Bond Films: Seventies Bond

Bond was played by Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s; mostly by Moore, with Connery getting in a turn in the mostly forgettable Diamonds Are Forever. Gone was the smooth operator of Goldfinger and Thunderball; Seventies Bond was more of a player, a baller in the current vernacular, who happened to go on missions. Comedic elements that once served as baroque or ironic ornamentation now became gags, and the series grew increasingly silly.

It isn't entirely clear why this was the case. Perhaps the Broccolis were following the market. In the West, mores certainly turned towards more open attitudes about sex.We see more open-collar, more opportunities for Bond to ply his second trade.

We also see plots chasing headlines and au courant culture more. Blaxpoitation enshrouds Live And Let Die. The subject of detente first comes up as a plot point in The Spy Who Loved Me, The Space Shuttle, as well as the success of Star Wars, bring about Moonraker.

For that matter, Bond spends less time fighting Russians, or SPECTRE, and more time tracking down lone industrialists who fund insane schemes out of their own pockets. This would change in the Eighties, when the 'mad general' scheme become more common. I wonder why this shift to private equity villainy came about. Perhaps the old SPECTRE and SMERSH organizations seemed less believable, but then, are they any less believable than the equivalent of John Paulson seeking a real estate gain by drowning Silicon Valley, or establishing a stealth orbital colony?

The Girls reflect changing attitudes about women. From the incompetence of Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever, we get Russian Agent Anya Amasova and CIA Agent Holly Goodhead in Moonraker, paving the way for generally competent Bond Girls in the Eighties.

The result of these changes is that Bond became less of an icon and more of a cipher. Bond stopped standing for the forces of law and the international order; he is simply a well-resourced agent-at-large. It isn't clear what the scope of his operations is, other than somehow, some other British agent was killed, and he has to investigate. Bond pursues jewel smugglers, drug smugglers, and super-rich industrialists who steal nuclear submarines and build secret bases in Earth orbit. Oddly enough, is villains are the ugly side of capitalism, his enemy the increasing irrelevance of the nation-state.

You might point out that this is nothing new. SPECTRE was basically a capitalist criminal conspiracy, and Goldfinger was also a super-rich capitalist. However, these villains tended to work with in the system, usurping gains for themselves at the expense of the East and West states. Bond's villains in the Seventies are destructive for the sake of being destructive -selling drugs, building space lasers, stealing submarines in order to start World War Three. In a way, this reflects the thinking of the time, as citizens of the superpowers and their associated states began to look at the Cold War as less of a historical necessity and more of a path to Mutually Assured Destruction. We were our own worst enemies.

So, that' Seventies Bond for you. A little lost, looking for solace in easy sex, traveling the world trying to find himself (and stolen jewelry, or nuclear weapons). While Roger Moore continue playing him into the Eighties, we'll see him take a different turn by then, with a strong statement at the start of For Your Eyes Only, and an increasingly thuggish - in spirit, if not flesh - Bond.