Shaken, not Stirred

Goldfinger and Thunderball

Goldfinger, the third movie, released in 1964, is the first time we hear Bond say the famous line about his preferred cocktail, “I’ll have a martini, shaken, not stirred.”

Goldfinger was Fleming’s 6th novel, published, 1959. The film shook up the movie going public. The production cost $3 million dollars, and earned $69 million during its initial release. It was the fastest grossing film of all time, according to the Guinness World Book. Measuring Worth calculates that 69 mil is about 900 mil in 2021 dollars. Production costs of 3 mil in 1964, translates into $36,000,000 today. Of course, there were no expensive special effects back then. Just Oddjob’s hat, and that Aston Martin DB5, along with its own special effects, that was as wild as it got.

The movie did not need any special effects. The genre was fresh, and packed a punch. Besides, so much of today’s digital pow and wow actually detracts from the characters and their story. To me, the big effects have become just as obligatory as the sex. And just as boring.

Speaking of sex, anyone could see this movie in 1964, including a teenaged girl, like me.  It was, actually, the first Bond movie I saw, as a first run movie.  I went on a date with the first guy I truly liked. It was traditional stuff, local guy takes out local girl to see worldly movie. What the Bond movies did, to me, was awaken a desire to see the world. Two years later, I found myself going to school in France.

As for the movie’s particulars,  Goldfinger’s opening credits roll with a lusty voiced Shirley Bassey singing the title song. The villain, Auric Goldfinger, is another one of those cold hearted bastards that wants to do something BIG. Like take on the US government and take control of the gold in Fort Knox. The fun angle of this story is that the US government doesn’t save the day. Pussy Galore does. She betrays Goldfinger because Bond shows her the truth about her boss, Goldfinger.

Did love have anything to do with it? Well, Pussy Galore is the first Bond girl that can take care of herself. She ranks right up there with James in resourcefulness and skills. She is the feminine archetype of the warrior woman, an Amazon general. Except, she too, gets slapped in the arse by Bond.

We need to talk about that. Did Amazon generals, back in the day, slap their female generals in the arse?  I don’t think so. They needed the women to share all the burdens of their nomadic society.  If the male did give her a slap, I bet she slapped back.  I suggest that is when we know we have parity in a society; we slap back.

There is no slapping arses in Thunderball. That movie was released in 1965. The book was published in 1961. By the time of this movie’s release, Ian Fleming was dead.

Thunderball has two of my favorite bits of classic Bond dialog:

“Behave yourself, Mr. Bond.”

and

“Do you know about guns, Mr. Bond?”

“No, I know about women.”

The first needs no explanation, because Bond can never truly behave himself. He’s the warrior, and in war, there is no behaving. Spies are, of course, tricksters.  As for the warriors, they have always been both a blessing and a curse in every civilization. We love the warrior when he is on our side. We hate the enemies’ soldiers. The Western world loves Bond because he is on our side.

As the series morphed, the enemies of the West became huge, multinational corporations, AKA, oligarchs. In Bond’s world, mid century era, their reach is huge. SPECTRE is everyone’s problem. They make wars for us to fight in. Like Viet Nam, for example. What was the real point of that “conflict?” To make others rich.

Oligarchs also worm their way into a government’s bureaucracy. They get bureaucrats to work for them. Bureaucrats make perfect spies. Bureaucrats know where the bodies are buried. Plus, they love the side gig and its income stream.

Ian Fleming was once a bureaucrat. I would say he knew where a few bodies were buried.

That second bit of dialog, about guns and women, is humorous, yes? Bond knows about guns, that’s why we snicker when he lies. What he knows about women is how to manipulate them, so that he can get what he wants; sex and information. Women are his weapons to get to the right oligarch. Sleep with the oligarchs’ babe, and you get a foot in the door. In Thunderball, the oligarch’s babe is angry once she finds out he killed her brother. She becomes the avenger, not Bond.

Bond is the prototype of many modern males; single, never committing, in a line of work wherein he crosses paths with many people. Ergo, plenty of fruit on the tree for him to enjoy. Domino, the oligarch’s mistress in Thunderball, is like many of today’s women; able to take matters into their own hands. True too, of Fiona, the female villain. She is the perfect counterpart to Bond. She has sex with him because the job requires it. She also punches his ego when she tells him that, sexually, he’s nothing special: Just a part of the job.

The sixties were rife with new thinking and attitudes about sex. We referred to it as the sexual revolution. Movies,  like the Bond series, played into it. The Bond movies could not have been produced in the 50s. Bond would be a scandal in the 50s. In the 60s? He is a hero, and a role model. He’s the Bogey of the Boomers. The tough guy. Except that the Bogey movies were not filled with sex and violence. All that was off stage, or low key. More realistic. Bond is a caricature, not a real human being. Bond films are the door that opened to the fantastic films that came later in the 70s, like Star Wars, Superman, and beyond.

Bond, however, is based on a real life experience. Fleming worked in the spy game during WWII. He was, more or less, M. Not Bond. But he knew such men. He would send such men into the maelstrom. That takes a willingness to shut down the heart, to not let the mind be troubled.

Did Fleming write to purge his soul? Think of it this way; war was good to him. It gave him a job, and material to work with. And we got the benefit of it as well. We got to enjoy the stories without risking our souls.

That teenaged girl who saw her first Bond film learned to stay away from suave men in tuxedos. One just didn’t know what was underneath all that smooth talk, and those dry martinis that were shaken, not stirred.