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Bond's underwater investigation of the hull of the Disco Volante in TB is almost certainly based on a real life incident in April 1956, mostly forgotten now, where a completely unauthorized MI6 sent Britain's supposedly best frogman, Lionel "Buster" Crabbe, to investigate the undersides of a visiting Soviet cruiser (carrying dignitaries) and two destroyers in Portsmouth harbour.
While not exactly certain what happened, apparently Crabbe was intercepted by waiting Soviet frogmen, one of whom decades later claimed to have slit the Englishman's throat. The badly decomposed remains of Crabbe's body were only found more than a year later ... but the Soviets made a stink about it and it caused a public scandal and embarrassed the government, especially when MI6 clumsily tried to cover it all up, leading to the enforced retirement of then MI6 head, Sir John Sinclair.
We might see the episode in TB as an instance when early Bond becomes the fictional, heroic cover for a far less successful real life operation, much as the creation of Bond himself is, on a larger scale, a kind of a deliberate fictional reimagining for the public of such spies as Philby, Burgess and Maclean.
Indeed, according to Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends, the Soviets were probably tipped off by Philby himself, who while under heavy suspicion by MI5 at this point still had intimates in MI6 ....
The underwater stuff is pretty boring by the standard of films at the time: nothing else in the Bond films to that point had been as slow and ponderous.
There's a lot to look out for: The dummy who gets his mask broken by the spear gun; the crayfish; the random spear gun that does not fit in; Bond's air tanks having the branding disappear then reappear; the constant switching of one regulator to another between shots; the black paint wearing off the SPECTRE frogmen's spear guns because they had been painted just the night before shooting.
Many high- or near highpoints elsewhere: the kinky, predatory sexual chemistry between Fiona and Bond has arguably never been bettered ... Barry's score and the widescreen cinematography throughout is the best so far ... Connery looks great while demonstrating that being relaxed needn't mean phoning in his performance .... the mysteriously creepy henchman Vargas ... not to mention Bond's "I think he got the point," and other great one liners ... Claudine Auger's beauty, of course ... Adam's set for the SPECTRE meeting ... so much really.
I wonder if contemporary audiences in 1965 had more of a willing sense of disbelief regarding the back projection and some of the sped-up sequences. Maybe much as today's audiences have with the visual effects in superhero movies, which for all we know will look ridiculous to succeeding generations ....
It's an impressive feat, but it doesn't translate as good excitement. People write off Tom Cruise's exploits for similar reasons nowadays: doing something groundbreaking and technically impressive doesn't mean that it's automatically great to watch as part of a story.
I look forward to reading your discussion of film standards of 1965 and how Thunderball's underwater sequence is an impressive feat that doesn't translate as good excitement because it is boring, slow, and ponderous.
I'm not sure what this post is supposed to mean..? That is my point of view, yes.
You suggest a knowledge of film standards in 1965, which I interpret as support for you opinion. I am interested in what standards you are speaking of.
If you think this is an unusual complaint then read back through this very thread: you'll find many other people saying it.
When you compare Avatar or as someone has mentioned Meg 2 it's a different vibe. A watching of Meg 2 was making me seasick with the camera movements. Hard to follow the action and someone disorientating.
TB has a grace and style to it!
The scenes in YOLT where Sean and Kissy are walking through the mountains to get up to the volcano are also very beautiful, and seeing rural Japan in a movie was a bit of a feat too: but it's all edited tightly to keep it pacy and entertaining to watch.
I think you’re looking for an argument. I don’t know what point you’re trying to make here or what you think ‘standards’ means, but generally when people say ‘by the standards of x’ they’re making a direct comparison to other general examples of the same thing, as I have done here. This type of an attempt at a semantics-based argument doesn’t really interest me, sorry.
If you want to demonstrate that the standard of the day was to make long, ponderous and dull action scenes, then go for it.
Can't forget Ken Adams designing all those vehicles and sleds. It adds so much style and fantasy to the film.
Is this the single longest sequence in the series without any but the most incidental dialogue? I think it may be ... just the very brief exchange near the beginning between Bond and Leiter before Bond's own drop into the ocean ....
Now to many the following will sound like a bad thing, but it strikes me that the underwater battle plays a little like a movie from the silent era. Almost purely visual, especially with its intimate, formalized, highly gestural and choreographed physical movements. Like a ballet, as mentioned in the above post.
Of course the sequence features music, as did movies from the silent era (live, with orchestral accompaniment, if you were lucky), which only adds to the aesthetic, as well as many undrewater sound effects, however unrealistic.
I think this silent-movie effect may help account for why recent generations of Bond fans are so bored, even alienated, by the underwater battle. Almost as if personally offended by this dated aesthetic ....
But every generation has its own aesthetic, which is why so many younger people (I'm sixty) are likely to be bored by movies of the past. And this has probably always been true. They literally capture a moment in time that by its very definition appears dated to latter generations. And this dated quality may not only be aesthetic but also political .... but let's save the latter for another time.
It's most unlikely that audiences in 1965/1966 (the height of Bond mania) felt the same way about the underwater battle. Thunderball, afterall, was probably viewed in its day by more people than any Bond film ever in its own.
And why would they respond more favourably to that sequence than many of us today? Well, for one, it was a lot closer to the silent era (35 years), and the very birth of cinema, than we are today from Thunderball itself (almost 60 years), and so they were a lot more attuned to this almost purely visual silent movie aesthetic.
'EVERY THUNDERBALL DEBATE EVER'
:))
For me it's like complaining there's too much sand and shooting in a movie about D Day.
I think TB has a lot of problems: not least that they didn't seem to learn a lot of lessons about why GF was such a hit. I tend to think YOLT is the film where they actually tried to make a follow-up to GF and incorporated more of the ideas which made that film work.
Even just taking the nuke plots of the two films: in GF, 007 is actually handcuffed to the thing- you couldn't have higher stakes. But in TB we barely see the bombs, and they're off planted somewhere we never see and feel less connection with. There's not even a countdown at the end, which is kind of what you need with a big bomb plot. It's much less immediate, and less powerful.
The fight at the end really has the spectacular stuff and wouldn't chop much from that.
See I prefer TB to GF in many ways, among them because Bond is more proactive and has far more agency.
But regardless if one's prefer one to the other, the countdown had been done literally one film before. A second one would have come off as repetitive. I think it works better if the nukes are a MacGuffin.
He neither kills the baddie nor solves the plot in this one though :) That’s more the little chap; what’s his name? Kurtz?
It would be repetitive you’re right, which is probably a reason to steer clear of big bombs altogether really. YOLT had a countdown, which Bond averted, and I’d say it was more exciting.