Unhappily Ever After: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969, Dir. Peter Hunt): 

Bond suddenly thought, Hell! I’ll never find another girl like this one. She’s got everything I’ve looked for in a woman. She’s beautiful, in bed and out. She’s adventurous, brave, resourceful. She’s exciting always. She’d let me go on with my life. She’s a lone girl, not cluttered up with friends, relations, belongings. Above all, she needs me. It’ll be someone for me to look after. I’m fed up with all these untidy, casual affairs that leave me with a bad conscience. I wouldn’t mind having children. I’ve got no social background into which she would or wouldn’t fit. We’re two of a pair, really. Why not make it for always?

Bond found his voice saying those words that he had never said in his life before, never expected to say.

‘Tracy. I love you. Will you marry me?’

— Ian Fleming, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was always going to be an oddity in the Bond cinematic universe. At the time of its release, folks weren’t used to the idea of someone other than Sean Connery playing Bond, James Bond — certainly not a brash Australian who turned up at the world premiere in a beard and confirmed that he was one-and-done with the series. The movie was a gamble — a big one — for Bond producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. Not only did they hire a neophyte actor, sometime car salesman and male model to take over for probably the most popular actor on the planet, but they had the chutzpah to place him in the adaptation of Ian Fleming’s most poignant, downbeat Bond novel. While Majesty’s might not be the best book in the series — Fleming’s flair for journalistic detail gets the better of him for a good chunk of the story, where we have to sit through interminable explanations of bio-diseases and heraldry — it cuts the deepest, as Bond lowers his guard to entertain the possibility of a wife and something resembling a soul, before having it all snatched away from him.

As it is with the book, so it is with the movie. Bond editor Peter Hunt was elevated to the director’s chair, and in opposition to the extravagances of You Only Live Twice, was tasked to deliver a faithful rendition of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. To the producers, the timing must have seemed right: the tumultuous sixties were coming to a close, and cinema audiences were now getting exposed to more grit, more violence, more dissonance. Goodbye The Sound of Music, hello Midnight Cowboy. The expectation was that Hunt would deliver a more grounded film in line with more grounded times.

What resulted was a flick that honored all the standard Bond conventions (007 bedding a multitude of babes, the return of SPECTRE and Ernest Stavro Blofeld, the final raid on the villain’s hideout with the future of the world at stake) even as it deflated them. Take the pre-title sequence: Hunt includes all the requisite elements (a scenic beach in Portugal, a beautiful woman in danger, a brawl with bad guys), but goes somber and moody in the presentation. And instead of thanking Bond (George Lazenby) for taking the trouble to save her from a suicide attempt, Contessa Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) ditches him, leaving Lazenby to utter one of the series’ most memorable in-jokes: “This never happened to the other feller.” That feeling of a world slightly out of joint persists throughout the rest of the film, reinforced by the presence of Lazenby. After five films with Sean Connery, the Aussie must have been a shock to the system. Athletic, jaunty and coltish, he lacked Connery’s all-out charisma, but his relaxed, just-above-wooden performance (call it a fine wood, like mahogany) is key to the film’s singular perspective. This is a youthful Bond, untouched by cynicism, whose world is about to be rocked.

Taking its cues directly from Fleming’s novel, the movie’s plot is concerned with Bond the private individual as well as Bond the public servant. As fate would have it, Tracy is the daughter of Marc-Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), head of one of the biggest crime syndicates in Europe; in this strange new age of Bond, strange bedfellows are now the norm, as Draco attempts to bribe 007 into marrying his daughter as a last-ditch attempt to settle her down. Bond isn’t so willing to oblige (“I have a bachelor’s taste for freedom”), so Draco plays his trump card: knowledge of the whereabouts of Blofeld (Telly Savalas), Bond’s arch-enemy. From there Bond and Tracy’s relationship flowers against all odds, and then it’s off to the Swiss Alps, where Blofeld is holed up, brainwashing an international cast of lovelies to do his bidding in his latest diabolical scheme. In another departure from the norm, Bond masquerades as dithering College of Arms professor Hilary Bray (“Call me… Hilly”) to infiltrate Blofeld’s fortress. Talk about upping the difficulty level for a new actor: Lazenby is dubbed by actor George Baker and dresses up in frills and a kilt for this lengthy sequence, which is kind of like asking a right-handed quarterback to throw left-handed for his first NFL start.

Up to this point in the movie, audiences must have been wondering what the hell was going on. Save for a brainwashing scene lifted from the novel (“You love chickens. You love their flesh… their voice…“), the usual campiness is missing. This Bond is a deconstructed man, stripped down to his wits and that skimpy kilt. Instead of international intrigue, there’s a romantic montage with Bond and Tracy, the only one of its kind in the series, set to the lovely John Barry tune “We Have All the Time in the World” (sung by Louis Armstrong, his last major recorded performance). In place of an overwrought action setpiece to get the blood flowing, we have a clockwork suspense scene in which Bond must steal files from an office before a pudgy little Swiss lawyer returns from lunch. The usual office bits with M (Bernard Lee) and Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) are tweaked, with Bond submitting his resignation (“Kindly present it to that monument in there”) and Moneypenny saving the day. As played by Savalas, Blofeld is an affable gangster who parallels Bond’s identity crisis: deluded with snobbery, he seems more interested in confirming that he’s a honest-to-goodness Count than holding the world to ransom. The most threatening villain turns out to be his right-hand woman, the matronly Fraulein Bunt (Ilse Steppat, in her final role). Even the gadgets that had become so prevalent are made fun of: the only Q device in the film is so hands-free that Bond spends his time perusing a Playboy magazine while it whirs away. What Hunt does have is a clear affection for Fleming’s world. He drenches the casino scenes in smoky elegance, throws the fans some juicy bones (we see M’s home and Bond’s office for the first time), and takes his time enjoying the scenery in Portugal and the soaring Alps; this travelogue aspect would all but disappear in future Bond entries.

But just when you wonder where it’s all going, the story (and Hunt) drop the hammer down. Bond makes his escape from Blofeld and his goons, and the film busts out with some of the series’ most kinetic action sequences. Shot with daredevil abandon by Willy Bogner, the ski chases are top-class, and for once the heroine gets to share in the action with Bond, as Tracy shows up in the nick of time to save him (another twist on the usual conventions). Mixing electronics with his usual brassy theatrics, John Barry elevates the excitement with his best Bond soundtrack, and like the film, his instrumental title theme, the only one in the entire series, is unique. Hunt pushes the jagged editing style of his earlier Bond work to a new level, with every fight and action scene splintered into hard-hitting yet coherent shards. In a series that has become known for its stuntwork, few setpieces can top the final bobsled chase between Bond and Blofeld, as bodies and sleds careen at bone-crushing speeds. Through it all, the focus is squarely on Bond. Where 007 in Connery’s day would be more likely to sail through with a bemused expression, Lazenby is allowed to show fear, exhaustion and even anger. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service reminds us that Bond is at his most compelling when he’s less than indestructible.

All of the above catapult the film into the upper echelon of Bond movies; where it sits on your list of favorites depends on your attitude towards the film’s human element. Lazenby and Rigg make for a cute pairing, although there’s less heat in their relationship than one would want, despite Rigg’s best efforts to humanize their repartee. Still, she’s commanding yet vulnerable, an entirely plausible dream woman who no man in his right mind would resist. There’s very few moments in the Bond film series that correlate with the scene in which Bond, on the run and shacked up with Tracy in a barn, confesses, “An agent shouldn’t be concerned with anyone but himself… [but] I’ll have to find something else to do.” When he finally pops the question to her and Rigg takes a second to let it sink in, it’s an unabashedly tender and languorous moment. Like Casino Royale, the only other Bond movie that dares to imagine him with a lifetime partner, the love story does get minimized a bit by all the other goings-on, but it also gives Bond a clear stake in the action, leading to the wonderfully ironic climax, where he teams up with Draco and his gangsters to rescue Tracy after his own government refuses to budge.

After all its twists on the Bond formula, the film concludes with two whoppers. The dream of being James Bond, untouchable and indomitable, surrenders to the lure of domestic bliss, and then even that gives way to a final catastrophe. To Fleming, the title of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was both prophecy and fate: no matter what he did, Bond would never escape his prescribed role of lone government assassin. To audiences weaned on the fairy-tale finishes of all the previous Bonds, this must have been a gut-punch of immense proportions. For Lazenby, it would be the end. Convinced by his closest advisers that James Bond would soon be passe, the would-be superstar backed away from a long-term contract, sealing his fate as the answer to a trivia question. It’s a shame, given his critical role in the proceedings. Bond fans often play the “what-if” game with this film, and imagine Connery in the role, giving much-needed omph to the love scenes. But would Connery, self-possessed to the end, have been as shell-shocked as Lazenby in the final moments, or as blankly vulnerable? “We have all the time in the world,” Lazenby whispers to a woman who is beyond hearing him, and just this once, Bond is out of time and luck. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service had its own share of ill fortune — a moderate success at the box office, it still fell far short of the previous films in profits, prompting Broccoli and Saltzman to scurry back to the safe, hoary arms of formula. At least there is one happy ending to all this: almost five decades since its release, the film’s stature has risen among aficionados and casual fans alike. Never again would Bond take as many artistic risks, and reap as many artistic rewards. ■