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The fact that Lazenby has only one Bond outing adds to the very intense dream-like quality the film conveys. As in many dreams, the film is packed with familiar images and sensations, but everything is slightly skewed. The star, story, tone and music all have an appropriate, but distinctly different, feel. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the longest Bond sagas, and the writers use that length to touchingly explore a character we've seen only certain sides of before. The difference is that Bond, played with youthful vigor and a stoically guarded emotional depth, meets Diana Rigg's Contessa Tracy, with whom he finally finds true love. This sun-dappled romance should have all of the sincerity of an advert, but somehow the writers and actors make this a genuinely special relationship of equals. By seeing what sort of strong woman it takes to capture Bond's heart, the character of 007 actually gains in our esteem. With both of the characters growing over the course of the film, it's a unique, illuminating moment in the Bond series.
The plot is classic Bond, but again with odd twists. Bond discovers that Blofeld (Telly Savalas) is hiding out in Switzerland and attempting to secure his royal heritage. After conferring with genealogy expert Sir Hilary Bray (played with prissy precision by George Baker), 007 disguises himself as Bray and pursues Blofeld to his Alpine hideout (the transformation is made complete by the fact that Baker actually dubs his voice over Lazenby's during the disguise sequences). From the start, Bond is rigidly determined to get Blofeld, to the extent that he even tries to quit his job when M (Bernard Lee) refuses to let him pursue SPECTRE's felinophilic head.
At Blofeld's lair, Bond comes across a bevy of beautiful women, whom Blofeld is curing of dietary allergies. At least that's the cover for his true plan; to hypnotize them and send them back to their native lands with chemicals designed to render the entire planet sterile. Ridiculous, I know, but the movie pulls it off in the grand Bond tradition. In its science-fictional way, the plan is very simple; simplicity, as seen in Goldfinger, has always been the secret to a good Bond threat. Naturally though, Bond's identity is soon uncovered. Why it takes Blofeld so long to do this is a mystery, since the two came face-to-face for the first time in the previous film, You Only Live Twice.
Bond eventually escapes and leads Blofeld's thugs on a lengthy and improbable chase that encompasses skis, race cars on ice, and a large man in a polar bear suit, with plenty of bad rear-screen projection to go around. He also rejoins Diana Rigg, to whom he eventually proposes, even though she comes over as schizophrenic. On one hand, in the chase sequences, she's strong, brave and capable, while at the same time, they've dubbed in her whining for help and advice.
The Contessa is eventually kidnapped, leaving Bond and Marc-Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti) to stage a thrillingly shot aerial raid which rescues her and destroys Blofeld's stash of sterilizing chemicals. Then the film keeps going, as Bond actually marries Tracy (a touching sequence with Q (Desmond Llewelyn) showing genuine affection for 007 and Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) moved to tears). The latter might seem like a cliche but Maxwell's performance makes the moment. All of the flirting suddenly takes on a secretly desperate, lonely quality, and it's easy to feel for her (another facet of the Bond mythos previously untouched).
The film ends with Blofeld's return and Mrs. Bond's subsequent death at his hands. Because we know that Bond was a rake, and we know what kind of a woman it takes to inspire a sense of commitment in him, the love Bond shows has real power and the loss is that much greater.
I'm always impressed at the amount of pathos that the right script can generate for a pop icon. For the true Bond fan, On Her Majesty's Secret Service can be an enlightening, exhilarating, and ultimately disturbing film to view. A character we've grown to trust, love, emulate, and identify with is given a glimpse of true happiness, only to have it tragically ripped away. Mirroring this, the movie maintains a dark, naturally-lit tone when Bond is without Tracy, to contrast the sun she brings to the picture.
The score caps this jarring atmosphere, with John Barry delivering a driving, dark heartbeat for the story, sparing the Bond theme until almost the very end. Oddly, the central song comes from Louis Armstrong, appearing in the Bond/Tracy courtship montage. Sung by anyone else, "We Have All the Time in the World" would feel sappy and maudlin, but Armstrong makes it work.
Whether Lazenby would have gone on to make a classic Bond, to equal Connery's, is unknown. Ultimately, it helps On Her Majesty's Secret Service that he didn't. I think his uniqueness is what gives the film so much of its memorability, making it an aberrant tangent. The film is personal, romantic, and tragic in the same sense that Vertigo is, and I think the two movies would make for an interesting double-feature. On Her Majesty's Secret Service holds a special place as a moving, surprising, and thoughtful anomaly in the Bond series (which is the richer for it).
Patrick McCray.
VNDP20D@prodigy.com
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