among the Bond movies in that it doesn’t really feel like a Bond movie. It’s packed with a kind of camp sadism that owes more to some of the sixties Bond rip-offs than the previous films in the series. The plot is as familiar as ever, concerning a plan by Blofeld to stockpile diamonds for use in a satellite weapon which, once again, will be the means to hold the world to ransom. Bond is, for much of the time, a straight man to the rest of the cast - although he does get one or two zingers to deliver - and Connery takes his cue from this to give what must be the laziest performance he has ever given. Relying on all his old tricks, and a delivery that is not so much slow burning as extinguished, he seems to be doing as little as possible. Throughout, he looks middle aged and tired. The scene in the burning coffin is a case in point; even given that it’s an appallingly loose bit of writing, Bond should surely look more concerned than he does here.
The narrative construction is a problem. The pre-credits stuff is fine and the development of the plot is fine up until we get to Las Vegas. Then the film drifts into a series of set-pieces, vaguely connected together by a number of coincidences, until we get to the, frankly, hopeless conclusion on the oil rig. It doesn’t help that the main villain, Blofeld, has not the slightest iota of threat about him. Charles Gray is often very funny but he is not a Bond villain. He never seems dangerous; he’s charming and pleasant and seems entirely reasonable. This would be acceptable if there were suggestions of hidden depths of villainy beneath the courtesy. Gray simply suggests hidden shallows.
The film survives because of Tom Mankiewicz’s dialogue. He writes tremendously good flip lines and the result is the wittiest of all the Bond movies. This is highlighted through Blofeld’s henchmen, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, incarnated to perfection by Bruce Glover and the extraordinarily odd Putter Smith - jazz musician, and session player for Phil Spector. PC they are not, being not merely gay killers, but pathologically misanthropic gay killers. Virtually everything they say is funny, not least because the actors just look so right, and they manage to keep a sense of genuine menace, even when camping around like Julian Clary.
Technically, the film is up to par. John Barry’s music is typically great, and the theme song by Shirley Bassey is one of the best Bond tunes. It’s quite well paced by Guy Hamilton but the lack of structure does begin to make the film pall after about an hour. The tone also seems somehow ‘off’. For example, in the first fight scene, the Japanese man’s head hits the radiator, and there’s a noticeable pause for us to appreciate the brutal smack and then a close up of his bloody forehead. Wint and Kidd are certainly funny, but there’s a queasy edge to the scenes which mix sadism with camp comedy, and that’s why the film has a different atmosphere to the other Bond movies. Not necessarily a bad thing, since it does make the film distinctive, but I’m not disappointed that it was never repeated - although it’s exactly that tone which informs virtually every recent Hollywood action movie.