You Only Live Twice

The original producers of the James Bond series, Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman made some interesting decisions with the early films.  One of them was not only to film the books out of order but to film some of the later books first.  You Only Live Twice was the eleventh Ian Fleming novel but was the fifth film.  Dr No was first film but came in the middle of the series.  From Russia With Love was the second film but the fourth book and Goldfinger, Thunderball, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service were all later books but were the third, fourth, and sixth films.  The logic might be to capitalize on a recent successful title but it is interesting that although the books follow a through-line the films were largely designed to be independent experiences with only loose connections so an audience member could watch one without having seen prior entries.

The first four film adaptations are pretty similar to the novels but You Only Live Twice takes the Japanese setting, the villain (Ernst Stavro Blofeld), two major supporting characters (Tiger Tanaka and Kissy Suzuki) and tells a different story.  

Spoilers for the novels and films of You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty's Secret Service below:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was planned as the fifth film but pushed back after conditions in Switzerland were not ideal for some of the ski sequences needed. The order of the books has On Her Majesty's Secret Service (OHMSS) right before You Only Live Twice which is now reversed.  As such the main thrust of the novel was discarded for the first time.  

The novel, set in 1962, begins as more of a character study as Bond is battling depression after the events of the last story.  Fleming had a heart attack not long before writing the book and was contemplating his mortality and his thoughts seep into the novel.  In the final pages of On Her Majesty's Secret Service Bond's archenemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld (the head of Spectre) and his companion Irma Bunt, tried to shoot Bond and accidentally killed Bond's new bride Tracy instead.  To save his job M, aware that Bond is not fit for dangerous missions, sends Bond to Japan to see if get the Japanese secret service to share a decoding machine that has information on the Soviet Union.  Bond spends a lot of the novel learning about Japanese culture and developing a friendship with Tiger Tanaka.  As Bond begins to heal emotionally Tanaka agrees to share the information if Bond will take out a Dr. Shatterhand who is running a Garden of Death full of poisonous plants in a castle on an island where people go to commit suicide.  Bond realizes that Shatterhand is Blofeld but keeps the information to himself so he can avenge his wife.  Bond lives as a fisherman for a time with Kissy Suzuki to get close to the island and eventually goes and after a violent showdown, strangles Blofeld and blows up the castle.  During these events Bond gets a head injury and develops amnesia.  Kissy helps Bond recover but does not tell him the truth of his past so he will stay with her.  Eventually Bond leaves for Vladivostok in the eastern USSR to try to find out more about his past not knowing that Kissy is pregnant.

This is all rich material but since On Her Majesty's Secret Service had not been made yet it would have been wildly out of context if the producers had done a straight adaptation.  A lot of these details were used in No Time To Die in which there is a poisonous garden, Bond leaves a woman unaware she is pregnant with his child, strangling Blofeld (using the same lines) but for You Only Live Twice the producers needed to put together another story quickly.  At the time the films were coming out once a year but in this case You Only Live Twice was released in the summer of 1967, a year and a half after the December 1965 release of Thunderball.  Given the scope of the film, it is still pretty impressive.

The producers hired writer Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to pen the film since their usual writer Richard Maibaum was unavailable.  Director Lewis Gilbert signed up for the first of three Bond adventures (all of which have plots in which the entire world is threatened by a villain with a huge base) and veteran cinematographer Freddie Young (Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia) was also hired.  Perhaps the star of the behind the scenes was production designer Ken Adam who made excellent work of the Japanese locations and built a set to resemble a rocket base inside a volcano.  

Sean Connery had originally signed a six picture deal, but was released from his contract after this, his fifth film.  The overlong shooting schedules, which prevented him from taking other roles, combined with his relatively low salary had worn out any enthusiasm he had left and it showed in this film.  Overall Connery's line deliveries are flat and he looks out of shape and disheveled.  If Bond had a stronger emotional arc as he did in the novel (or if this film had been On Her Majesty's Secret Service as planned) Connery would likely have been more engaged.  For example Bond does not seem interested or antagonistic toward Blofeld, when he finally meets him which drains a lot of the tension out of the latter parts of the film.  As Bond has been battling with SPECTRE for the past few films it should be a crescendo and it is not.   

I think some of this might have to do with Lewis Gilbert's direction.  A few years ago I watched a documentary that detailed the making of his Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me.  In the documentary we see various takes and angles in the shooting of the scene in which Stromberg (the villain played by Curt Jurgens) explains his plan to Bond.  Jurgens has a line that says "You have certainly been persistent.  Very well, now your curiosity can be satisfied."  In all the takes Jurgens (a German actor speaking his second language) throws away the "very well" as if it was at the end of first sentence and it is confusing.  At no point does Gilbert correct him or suggest that Jurgens deliver the line more clearly.  Upon further examination there are a lot of monotone deliveries in Gilbert's films, especially Moonraker.  This tells me that Gilbert probably did not focus much on actor's performances and was better at managing the technical logistics of the scenes.  

Two Japanese actresses were cast, Akiko Wakabayashi plays Aki, Bond's partner who works under Tiger who Bond gets involved with.  Mie Hama plays Kissy, who Bond "marries" when he has to go undercover in the fishing village.  Of the two Aki is far more memorable.  She is self assured and competent, helps to teach Bond (and the audience) about life in Japan and unlike many other women in the film, never appears under dressed despite going to bed with Bond at least twice.  Mie Hama was originally cast but was struggling with English and so the roles were swapped as Kissy had much less dialogue.  Kissy plays a crucial role in bringing in the cavalry but does not have the opportunity to make an impression.  I think the film would be better if Aki had survived throughout and Kissy were not in it.

As the film opens the guitar has a nice twang that plays well against the black and white gunbarrel.  The first shot of the pre-title sequence sets the stage as it is a rocket in space paired with John Barry's majestic "Capsule in Space" theme.  The message to audiences is this film will be even bigger than Thunderball.  In 1967 humans had gone to space but not yet reached the moon.  2001 was not released until the following year so this was one of the first big budget films to have scenes set in space.  The astronaut comes out of the capsule but then is killed almost immediately by the approaching SPECTRE rocket by having his line cut.  In 2001 director Stanley Kubrick stages a similar scene but it is paced much more slowly.  Gilbert and editor Peter Hunt (who had edited the previous films but had to be coaxed back into the job after quitting the series because he was not offered the director's chair) set the horror (the rocket looks like a giant monster with an open mouth) and move on.  

I do have a couple of quibbles with the pre-title sequence.  The rockets, especially the U.S. craft, look like models by modern standards.  Also, while I like the zoom out on the first shot of Bond's the staging of the faux assassination makes no sense.  Bond seems surprised when the bed pops up.  The bed is shot up and the policemen find Bond appearing dead.  We needed a scene need explaining how all this was faked (gunmen fire blanks, charges in the bed, fake blood, cop was part of the ruse) or it should have been set up differently.  Also, how would the cop know so much about Bond's womanizing reputation?  And is Bond temporarily stationed in Hong Kong (he is referred to as "our man in Hong Kong")?  When I first saw this film I saw they were making good use of the title.

Maurice Binder's titles make thematic use of the volcanos which play nicely against the elegant song.  The final shot is of the rising sun which is what Japan is and where the film is about to spend the rest of its run time.  

The naval funeral in the port of Hong Kong feels fitting for a man of Bond's rank (and may be faking out the audience a little).  There is an establishing shot of Victoria Harbor but the shots of the actual boat are in Gibraltar Harbor (notice the mountains change once we are looking at the boat).  The spy watching presumably works as a SPECTRE informant.  I would surmise the existence of this scene may have prompted the producers of No Time To Die to stage Bond's actual funeral as a much more personal gathering in M's office to avoid repetition and for a stronger emotional impact.

M's office on the submarine is a nice twist and keeps the characters in Asia.  Bond burning the address, catching the book in his hat and refusing to say "I love you" to placate Moneypenny are all fun touches.  Would it be safe for a man be launched like a torpedo?  As Bond gets  out of the water out are we supposed to believe he has just landed in Japan?  The distance is about 1700 miles from Hong Kong where he only left a few moments earlier.  

While there are some tasteless moments such as Bond and Tanaka getting bathed and waited on by young girls who have no names or lines, as a whole the film treats Japan respectfully.  Bond recognizes local customs (ie he takes his shoes off when entering a home and happily drinks sake).  The sumo wrestling scene gives the film some color and is a nod to a moment in the book.  I enjoyed that Bond says "I love you" to Aki who he has just met but not Moneypenny who he has known for years.  

Charles Gray is much better cast in this film as the slightly effeminate and dryly British Henderson  than as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever.  In just a couple of moments of screen time we get a full sense of this man's life through his colorful lines and the set design of his apartment.  Bond takes to him enough that he does not correct Henderson when Henderson gets his martini wrong.  There is some debate that Gray might have flubbed the line ("That's stirred, not shaken, right?") but while preparing the drink he clearly stirs it so I think it is a wink to the audience.  Henderson quietly hints that the doorman at the Russian embassy provides him with "certain other things" which could mean sex or young women or some contraband.  Gray makes a good actor's choice as Henderson suddenly looks confused when he is stabbed from behind.  

Bond realizes the assassin must be close and he quickly catches, kills and impersonates the killer to find out where they are based.  Bond's fight with the driver, played by Samoan-American professional wrestler Peter Maivia  (grandfather to Dwayne Johnson) has some clever staging and is marred only slightly by some sped up shots (perhaps to cover stuntmen faces-I doubt Connery, as well as he often performed in the fights-flipped Maivia over his head).  The lack of score gives the scene a rawness.  

Bond's meeting of Tanaka has a lot of interesting beats (trapdoor with a long chute, underground train, Tanaka using cameras to monitor Bond's movements).  The sound of the shoes on the cold metal as Bond pursues Aki with no score gives an unpredictability.  Tanaka's usage of the underground train to protect his identity contrasts with him personally leading the ninja charge against the volcano base in the climax.

Bond's return to the place he just broke out of is nervy and unique (usually once he leaves a location he does not return).  Bond is spied on by several cameras but does no one looks at footage from the same room the night before?  Gilbert builds some tension as Helga opens the door where he had stashed the body of the man he fought the night before.  Connery is more animated in this scene as Bond gleefully describes the (made up) violent death of a coworker and has a fabulous reaction to Helga's line about "healthy chests" while sitting in front of her cleavage.  

Osato's instructs Helga to kill Bond but the decision to gun him down in the street right in front of the building is almost as foolish as Bond not noticing a car following him near the enemy's den.  Aki must just continually park outside waiting for Bond to about to be shot since she rescues him twice from the street in front of Osato's headquarters within about twelve hours.  The car chase is entertaining but not well edited since in long shots Bond appears to be firing back at the pursing car but in close shots is just sitting in the passenger seat.  The helicopter grabbing the SPECTRE car and dropping it into Tokyo Bay is inventive but it makes no sense that Bond is somehow watching this on a monitor since there is no second helicopter filming it.

The dock scene starts with a little tension as the rough looking guys get a little closer than is comfortable.  Barry's music teases the suspense.  Although as an agent Aki (who is wearing a very nice sweater) is probably a good fighter Bond chivalrously draws the men away to protect her.  Nowadays a scene like this would be intricately staged but as it stands the scene has an looseness since Bond is not going up against trained gunmen.  Some pieces of the scene do not work (Bond shoots at close range at two workers on the conveyor belt who keep coming indicating he either missed or the sound design person mistakenly added a gunshot).  Bond also shoots a dock worker who is unarmed.  Gilbert and Young stage a magnificent tracking shot on top of a container that works all the better for not having excessively detailed action.  No matter how many workers Bond knocks out they keep coming at him like a swarm of insects.    

When Bond is captured he is lucky that Helga is attracted to him and decides to seduce the information out of him despite threatening him with a knife, which she notably holds it to catch the sunlight for the camera.  There is an unsettling feeling as we never think Helga has suddenly switched sides.  Helga is an obvious successor to Fiona in Thunderball, but is quieter and more cunning, rarely revealing what she is up to until she actually does it.  

Helga's attempt to assassinate Bond by trapping him in a crashing a plane may fit with the film's bigger motifs but it makes little sense in the story.  Bond's escape by chopping the board holding him is  uninventive at best and one of the few times I think they should have used a gadget.  The sound is good but the whole sequence feels like an afterthought especially with the rearscreen projection is used in the shot of Helga in the air.  

Q makes a welcome appearance, typically annoyed at having to travel so far.  The sequence with Little Nellie shows us a lot of the countryside while Bond searches for signs of the missing rocket.  The first portion uses Barry's 007 theme and is reminiscent of the producers' ultimately fruitless hunt for a castle in Japan to replicate the setting from the novel.  Both Bond and the producers spot volcanoes which turns into the setting for the third act.  The shadows hint nicely that the area is more menacing than it first appears.  The air battle is scored to the original Bond theme which is more propulsive than we remember and I find it more more exciting than any dogfight in the original Top Gun.  The geography is clearly established, the setting is attractive, the action matches the movement, as Bond uses all of Little Nellie guns.  Sadly one of the cameramen, Johnny Jordon, lost a foot during the filming of this scene (and a few years later tragically died falling out of a plane into the Pacific Ocean while filming Catch 22).    

The whole setup for the film, Bond has to figure out who is kidnapping astronauts is flawed.  After the first event neither the Americans nor the Russians would ever continue to send the people into space knowing they might be kidnapped unless the rockets were loaded with armed soldiers.  Putting that aside after the Russian craft is grabbed Gilbert shows us the rocket arriving at the SPECTRE base though not why neither the U.S. nor Russia can track it.  Blofeld himself is directing this operation and through this scene we see how the volcano base works.  Pleasance's even but quietly menacing tone fits with Eric Pohlman who voiced Blofeld in Thunderball and From Russia With Love even though the accents are different.  Blofeld's power is conveyed by how afraid everyone is of him.  The piranhas (which are never seen) are similar punishment methods from the previous films (which much make recruiting a challenge) but also foreshadow a danger for Bond who will later be in the room.  Barry inserts the Bond theme when Blofeld says his name.  There is a nice moment of humor when the platform closes after Helga's death, recalling the reappearing chair in Thunderball after a similar execution.

The scenes at the ninja school are a nice showcase for the ninja stuntmen who will participate in the finale and a little reminiscent of SPECTRE island from Thunderball.  Aki's death is suspenseful (the dripping of the poison down the string is agonizing) and then tragic as we see she suffers.  Bond is immediately detached and a little bitter.  

The training scene in which Bond loses a practice exchange only to have the assailant try to kill him is  a good character moment.  In practice the man is a better fighter but once the situation turns real, Bond's survival instincts kick in and he easily disarms the man and stabs him with his own knife (for the second time in the film).

The Shinto wedding scene is done nicely, with little dialogue, scored with soft strings that go into a nice melody when Kissy's face is revealed, proving that Tiger either has a very low opinion of Kissy's appearance or he was teasing Bond.  Either way both men's discussion of Kissy's appearance is in poor taste.  Bond looks a little ridiculous in his Beatles wig but Bond going undercover as a Japanese fisherman is one of the few details that was lifted from the book and we do get a sense of the hardworking community once he enters the village.  In the book Bond is easily identified as a foreigner  trying to look Japanese so it's ok for the disguise to not quite work.  Interestingly the fake wedding here goes on much longer onscreen than Bond's real wedding does in the next film.

Kissy, played by Mie Hama, is never named in the film and does not have personality that Aki does, but the character was pivotal in the novel.  Bond's remark about the oysters when Kissy refuses to go to bed with him is funny.  However Aki has just died so his attempts also feel out of place

Young frames a beautiful shot of the fishing fleet leaving in the morning though there is a shot of Kissy with an obvious looking backscreen projection.  The cave scene is suspenseful and the long walk up the mountain is beautifully scored and filmed.  When they arrive at the top and discover the hidden base there is some sloppy plotting.  Bond puts on suction cups and a grey ninja outfit that he was never shown carrying.  Gilbert should have given Connery a bag or something.  Also they just spent most of the day going up the mountain and Kissy immediately goes back down and arrives pretty quickly back at the water (and narrowly avoids being killed by a SPECTRE helicopter in a suspenseful scene).  Following this Kissy is shown quickly back at the top with all of Tiger's ninjas.  There is a great reveal of all of them but there should be some explanation as to how they arrived so fast (a helicopter of their own, perhaps).

Inside the base Bond frees the astronauts and plans to replace the SPECTRE astronauts on the rocket that is heading out to intercept the next American launch.  The moment when Bond and the Americans are walking toward is scored with Barry's space walk melody from the beginning suggesting he is about to go into space until Blofeld catches that something is up and stops him.  There is a flaw in this though.  The other two astronauts are not stopped as far as we can tell and Bond is replaced.  So unless there is a cut scene explaining that the other two were also stopped Bond later blows up a rocket with two American astronauts onboard.  The American astronauts are also seemingly complying with SPECTRE's mission to intercept the American launch so as it stands the third astronaut (who replaced Bond) threatened them must have convinced them of the worthiness of SPECTRE's cause.

Bond's introduction to Blofeld has a nice underplayed score.  The producers have wisely hidden Blofeld's face until Bond meets him and certainly this film is a big enough one to warrant showing us the man behind the curtain.  It is not clear from the staging how Blofeld can see Bond before he leans out from the chair.  The scar and Pleasance's wide eyed are a little chilling but he looks tiny compared to Connery which makes it good that they never have a fistfight.

Connery's bored look works while the ninjas are getting gunned down as it helps Blofeld to relax enough to let Bond smoke (to create a diversion to open the door so the ninjas can get in to save the day).  This leads to Blofeld walking Bond to the main room and preparing to execute Bond.  The moment when Tiger saves Bond by wounding Blofeld with a ninja star (with  Blofeld escapes in a small monorail car) works but Blofeld has no motivation to execute Bond right there and the whole scenario makes Bond too passive.  If Blofeld had tried to drop Bond into the piranha pool then it might have been a better use for it than Bond's underwhelming fight with Hans a few moments later (in which both actors and their stunt people are clearly following stage directions).

The moment when the ninjas appear on the volcano is made powerful with the score and the framing.  The overall sequence of the ninjas dropping into the volcano and gradually overwhelming the SPECTRE guards with their advanced fighting techniques and variety of weapons is original and we can feel the vastness of the set.  The film repeats the previous error from the car chase in that on monitors we can see things in space that are not being filmed.

The finale again plays loose with the geography and rules established earlier and is cut too quickly for events to have any impact.  Right after Bond blows up the rocket (and his American buddies) Blofeld sets the volcano to erupt even though it has been hollowed out.  Tiger, Bond, Kissy and all the ninjas escape by going through the other end of the cave Bond and Kissy were in earlier and easily get all the way down to the sea before the big explosion even though the sea is miles away.  The cave, which had poisonous gas in it which killed a local girl and almost killed Bond and Kissy, is now inexplicably safe for everyone to swim through.  After they arrive there is a big explosion shown in back projection which despite the attractive color looks silly by modern standards.  The British submarine interrupting Bond and Kissy's romantic moment in the raft (and Moneypenny's delight at doing so) is a fun end to the film as we imagine the conversation to come.  It also reverses the end of Thunderball in which Bond and Domino were pulled into the air from a raft.  

Despite my remarks I find the third act of the film a lot of fun to watch but it does not hold up to serious scrutiny.  Peter Hunt took over the editing late in the day and reportedly cut more than an hour out of the film, which could explain some of the lapses in logic. There may be cut scenes explaining why it is now safe to swim in the water or the Americans also being removed from the spaceship.  These are also things I only noticed after seeing the film a few times and did not impede my joy of it at all.  

You Only Live Twice is a more enjoyable watch than Thunderball due its better pace and villain and I enjoy it much more than Gilbert's final Bond film, Moonraker.  Connery himself gives a much more engaged performance in Thunderball, perhaps motivated in part by his love for the Bahamas location where he later bought a home, whereas apparently he did not enjoy filming in Japan where the intensity of the fandom made him feel overwhelmed.  Later Connery made an interesting detective thriller called Rising Sun based on a Michael Critchon novel which was set in Los Angeles but was Japanese themed.  Connery's character John Connor was the westerner who taught all the Americans how to navigate the Japanese business culture.   

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