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Goldfinger (film)
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Goldfinger (1964) is the third spy film in the James Bond series, and the third to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is based on the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The film stars Shirley Eaton as Bond Girl Jill Masterson who is famous for her iconic death, Honor Blackman and Gert Fröbe. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and was the first of four Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton. The story has Bond following gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger, who plans a nuclear detonation inside the Fort Knox gold depository.
The film was the first official Bond blockbuster and made cinematic history by recouping its production costs in record-setting time, despite a budget equal to that of the two preceding films combined.
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Encyclopedia
Goldfinger (1964) is the third spy film in the James Bond series, and the third to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is based on the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The film stars Shirley Eaton as Bond Girl Jill Masterson who is famous for her iconic death, Honor Blackman and Gert Fröbe. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and was the first of four Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton. The story has Bond following gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger, who plans a nuclear detonation inside the Fort Knox gold depository.
The film was the first official Bond blockbuster and made cinematic history by recouping its production costs in record-setting time, despite a budget equal to that of the two preceding films combined. Goldfinger was also the first Bond film to use a pop star to sing the theme song during the titles, a hallmark that would follow for every Bond film since except On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Plot
In the pre-title sequence, James Bond (Sean Connery) destroys a Mexican drug lord's base with plastic explosives and defeats an assassin by electrocution. The story begins in Miami Beach, Florida, with CIA agent Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) delivering a message to Bond from M to watch Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe). Bond foils Goldfinger's cheating at gin rummy by distracting his employee, Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton). After blackmailing Goldfinger into losing, Bond and Jill consummate their new relationship in Bond's hotel suite. Bond is knocked out by Goldfinger's Korean manservant Oddjob (Harold Sakata), while Jill is covered in gold paint and succumbs to epidermal suffocation.
In London, Bond learns that his true mission is determining how Goldfinger transports gold internationally. He plays a high-stakes golf game with his adversary (with a recovered bar of Nazi gold as the prize); despite Goldfinger's cheating, Bond wins the match. Goldfinger warns Bond to stay out of his business by having Oddjob decapitate a statue by throwing his steel-rimmed top hat. Undeterred, Bond follows him to Switzerland, where he unintentionally foils an attempt by Jill's sister Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet) to assassinate Goldfinger for the death of her sister, Jill.
Bond sneaks into Goldfinger's plant and overhears him talking to a Red Chinese agent about "Operation Grand Slam." Leaving, he encounters Tilly as she is about to make a second attempt on Goldfinger's life, but accidentally trips an alarm. Bond attempts to escape using his modified Aston Martin DB5 car. During their escape, Oddjob breaks Tilly's neck with his hat. Bond is soon captured and Goldfinger has Bond tied to a table underneath an industrial laser, which slowly begins to slice the table in half. Bond then lies to Goldfinger that British Intelligence knows about Grand Slam, causing Goldfinger to spare Bond's life until he can determine how much the spy actually knows.
Bond is transported by Goldfinger's private Lockheed JetStar, flown by Goldfinger's personal pilot, Pussy Galore, to Goldfinger's Kentucky stud farm near Fort Knox, Kentucky. He escapes and witnesses Goldfinger meeting with U.S. mafiosi, who have brought the materials he needs for Operation Grand Slam; at the end of the briefing, Goldfinger has them all killed in a conference room by poison gas. Bond is recaptured, but soon learns that Goldfinger intends to irradiate the U.S. gold supply stored at the United States Gold Depository at Fort Knox with an atomic device, therefore rendering it useless for 58 years and greatly increasing the value of his own gold. This will also give the Chinese increased power following economic chaos in the West.
Operation Grand Slam begins with the women pilots of Pussy Galore's Flying Circus spraying lethal nerve gas over Fort Knox to dispatch its garrison, though Goldfinger had told Galore that the soldiers would just be rendered unconscious. However, Bond had earlier seduced her and persuaded her to contact the CIA, who had then replaced the poison with a harmless gas. The military personnel of Fort Knox convincingly play dead until they are certain that they can prevent the criminals escaping the post with the bomb. They choose this plan because Goldfinger had earlier suggested that if thwarted at Fort Knox, there was no telling where he might explode the device, so the CIA knew their scheme had to trap both Goldfinger and his bomb beyond any reasonable hope of escape.
Goldfinger's Chinese agents gain entry to the vault. Oddjob handcuffs Bond to the atomic device and lowers both into the vault. As Goldfinger and his men prepare to leave, U.S. Army forces surround them and all but wipe them out. Goldfinger has planned for every contingency, however: under his heavy coat is a colonel's uniform, and from a pocket he retrieves a proper military head covering. He even kills his Red Chinese contact to cement his authenticity as a U.S. Army brigadier general that he is impersonating (and prevent the man from giving him away).
Goldfinger's henchman Kisch, forced to retreat to the vault, intends to shut off the bomb. Oddjob kills him by throwing him off a balcony before he can do this. Bond retrieves the man's keys and frees himself from the handcuffs, but before he can disarm the bomb, Oddjob races down the stairs and attacks. Bond manages to duck under Oddjob's lethal hat, but the fight proves that Oddjob is the superior combatant. Finally, Bond retrieves the hat and tries to throw it himself without success. It wedges in between two of the bars of the vault. When Oddjob tries to recover it, Bond executes a sliding move that allows him to touch a high voltage cable to the metal gate, electrocuting Oddjob with current which is conducted through his own metal hat.
Turning to the bomb, Bond manages to force the lock by hammering on it with a pair of gold bars, but the mechanism inside baffles him. Nothing he tries seems to shut it off. Finally, he prepares to yank a wiring harness loose in desperation, but before he does a hand reaches over his shoulder. It belongs to an atomic specialist who reaches in and shuts off the device with a switch. The timer stops at "007".
With Fort Knox safe, the President of the United States invites Bond to the White House to thank him. Bond boards a military Lockheed JetStar for Washington D.C., but Goldfinger has forced Pussy Galore to hijack it. Bond and Goldfinger struggle for the latter's gold-plated revolver and accidentally discharge it, shattering a window, and creating an explosive decompression of the aircraft, causing Goldfinger to get sucked out of the cabin. Bond rescues Galore, and they parachute safely from the aircraft before it crashes.
Cast
- Sean Connery as James Bond (007): A British MI6 agent who is sent to investigate Auric Goldfinger. Connery reprised the role of Bond for the third time in a row. His salary rose, but a pay dispute later broke out during filming. After suffering a back injury when filming the scene where Oddjob knocks Bond unconscious in Miami, the dispute was settled: EON and Connery agreed to a deal where the actor would receive 5% of the grosses of each Bond film he starred in. It was while filming Goldfinger that Connery also became a fan of golf.
- Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson: Goldfinger's aide-de-camp, whom Bond catches helping the villain cheat at a game of cards. He seduces her, but for her betrayal, she is completely painted in gold paint and dies from 'skin suffocation' (a fictional condition Ian Fleming created for the novel. The skin does not actually "breathe"). Shirley Eaton was sent by her agent to meet Harry Saltzman, and she agreed to take the part if the nudity was done tastefully. It took an hour-and-a-half to apply the paint to her body.
- Gert Fröbe as Auric Goldfinger: A wealthy man obsessed with gold. Theodore Bikel auditioned for the role of Auric Goldfinger but failed. Fröbe was cast because the producers saw his performance as a child molester in a German film. Fröbe, who did not speak English, said his lines phonetically, but was too slow. In order to dub him, he had to double the speed of his performance to get the right tempo. He was dubbed over by Michael Collins.
- Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore: Goldfinger's personal pilot and leader of an all-female team of pilots known as the Flying Circus. The character's name follows in the tradition of other Bond girls names that are double entendres. Blackman was selected for the role of Pussy Galore because of her role in The Avengers. Concerned about censors, the producers thought about changing the character's name to "Kitty Galore", but they and Hamilton decided "if you were a ten-year old boy and knew what the name meant, you weren't a ten-year old boy, you were a dirty little fucker. The American censor was concerned, but we got round that by inviting him and his wife out to dinner and [told him] we were big supporters of the Republican Party." During promotion, Blackman took delight in embarrassing interviewers by repeatedly mentioning the character's name.
- Harold Sakata as Oddjob: Goldfinger's lethal Korean manservant. Director Guy Hamilton cast Harold Sakata, an Olympic silver medalist weight lifter, as Oddjob after seeing him on a wrestling programme. Hamilton called Sakata an "absolutely charming man", and found that "he had a very unique way of moving, [so] in creating Oddjob I used all of Harold's own characteristics". Sakata was badly burned when filming his death scene.
- Tania Mallet as Tilly Masterson: The sister of Jill Masterson, she is on a vendetta to avenge her sister.
- Bernard Lee as M: 007's boss.
- Cec Linder as Felix Leiter: Bond's CIA liaison in the United States. Linder was the only actor actually on location in Miami. Linder's interpretation of Leiter was that of a somewhat older man than the way the character was played by Jack Lord in Dr. No; in reality, Linder was a year younger than Lord.
- Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny: M's secretary.
- Desmond Llewelyn as Q: The head of Q-Branch, he supplies 007 with a modified Aston Martin DB5. Hamilton told Llewelyn to inject humour into the character, thus beginning the friendly antagonism between Q and Bond that became a hallmark of the series.
Production
Goldfinger had what was then considered a large budget of $3 million, and was the first James Bond film classified as a box-office blockbuster. Guy Hamilton directed the film. Terence Young, who directed the previous films — Dr. No and From Russia with Love — chose to film The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) instead after a pay dispute. Hamilton felt that he needed to make Bond less of a "superman" by making the villains seem more powerful. Hamilton knew Ian Fleming, as both were involved during intelligence matters in the Royal Navy during World War II, and had turned down directing Dr. No.
Richard Maibaum, who wrote the previous films, returned to adapt the seventh James Bond novel. Maibaum fixed the novel's heavily criticised plot hole, where Goldfinger actually attempts to empty Fort Knox. In the film, Bond notes it would take twelve days for Goldfinger to steal the gold, before the villain reveals he actually intends to irradiate it. However, Harry Saltzman disliked the first draft, and brought in Paul Dehn to revise it. Hamilton said Dehn "brought out the British side of things". Connery disliked his draft, so Maibaum returned. Wolf Mankowitz, an uncredited screenwriter on Dr. No, suggested the scene where Oddjob puts his car into a car crusher to dispose of a dead body.
Filming
Principal photography on Goldfinger commenced on 20 January 1964 in Miami, Florida, at the Fontainebleau Hotel. Sean Connery never travelled to the United States during filming; his entire performance was filmed in Europe — primarily at Pinewood Studios where portions of the Fontainebleau were recreated in April 1964. Goldfinger's estate was built at Pinewood. The scene in which Tilly Masterson attempts to snipe Goldfinger was filmed near the Pilatus Aircraft Factory, Stans and Furka pass in Switzerland. Other scenes set in the country were shot in Buckinghamshire during May 1964. The golf club scene was shot at Stoke Poges, while the car chase involving Bond's Aston Martin and Goldfinger's henchmen outside his Swiss lair was filmed at Black Park. Ian Fleming visited the set of Goldfinger, but he died a few months later in August 1964 shortly before it was released. Principal photography was completed later that month. The second unit filmed at Kentucky, and these shots were edited into scenes filmed at Pinewood.
To shoot Pussy Galore's Flying Circus gassing the soldiers at Fort Knox, the pilots were only allowed to fly above 3000 feet. Hamilton recalled this was "hopeless", and they flew at about 500 feet, "and the military went absolutely ape". For security reasons, the filmmakers were not allowed to film inside the United States Bullion Depository, though exterior photography was permitted. All sets for the interiors of the building were designed and built from scratch at Pinewood Studios. The filmmakers had no clue as to what the depository looked like, so "we [the crew] decided to let our imaginations run wild". Ken Adam's idea behind the design was seeing gold stacked upon gold behind iron bars. Harry Saltzman disliked the design's resemblance to a prison, but Hamilton liked it enough that it was built. The comptroller of Fort Knox later sent a letter to Adam and the production team, complimenting them on their imaginative depiction of the vault. United Artists even had irate letters from people wondering "how could a British film unit be allowed inside Fort Knox?" Adam recalled, "In the end I was pleased that I wasn't allowed into Fort Knox, because it allowed me to do whatever I wanted."
Effects
Hamilton remarked, "Before [Goldfinger], gadgets were not really a part of Bond's world." Production designer Ken Adam chose the Aston Martin because it was the latest British sports car. The company was initially reluctant, but were finally convinced to a product placement deal. In the script, the car was only armed with smokescreen, but every crew member began suggesting gadgets to install in it: Hamilton conceived the revolving license plate because he had been getting lots of parking tickets, while his stepson suggested the ejector seat (which he saw on television). Adam and engineerer John Stears overhauled the prototype of the Aston Martin DB5 coupe, installing these and other features into a car during six weeks. Another car without the gadgets was created, which was eventually furnished for publicity purposes. It was reused for Thunderball.
Lasers did not exist in 1959 when the book was written, and they were a novelty in the movie. In the novel, Goldfinger uses a buzzsaw to try to kill Bond, but the filmmakers changed it to a laser to make the film feel more fresh. Harry Saltzman had learnt of the new technology "that could shoot all the way to the moon". Hamilton immediately thought of giving the laser a place in the film's story as Goldfinger's weapon of choice. Ken Adam was advised on the laser's design by two Harvard scientists who helped design the water reactor in Dr No. The laserbeam itself was an optical effect added in post-production. For close-ups where the flame cuts through metal, technician Bert Luxford heated the metal with a blowtorch from underneath the table Bond was strapped to.
The opening credit sequence, as well as the posters for the advertising campaign, were designed by graphic artist Robert Brownjohn. Its design was inspired by seeing light projecting on people's bodies as they got up and left a cinema. Actress Margaret Nolan, who appeared in the film as Bond's masseuse at the Fontainebleau Hotel, also played the golden woman in the credits and posed for the posters. The model jet used for wide shots of Goldfinger's Lockheed JetStar was refurbished to be used as the presidential plane that crashes at the film's end.
Music
Shirley Bassey sang the theme song "Goldfinger", and she would go on to sing the theme songs for two other Bond films as well. The song was composed by John Barry, with lyrics by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse. Newley originally sang the song, but Bassey's recording was used in the film and was featured on the soundtrack. Newley's version was released in the 30th anniversary compilation album The Best of Bond...James Bond. The theme was an international hit single, achieving a spot in the Billboard Hot 100 top five. The album went gold, selling over a million copies in the United States alone; it reached #21 in the UK charts. The film score was composed by John Barry with the UK soundtrack featuring 4 tracks that didn't appear on the US soundtrack.
Release and reception
Goldfinger was originally released on 17 September 1964, in the United Kingdom, and on 21 December 1964, in the United States. To promote the film, the two Aston Martin DB5s were showcased at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and it was dubbed "the most famous car in the world". Sales of the car rose. Corgi Toys began its decades-long relationship with the Bond franchise, producing a toy of the car. It became the biggest selling toy of 1964. The film's success also led to clothing, dress shoes, action figures, board games, jigsaw puzzles, lunch boxes, trading cards and slot cars.
The film was both a critical and financial sucess. The film's $3 million budget was recouped in two weeks, and it broke box office records in multiple countries around the world. Goldfinger went on to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest grossing film of all time. The film grossed a total of $51,081,062 in the United States. At the 1965 Academy Awards, Norman Wanstall won the Academy Award for Sound Editing for his work on Goldfinger. Barry was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Score for a Motion Picture. Ken Adam was nominated for the BAFTA for Best British Art Direction. The American Film Institute has honoured the film four times: ranking it No. 90 for best movie quote ("A martini. Shaken, not stirred."), No. 53 for best song ("Goldfinger"), No. 49 for best villain (Auric Goldfinger), and No. 71 for most thrilling film. In 2006, Entertainment Weekly Goldfinger and IGN both named as the best Bond movie, while MSN named it as the second best, behind its predecessor, and also named Pussy Galore as the second best Bond girl as did IGN. In 2008, Total Film named Goldfinger as the best film in the series. An Internet Movie Database poll in 1999, based on 665 votes, named Goldfinger as the most sinister Bond villain. Another poll in 2006, based on 16416 votes also named Goldfinger the best Bond villain. The Times placed Goldfinger and Oddjob second and third on their list of the best Bond villains in 2008. They also named the Aston Martin DB5 as the best car in the films.
Danny Peary wrote that Goldfinger is “the best of the James Bond films starring Sean Connery…There’s lots of humor, gimmicks, excitement, an amusing yet tense gold contest between Bond and Goldfinger, thrilling fights to the death between Bond and Oddjob and Bond and Goldfinger, and a fascinating central crime…Most enjoyable, but too bad Eaton’s part isn’t longer and that Frobe’s Goldfinger, a heavy but nimble intellectual in the Sydney Greenstreet tradition, never appeared in another Bond film.”
Based on 47 reviews which were mostly published after the film's release, Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews. after and From Russia with Love which received a 97%, and Dr. No, with a 97% score.
The distributor Park Circus Films theatrically re-released Goldfinger in the UK on 27 July 2007 at one-hundred-and-fifty multiplex cinemas, on digital prints. The re-release put the film twelfth at the weekly box office.
Impact
Goldfingers popularity led to parodies of James Bond appearing in the form of "secret agent" comics, television programmes, and a spoof of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1967. The laser scene was also popular and parodied: in The Simpsons episode "You Only Move Twice", James Bont is strapped to a table and is about to be cut by a laser, and makes his escape, only to be foiled by Homer. Dexter's Laboratory has Dexter on the Photo Finisher, which mirrors the scene from the film. The rest of Fleming's Bond novels also gained popularity as a result of the success of Goldfinger. In the last years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and according to Toby Harnden, the South Armagh sniper was dubbed ironically Goldfinger by the tabloid press.
An episode of the US television programme MythBusters considered the scenario of an explosive depressurisation in a plane at high altitudes. Their investigation concluded that a sudden depressurisation as depicted in the film would not occur. Mythbusters also twice investigated if death could be caused by full body painting, as was depicted in the film. While this was proved to be possible—likely due to heat stroke and not epidermal suffocation as depicted in the film—it was found that such a death would be very slow, unlike in the film. The MythBusters also recreated the ejector seat of the DB5. Although their car was not an Aston Martin, they concluded that such an ejector seat could work nearly identically to what was seen on film.
In Quantum of Solace, the director, Marc Forster, decided to pay homage to the gold body paint death scene by having another female character, MI6 operative Strawberry Fields, dead on a bed nude in a similar pose as Jill Masterson's, but instead of being covered in gold paint, her entire body was daubed in crude oil. Her cause of death was given as drowning in crude oil with her lungs completely filled with the sticky substance, rather than dying from skin suffocation. Forster wanted the scene to show that oil has replaced gold as the most precious material.
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