Review: "Goldfinger" and the solidification of the 007 formula
Movie of the Week #45
Welcome to Movie of the Week, a Wednesday column where we take a look back at a classic, obscure, or otherwise interesting movie, with writing of mine that’s never been published online before. Enjoy…
Goldfinger
1964, Dir. Guy Hamilton
Originally published in the book 200 Reviews, based on an unpublished piece written in 2013
The most iconic of the James Bond films, and the one that cemented the formula audiences would enjoy for decades to come, what strikes me most about Goldfinger is, ironically enough, how unique it feels from its predecessors. The film’s structure may be more than commonplace now, but watching the series in order, this one is a very different beast than From Russia With Love, just as that film innovated heavily on what Dr. No established.
The biggest change is epitomized by the title character, Auric Goldfinger, a delightfully wicked villain who introduces a fresh antagonistic dynamic to the series. Goldfinger is not a mysterious or shadowy figure like Dr. No, Blofeld, or Red Grant; Bond confronts him in the very first scene after the credits, and from there, he is almost as big a presence as 007 himself. He and Bond partake in many verbal or psychological sparring matches – including a truly spectacular gentleman’s showdown at a golf course – and Bond spends the last half of the film as Goldfinger’s prisoner, in far over his head and waiting for the right opportunity to strike. It is fitting that Goldfinger should get his own theme song – one that supplants Monty Norman’s Bond theme for most of the picture – as his iconic presence keeps Bond on his toes in ways neither 007 nor the audience can predict.
Pussy Galore too is a new kind of Bond character, a love interest largely disinterested in love, cold as ice and working for the bad guy. From a culturally historic standpoint, the character is at once fascinating and problematic – explicitly a lesbian in Ian Fleming’s book, and implied to be one here, it is frightening how close Bond’s conquest of her veers towards rape, and how uninteresting she becomes post-coitus – though looking at her now, I mostly find Pussy a fairly dull creation. Honor Blackman is quite good in the part, but until On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, there simply were not any female roles in the Bond series fleshed out enough to be truly interesting, and Pussy is a victim of that sobering truth. That being said, we do get to hear Sean Connery say “pussy” over and over again in that wonderful, classy accent of his, so I certainly cannot complain too much.
Goldfinger moves at a near perfect pace, finding time to work espionage, action, humor, and interesting character beats in organically from start to finish. It has one of the best pre-credits sequences in the entire series – “Shocking; positively shocking” – a ridiculously cool Aston Martin car chase, an extremely satisfying showdown at Fort Knox (production designer Ken Adam’s most stunning set up to that point, and of the best in the series overall), and some gorgeous cinematography in the Swiss countryside. Entertaining does not even begin to describe it. This is just an absurdly fun movie, and that’s all before I mention gold-paint victim Jill Masterson or hat-wielding henchman Oddjob, the first of many ‘freak assassins’ that would quickly become staples of the films.
It is very easy to see why Goldfinger remains one of the most universally beloved Bond films. Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli were justifiably confident in what they had created up to now, and sharp enough to build upon everything audiences found most intoxicating to craft a film that has stood the test of time as a true classic, and perhaps the single most influential film in the series. It is not my favorite of the films – I think the second half, for all its strengths, is noticeably less engaging than the first, a byproduct of Bond being in captivity for most of it – but I cannot deny its significance, nor its many, many pleasures. One cannot deny the 007 brand was firing on all possible cylinders at this point.
Read the book 200 Reviews by Jonathan R. Lack in Paperback or on Kindle
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