Time for a Bank Holiday classic. Time for Connery’s return in Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Sideburns, seediness — and a turmeric-sprayed Stag. The beginning of the end.

I’ve been working through the earlier Bond films in no particular order. So far, we’ve discussed From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1975) — and my personal favourite, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). I’m not sure that I can bring myself to write about anything else — well, at least beyond The Man with the Golden Gun (1975). Altho’, perhaps, if you’re nice, and I’m in the right mood, you might persuade me to tackle The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) or Moonraker (1979). On a sunny day.

I’ve got nothing against Timothy Dalton, that intense Shakespearean, who makes for an excellent dark, brooding, chain-smoking Bond — of the Welsh persuasion. And Pierce Brosnan could have been terrific if the poor man had been given better scripts. I mean, remember his brilliant performance in The Long Good Friday (1980)? As the hard-as-nails IRA hitman? But it’s just that by the early 1980s, the whole flippin’ Bondian raison d’etre has gone. Which explains why the more recent films have transmogrified into something entirely different — well made and sometimes exciting, sure, but under the influence of the highly successful Jason Bourne franchise, have become something else: gritty, generic, fast-paced action thrillers — with a grizzled, body-building, blonde Bond, who’s more like the geezer come to mend your washing machine. Or a microphoned bouncer in tight Tom Ford suits, standing outside Chanel in Sloane Street. Mr. Muscle; legs apart. Neanderthal. Bond’s suave, clubbable, public school credentials abandoned. Where’s the original Fleming? The Old Etonian Whitehall mandarin? With a penchant for black coffee and scrambled eggs, ‘which never let you down’?’ And a decent London tailor; Anthony Sinclair of Conduit Street? That’s long gone. Kaput. Like the British Empire, on which, until last week’s Chagos Islands sign-off, the Sun never Set. As Dead as a Dodo. This unfashionable view may also explain the weakness of the Moore cluster: For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985). Even if, by 1981, Roge was only seven years off his bus pass — altho’ for those of us embracing Late Youth, it gives one hope.

Take Octopussy. If there was ever a non-Bond place, it’s India. India is about as Bond as Canada, Ireland, Manchester or Budleigh Salterton. Bond places are, or should be: Jamaica, Austria, Switzerland, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Deauville, London, New York and Dover. Plus Amsterdam. Amsterdam is very Bond. The canals, the tourist barges, with their perspex canopies; the diamond merchants, the cold, rainy, clinical, Protestant feel of the place; it’s like the View-Master, that splendid celluloid gadget which enjoyed a following in the 1960s and 70s, a sort of plastic magic lantern, updated to the mid-20th century, which allowed one to view colourful slides in glorious 3D, so that you too could visit Versailles, the Tyrolean Alps, a Beer Hall in Munich, the French Riviera, the Hollywood Road, Hong Kong; or the Louvre.

The Amsterdam sequences in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) are completely right. Bond poses as professional assassin, Peter Franks, and there’s a nifty switch-over, courtesy of British Intelligence at the rancid rust-bucket of the Dover Ferry. With a turmeric-sprayed Triumph Stag, like a Sunday Colour supplement ad for Rothmans King Size cigarettes, aimed at aspiring International Men of Mystery, the hint of a braided naval cuff ring in gold, an expensive wristwatch and a veneered dashboard. The subsequent punch-up in the creaky 1930s lift, in a building (on the Herenstraat, I think) is genuinely brutal. And, along with Captain Nash and the fight on The Orient Express in From Russia with Love (1963), has to be one of the best brawls in the entire Bond franchise.

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But. Oh, gosh, Diamonds. Despite Guy Hamilton’s direction, it’s all a bit seedy. An accusation that could never be made against the elegant From Russia with Love (1963) or the Euro-chic sensibilities of Peter Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) — in my opinion, possibly the best Bond film of them all. By You Only Live Twice (1967), Connery had become fed up with the role. Which is why he left, handing over his Walther PPK to George Lazenby, who, actually, with a bit of work, might have been very good indeed. But Lazenby, like Jesus, liked his hair and beard long, and wringing his hands over Bond’s middle-aged, square, very British image (like an upmarket ‘company director’ turned ruthless assassin) chucked it all in — which just goes to show that personal image ain’t everything. Even though On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) performed perfectly well at the box office, thank you very much. So back came a disillusioned Connery. There’s nothing quite like $1.25 million to make you change your mind. Is there?

So, in Diamonds Are Forever, Bond’s forty-one going on sixty. A bit long in the tooth. A bit out of shape. Weirdly, Connery happened to be four years younger than Roger Moore’s Bond in Live and Let Die (1973), but in Diamonds, he looks old enough to join the mailing list of a luxury old folks’ home in the Sunny Uplands of Battersea. Trust me on that; a personal invitation ‘to meet the residents of a luxury retirement home’ dropped onto my seagrass matting only yesterday. A spell at Shrublands? That would do the trick. But Bond: he’s been there and done that. Thinking about it, Diamonds Are Forever must have been the first Bond to have appeared on my radar (I graced the autumn of 1965 with my arrival), and I most certainly owned the Corgi James Bond Moon Buggy (oh, excitement! Now worth about three hundred golden smackers, mint and boxed) before I was even aware of what and who 007 was. In my innocence, the sexual preferences of the delightfully creepy Mister Kidd and Mister Wint passed me by, not that the parental ban on Bond helped exactly. “Most unsuitable”. This became a problem in the playground. Especially when little Geoffrey Moore rocked up, explaining to his fellow schoolmates that “My Daddy swims with sharks.” I had to pretend to like Bond, even though I had no idea who he was.

The look of Diamonds Are Forever is a transitional hybrid between the 1960s and the 1970s. And that’s not surprising, when you think about it, as the film was released in 1971. The rather good Amsterdam segment is 1960s in spirit, if late 1960s. The rest of the film, shot in Las Vegas and the Nevada desert (because of British union difficulties) is more 1970s in feel, almost televisual, even Columbo-esque, with, perhaps, a nod to American television, to Aaron Spelling and the likes of Charlie's Angels. By Live and Let Die (1973), this was most certainly the case, with that tiresome American policeman — he with the pot-belly — which despite all the Voodoo stuff (very Fleming), pulls the film down into Smokey and the Bandit (1977) territory. And Jill St. John as brassy Tiffany Case — although easy on the eye — lacks that certain je ne sais quoi.

I’m also disturbed by 007’s white dinner jacket, a bizarre choice for a Vegas casino. Craps as opposed to Chemmy. I mean, it’s hardly incognito, is it? Like striding into The Golden Nugget and announcing over a megaphone, “Hey! I’m a British Secret Agent”, especially considering everyone else is modelling man-made fibres. But then we couldn’t have Bond in a polyester short-sleeved shirt, could we? But Charles Gray’s Blofeld is superb. Like the urbane host of a Knightsbridge dinner party (incidentally, that’s exactly where he lived, close to the Bonhams saleroom, trust me on that), with camp relish. As is Slumber Inc., the fabulous undertakers — like something out of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One (1948). And, thinking about it, Shirley Bassey’s title song, composed by John Barry, lyrics by Don Black, might be the best Bond theme of the lot. Could this be the very last true Bondian theme? Before Wings’ funky Voodoo sound (as much as I like it) for Live and Let Die (1973) and — oh heavens! — Sheena Easton’s For Your Eyes Only (1981)? Lady Di hairdo and a turquoise jumpsuit.

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Look, don’t get me wrong, Substackers, I like Diamonds Are Forever. I do. And it’s most certainly a recommendation. The last of the old style Bonds. But it’s tired, it’s jaded, it’s the beginning of the end, rather than the end of the beginning: Ian Fleming’s original concept fading fast. Before Roger Moore’s attempt (brave as it was) to reinvent Bond along more jocular lines: a middle-aged, rent-a-quip wag propping up the Captain’s Bar at the Mandarin Hotel, Hong Kong, and, even then, that revival only lasted, as far as it worked, for a handful of films. But which Bond film to write about next? Now, that’s an agonising, life-changing, hand-wringing decision…

I watched Diamonds Are Forever (1971) on DVD, and it’s also available on Blu-ray, and to download via Amazon Prime Digital Video.

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