Has Success Spoiled James Bond?

MOVIES

Has Success Spoiled James Bond?

John Kane

by

Things change. If the calendar didn't tell us we're safely into the seventies, the systematic crumbling of our sixties" idols would. The Kennedys are gone, no longer the national force they once were; Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and any number of others are gone, their albums now serving as a dim reminder of a glory that was once supposed to have been; even blacks are, well if not exactly gone, at least no longer the angry, Chic force they were once perceived to be.

James Bond, almost alone of all the idols of the sixties, survives. Double-oseven, the suave spy in a velvet smoking jacket who came in from the cold war, is still big boxoffice. There have been seven Bond films to date; the eighth, The Man With the Golden Gun, has just gone into release. Like its predecessors, it's expected to be a blockbuster. Note

that I said blockbuster. The Bond films don't merely turn a profit^ for more than a decade now they have consistently been among the year's top grossing films.

Why? Well, nobody seems to think the films themselves are particularly good. In the beginning, with Dr. No and From Russia With Love, they were amusing, and parts of Goldfinger were considerably more than that. But Goldfinger, with its devious plot and suspenseful set pieces, was the Bond film that inadvertently dug the grave for the rest of the series. When the film went through the roof, the producers decided, correctly, that it was the gadgetry, not the plot, that audiences were turning on to. The emphasis for the series was set. Now the Bond films give you what other movies can't even afford to suggest: explosions, underwater bat-

tles, volcanoes, trick cars, Fort Knox robberies, the works. And ever since Goldfinger you could go blind searching for the plot in a Bond film.

It's even become irrelevant who portrays Bond (though it wasn't when George Lazenby tried in On Her Majesty's Secret Service). Sean Connery was good in the role, tense and amusing long after the series had turned to flab. But Roger Moore isn't good; with his dry-asdust British clubman schtick and his stock expressions he's an escapee from syndicated television who inexplicably made it into the Big Casino on a pass. But nobody seems to mind; when he arches his eyebrows and wheezes out a crack, the audiences laughs just as if it were Connery.

Some people thought the counterculture (remember?) might kill off Bond, a hero who appeals to three distinctly establishment appetites, violence, snobbery, and male chauvinism. Most heroes appeal to those appetites, but Bond's cold war ruthlessness and his soldier of fortune aura deny him even the righteous sincerity of a Billy Jack or a Buford Pusser. The people behind the series never tried to adjust Bond to the times, and I'd say you'd have to be desperate to laugh at the ancient double entendres and wine tasting jokes that still turn up in the scripts. But I'd be wrong. Nothing has turned the public off.

And nothing probably ever will. Because James Bond is beyond mere success now. What started as a fad, like the Apes movies or hula hoops or topless bathing suits, has become an institution, like Frank Sinatra or Vietnam or McDonald's. When the Bond films survived the cultural upheaval of the late sixties, the series passed its trial by fire. The outdated attitudes, the non-plots, the feeble cops from Hitchcock, none of it mattered. The special effects were enough to carry the day.

It seems a distinctly American syndrome. If someone can sustain his or her popularity past the passing fad stage, immortality sets in. (Richard Nixon is the greatest example.) Going to see a James Bond movie today is like watching a Bob Hope comedy special. Bob Hope, once a funny man, has become an embarrassment; his TV shows are so sloppily put together, so filled with groaning gags and worn out skits, that they frequently reach the level of a P.T.A. talent night. But nobody seems to mind. They were good once, and maybe seeing them now, feeble and second rate as they've become, is enough to 'make people remember what it was they once liked about them in the first place.

Nobody pretends that something as empty as Live and Let Die even comes close to Gold finger. But

the theme music is the same, so is the actress who portrays Miss Moneypenny, and the effects are great. Perhaps, if you close your eyes and forget that you paid three and a half bucks to see this muck, perhaps for a second if almost seems as if Jack Kennedy is back in the White House and we're all still safe. , •

The: James Bond films really are special. They've achieved the ultimate success: they no longer have to be good, they simply have to be.

THE GODFATHER PART II Directed by Francis Ford Coppola (Paramount)

The Godfather, Part II is a magnificent vacuum. The movie rolls on majestically for three-and-a-half hours without saying anything Original, yet it's darkly . compelling, and surging with a sense of moral urgency. The film's center is Al Pacino's grimly one-key portrayal of Michael Corleone — he doesn't have one loose or casual moment. Rich in suggestiveness, and with a quiet malevolence that taints everything around him, he's the quintessential Nixonian monster.

But he's triumphant; at the end, Michael Corleone is alone, his enemies

eliminated, his rule absolute. Yet there's no pleasure in his triumph, no exhilaration: his victory is hollow. The brooding bitterness in his eyes and cadaverous pallor of his face tell you that Pacino's Corleone will never enjoy peace within himself again.

Still, none of this is revelation. It was clear at the end of the first film that the Corleone empire was damned by its own accomplishments. The sense of sinful-1 ness — of Catholic guilt — permeates the atmosphere of both films, vitiating the pleasure of economic conquest. The paralleling of the family's illegal activities with legitimate business enterprises was done ifi the original film as well.

But what writer / producer / director

Francis Ford Coppola has brought forth anyhow is the first great social novel for the screen — the cinematic equivalent of a sprawling 19th century novel. Brimming with life, swarming with characters, shifting back and forth in time, Godfather II is a glorious parade that never goes astray. The shaky marriage of the Mafia with the corporate state is counterpointed by the chroriicle of young Vito Corleone's rise to power. Simultaneously we see the ascent of the two Corleones into Godfatherhood. To give stylistic continuity, many motifs are carried over from the earlier film: the contrast between the subterranean intrigue of the gangsters and the sunny commonplace activities of their families, the parallel movements of personal

venality and public celebration, the use of a closed door to symbolize the isolation of the women from the men.

Not all these stylistic flourishes succeed. The movie's worst flaw is the murky photography by Gordon Willis; every interior shot is so awash in brownish tint that at times the characters seem to be submerged in a dense soup. And t too much angelic-white light pours gorgeously through the windows. Not only do these effects strain the eyes but they, obscure some of the performances.

Robert DeNiro" as the young Vito Corleone (the Brando role in the first film) comes through clearly; however, and his acting is brilliant, but unsettling.

He flawlessly mimics Brando but that deep, abrasive voice imprisoned in a youthful body is faintly comical, sometimes even edging toward parody. DeNiro never disturbs the tone of the film by going too far but that's somewhat frustrating, because anyone who saw him as the volatile Johnny Boy in Mean Streets knows iaow fiercely incandescent an actor he can be. Robert Duvall is fine as Corleone's Haldeman, Leo Strasberg is superlative as an avuncular Jewish gangster, John Cazale as Michael's older brother is effectively weasel-like. Only Diane Keaton as Michael's wife is wrong: she's too skittish, and the nervousness is more within her than within the character. Since she doesn't have enough self-confidence to really deliver, her big scene — when she tells Michael about her abortion — is not nearly as lacerating as it should have been.

However, the sweep and strength of Godfather II are so great that all flaws seem puny when the movie ends. Perhaps this is because the film ends so beautifully. After Michael Corleone has obliterated his opponents there are two interwoven flashback sequences: in the first, the young Michael is seen arguing in the dining room with Sonny (played with engaging boisterousness by James Caan) about going into the Marines; their father arrives, the argument ends, and Michael sits alone at the table, separated from the rest of the family. Then we see a youthful Vito Corleone leaving Sicily with the baby Michael cradled hr his arms. The leave-taking is elegaic but sharply ironic — we know that Michael will truly be his father's son, but that the blood heritage will become bloodlust, Michael not only survives his family, but devours them, and when they're gone there's nothing left.

James Wolcott