The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Music

John Barry wasn't available to work on the music for The Spy Who Loved Me, apparently not for scheduling or creative reasons, but because of his tax status with the UK at the time. To replace him, Broccoli hired Marvin Hamlisch, who had already won Oscars and Grammys for his work on The Sting and The Way We Were. He was an interesting choice because he was super talented, but not known for big action movies. And his theme song reflects that.

"Nobody Does It Better" is the first Bond theme song not to be named after its movie, though the movie title is included in the lyrics. Hamlisch wrote it with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, who'd had a big hit in the '60s with "A Groovy Kind of Love." True to the styles of both artists, it's a mellow song, what we used to call Easy Listening. I'm not sure if there is a modern equivalent of Easy Listening, which was more or less comprised of pop ballads that used orchestral music.

To record it, they got Carly Simon, who had only a slightly more rocking style. The result is a gorgeous ballad that was a huge hit, especially in the US. Like so much else in The Spy Who Loved Me, it would go on to influence the theme songs for the next several movies. And it's a truly great song in every way from the way it builds musically, to the sensual - but not crass - lyrics, to Simon's sultry voice. It's sexy, but it's also classy.

To go over the song, Maurice Binder doubled down on the silhouettes that had long been a feature of his title sequences, but usually in conjunction with other images. This time, they're the focus, with the only other image being a Union Jack at one point. For the most part, the silhouettes play against a solid background of slowly changing colors and light effects. There are plenty of female silhouettes of course, all naked and mostly performing acrobatic acts like jumping on a trampoline, doing cartwheels, and going through gymnastic routines on the barrel of a giant gun.

What's different this time is how often a man shows up. We've seen that before, but it's a major element in this sequence. Playing off the idea of enemies becoming lovers, Binder has the woman repeatedly threatening Bond with a gun before making out with him. (To make sure we know who he is, we even see a black-and-white representation of Roger Moore's face.) He also has a line of naked women marching with Soviet hats and then Bond (who's always fully clothed, strangely enough) tips them over. Hooray for Britain! Snottiness aside though, I do like how minimalistic the credits sequence is compared to the busyness of previous movies.

For the rest of the soundtrack, Hamlisch uses the "Nobody Does It Better" tune as a love theme, but also comes up with a cool, stringy theme for Stromberg and Atlantis. He also uses Bach and Mozart for key Stromberg/Atlantis scenes, further supporting the villain's pretense at sophistication.

The soundtrack gets weird in a couple of places though. There's a goofy fanfare that plays as Bond and Amasova drive Jaws' ruined van across the desert, but even worse is the bombastic men's chorus that belts out "Nobody Does It Better" at the end like it's some kind of bawdy show tune. Both of those moments are the car jump slide whistles of The Spy Who Loved Me.

For the most part though, it's a great soundtrack and it uses the Bond Theme more and better than any other movie so far. Hamlisch arranged his own disco version of it that plays over lots of action sequences from the teaser's ski chase to the Lotus' battles with helicopters and underwater villains, to the good guys' taking over Stromberg's tanker. He uses the traditional version too though: when Bond drives the Lotus up onto the beach out of the water, when he's riding the camera with a bomb to blow open Stromberg's command center on the tanker, and when he's riding the WetBike to go rescue Amasova. There's also a nice orchestral version of the Bond Theme when Bond and Amasova are in the Egyptian ruins looking for Jaws. This is how the Bond Theme ought to be used. Not sparingly like Barry, but creatively.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. Diamonds Are Forever
4. You Only Live Twice
5. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
6. Live and Let Die
7. Dr No
8. Thunderball
9. Goldfinger
10. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia With Love
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Diamonds Are Forever
8. Live and Let Die
9. The Man with the Golden Gun
10. You Only Live Twice

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Villains

Karl Stromberg has all the makings of what should be my favorite Bond villain. He's what I'd want to be if I was a bad guy; from his cool, webbed fingers to his giant, submersible headquarters. The HQ is even called Atlantis and is appropriately located in the Mediterranean.

It's too bad then that Curt Jurgens plays him so lethargically. On the one hand, it makes him seem very powerful that he doesn't have to do much for himself. But on the other, it's dull to watch. It's not only that he's physically inactive; it's that he just looks so bored.

His plan isn't original either. He's basically copying SPECTRE's scheme from You Only Live Twice, but stealing submarines instead of space capsules. (That's even sadder when you know that the Spy villain was actually going to be SPECTRE through most of the writing process until Kevin McClory reminded everyone that he had the rights to that organization.) What saves Stromberg's plot from being totally derivative is his motivation. Instead of using the threat of nuclear war to make money, Stromberg means to just go ahead and blow the place up so he can start the human race over in an underwater civilization. There's a great moment when this confuses Bond, who thinks he's dealing with another Blofeld. It's a great twist; it's just too bad it gets repeated in the very next movie. But let me not get ahead of myself.

Stromberg's also pretty smart. He does leave a dead woman's arm in the shark tank where any visitor can see it, so that's kind of lazy and dumb. But that's not a fatal mistake. Bond's already onto him by then. The only way anyone catches on to Stromberg's plans is because he's betrayed from within his organization. Once that happens, Stromberg's pretty powerless to stop it even though he sends his assassins out to try to clean things up.

I even like how Stromberg captures the US sub with Bond on it even though he doesn't need it to complete his plan. Stromberg has no idea that Bond's on there, but it's obvious that the sub is tracking Stromberg, so it's smart to try to neutralize it before it can do anything to stop him.



Jaws is iconic, but he doesn't do anything for me. He's strong and ridiculously tough, but he's also slow. That would be a fine weakness for Bond to exploit, except that the movie likes to pretend that Jaws is fast enough to go head to head with Bond. I'd much rather see Jaws as a smarter villain who has to accommodate for his lack of speed by tricking Bond into getting within reach. That said, there are some great, effective moments with him, like when he's tearing apart the van and when he's fighting Bond in a confined railroad cabin.



It's interesting to me that Jaws and Sandor are a team and that Jaws is in charge. Jaws is never portrayed as very bright, but that doesn't mean he's dumb and I like that his leadership role implies that there's more going on there than we're seeing.

Of course, it could just mean that Sandor is even dumber, which is kind of born out when he meets Bond. He shoots once, kills Felicca, then runs as soon as Bond draws a gun. Even though Sandor has great cover and plenty of bullets left, he takes off and leads Bond to the roof for a hand to hand fight. Even if Sandor is really confident of his hand to hand ability, why give up the easy kill in the bedroom?



Naomi introduces herself as Stromberg's assistant, but she's also a helicopter pilot and assassin. I wish she had a bigger role in the movie, but it might be because she's so sparingly used that she's cool and mysterious.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
6. Doctor No (Dr. No)
7. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
9. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
10. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
6. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
7. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
9. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
10. Tee Hee (Live and Let Die)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Women

Maybe because the film makes Bond wait so long to get into bed with Amasova, it gives him plenty of other women to spend time with early on, starting with an enemy agent in Switzerland. We don't know anything about her or even Bond's mission there, but she tries to delay him until a group of Soviets can arrive to either kill him or take him in. We're not even sure if Bond knows she's a bad guy, but she's not able to keep him there once he gets the extraction order from M.



The next woman is troubling, because she's a slave to Bond's old buddy from Cambridge. The sheik gives her to Bond for the night, meaning that Bond is going to have sex with a woman against her will. Sadly, that's not exactly out of character for him.



Bond never has a chance to get in bed with Felicca, the woman at Fekkesh's house whose job it is to "entertain" Bond while Fekkesh is off meeting Amasova about the microfilm. Felicca's not on screen long, but she's an intriguing character. What's her relationship to Fekkesh? Is she an employee? His wife or lover? She seems very okay with her job to keep Bond distracted with sex. Is that because Bond's a handsome man or because she does this sort of thing a lot for Fekkesh? You can read it either way.

It's too bad that her death scene is so clumsily shot and edited. It's hard to tell whether Sandor murders her on purpose or if he's trying to kill Bond and she gets in the way. We're used to Bond's being the target in these situations, but the only thing that makes sense to me is that Sandor is trying to kill Felicca.

His orders from Stromberg are to murder everyone who knows about the microfilm. That possibly includes Bond, but it for sure has to include Felicca. And even if he's trying to shoot Bond first, there are only two explanations for Felicca's taking the bullet. Either she purposely jumps in front of it or Bond spins her around, purposely killing her to save himself. There's no reason that she'd be loyal enough to Bond to want to die for him. And as horrible as Bond is to women, I can't imagine his murdering one in cold blood, especially when she's just warned him that someone's about to shoot. That means that Felicca's got to be the first target. Bond probably would have been next if he hadn't drawn his own gun.

At any rate, it's almost certainly Felicca's murder that makes Bond pissed enough to kill Sandor in cold blood up on the roof.



It seems like every actress who plays a "Bond Girl" talks about how her character is going to be different from the stereotype. Frankly, I'm not even sure what the stereotype is, because they're all pretty different when you look closely at them, but Anya Amasova does have something special about her. Unlike Bond's previous co-stars, Amasova is also a superspy. She's his equal, up to a point.

Barbara Bach isn't a great actress, but she plays "amused" well and that's Amasova's defining characteristic. As long as she's supposed to be lightly entertained by Bond's shenanigans, she's great, and that's a lot. It's when other emotions are supposed to come up that she's not so hot. That's a big problem when the story calls for her to discover that Bond murdered her lover. That should be a powerful, dramatic moment where Amasova struggles with anger, regret, and vengeance, but Bach just goes with "mildly pissed."

On the other hand, maybe her reaction is entirely plausible. She refers to her dead boyfriend as "the man I loved," but she hasn't exactly been grieving over him in the three weeks since his death. She's been first flirting and then fooling around with Bond. She's moved on.

I think what's happening when she finds out that Bond killed her boyfriend is that she's as angry at herself as she is at Bond. The kill-or-be-killed speech Bond gives her is heartfelt by him, but not necessary for her. She knows this stuff already and that's why she's not grieving super strongly. But then she feels bad about not grieving and declares that she's going to take it out on Bond. Her heart's not in it though, which is why she drops her vendetta against him like a hot potato at the end. It's an anticlimactic way for the script to resolve that storyline, but it makes sense.

Amasova never turns dumb at any point, but the movie does lose interest in her as a character once Stromberg captures her. The movie cheats by moving from that to her being all tied up in a chair at Stromberg's HQ. There had to have been about twelve different times in between those two scenes where the Amasova from early in the film could have gotten herself out. Instead, Spy sets her aside and has her wait around for Bond to rescue her. There may be a perfectly valid reason that she wasn't able to escape, but I wish the movie cared enough about her to show it to me. She's cool enough to crack the Top Ten, but this lame bit at the end keeps her low on the list.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
3. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
4. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
5. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
6. Mary Goodnight (The Man with the Golden Gun)
7. Andrea Anders (The Man with the Golden Gun)
8. Honey Rider (Dr. No)
9. Anya Amasova (The Spy Who Loved Me)
10. Sylvia Trench (Dr. No and From Russia With Love)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Bond

Actors and Allies



The script for The Spy Who Loves Me gives Roger Moore a lot more to do than the previous films did and he's totally up for it. I mentioned yesterday that there are a couple of great moments for him. One is when Anya Amasova (Agent XXX) brings up the death of Tracy Bond and he suddenly turns hurt and serious, dropping the banter and ending that line of conversation.

The second is towards the end of the movie when she realizes that he may be the one who killed her boyfriend. She questions him about it and he gravely reminds her about the hazards of their job. He could have been flippant about it, but as he talks about the kill-or-be-killed nature of espionage, he makes me feel it. I replay that exciting teaser sequence in my mind and I realize that it wouldn't be all that fun for Bond. Roger Moore always plays it like it is fun, but this brief conversation reveals that that his self-confidence in those moments is at least partly an act.

Back to the fun though, Moore is never funnier than he is in The Spy Who Loved Me. It's not even the quips; it's the way he acts around Amasova. People give Barbara Bach's performance a hard time and it's true that she's not a great actress, but I do think she's serviceable as Amasova and her amused reactions to Moore do help build some chemistry between them. I don't know if that's what I'm noticing or if it's the fact that she and Bond begin as adversarial colleagues so he's not actively hitting on her in every scene. Instead, he's able to just relax and joke and it's a pleasure to see.

Moore really does have great comic timing. One of my favorite moments is one that I screen-captured at the top of yesterday's post when they're in the back of Jaws' van and Amasova falls asleep on Bond's shoulder. He puts his arm around her, but the van jolts and she wakes up, looking at him like, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" His faked innocence as he pulls back his arm his hilarious. Another fantastic moment is when she tries to take the van and abandon him, but he shows her that he has the keys. It's all about his expression.

Moore's facial expressions are what makes a lot of his quips so funny too. Connery got a lot of humor out of grimacing at his own jokes. Moore delivers them perfectly deadpan, but sometimes with a look at the end to see if anyone got it. Both ways work great.

On to Bond's allies, M is a lot more relaxed about Bond this time. Instead of being constantly annoyed by him, M refers to Bond as his "best man" and (like I said yesterday) even enjoys Bond's know-it-all behavior when it looks like Bond's showing up the Soviets.

M is on a first name basis with General Gogol who's introduced in this movie. I don't think this is the first time M's been called Miles in the series, but I'm not remembering the circumstances where it happened before. Maybe it is the first time? Fleming revealed M's full name - Vice Admiral Sir Miles Messervy KCMG - in the novel The Man with the Golden Gun. (Similarly, Amasova calls Q, "Major Boothroyd," cementing him as the same character who gave Bond his Walther PPK in Dr. No.)

Gogol is a great character and it's easy to see why they kept bringing him back. He's the head of the Soviet secret service, so he's not strictly an ally, but he's also not a villain. It would have been so easy to make him a cliché; a repeat of Rosa Klebb, for instance. But he's humanized right away. After the credits, the movie opens on him in a dramatic, somber pose in his office. He's preparing himself to brief Amasova, but he also has bad news about her boyfriend and he's sympathetic towards her. This is cool, bold stuff for an action movie made in the middle of the Cold War.

I don't know what this is about, but there's no flirting with Moneypenny this time. She and Bond are all business. I don't think I like that. I don't want her to be hopelessly smitten with him, but I do enjoy their friendly relationship and I miss it in Spy.

Best Quip



"Bring tears to your eyes?" To Amasova as they're touring Q-Branch's Cairo facility, looking at Q's weird stuff. Makes me laugh out loud every single time. I'm laughing now just remembering it.

Worst Quip



"Egyptian builders..." After some ruins come crashing down on top of Jaws. I'm not even sure what this means. Is he implying that Egyptians don't know how to build? Because they're kind of known for exactly the opposite of that.

Gadgets



Broccoli got over whatever gadgetphobia he had in The Man with the Golden Gun and lets Bond get fully outfitted in Spy. In the teaser, he receives instructions to leave Switzerland via label-maker watch, then uses a ski pole rocket to kill Amasova's boyfriend.

After he and Amasova recover the microfilm from Jaws, Bond reads it with a contraption made by assembling a cigarette case and lighter in a particular way. And of course there's the WetBike prototype that he uses to rescue Amasova at the end, but I don't tend to count real-life tech as gadgets.

The jewel of the movie is the Lotus Esprit outfitted with oil spray, rockets, mines, and - most importantly - turns into a submarine. Because of the underwater factor and the car's sleek lines, I like it even more than the Aston Martin DB5. I know that's heresy in some Bond circles, but there you go.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
5. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
6. Ski pole rocket (The Spy Who Loved Me)
7. Magnetic buzzsaw watch (Live and Let Die)
8. Attaché case (From Russia with Love)
9. Propeller SCUBA tank with built-in spearguns (Thunderball)
10. Rebreather (Thunderball)

Bond's Best Outfit



Love a man in uniform.

Bond's Worst Outfit



Nothing too horrid, but I'm not a fan of brown in general (unless you're Indiana Jones) and that's too many stripes for my taste.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Story

Plot Summary

British and Soviet submarines with nuclear missiles go missing, so Bond teams up with Soviet agent XXX (sigh) to discover who has the technology to track and capture the subs. Will the rival agents find love? Or will a tragic link in their past bring out a need for vengeance?

Influences

I always hear that The Man with the Golden Gun was a flop, but it made money. In fact, it made more money than On Her Majesty's Secret Service (which wasn't a flop either) or either of the first two Connery films. What it didn't do was meet expectations.

That was bad timing for Harry Saltzman who was in financial trouble thanks to some bad investments outside of Bond. He was also irritating everyone on the Bond team, but it was mostly the money that made him sell his stake in the series to United Artists. This left Cubby Broccoli as the sole producer, but with UA having a bigger say in the creative side. Pressure was on for the next movie to be a huge hit.

In Saltzman's absence, Broccoli's stepson Michael Wilson came in to help with some of the production duties. They settled on The Spy Who Loved Me as the next book to adapt and Broccoli himself came up with the idea of flipping the title so that Bond is the "Me" and the "Spy" is a Soviet agent. Beyond that though, the story took forever to bring together and involved a dozen or so writers pitching ideas and reworking each other's drafts.

Securing a director was also a problem. They originally went with Guy Hamilton, who'd directed the previous three films, but he pulled out to work on something else. While Hamilton was attached, traditional Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum was working on what everyone hoped was the final draft of the script. But when Hamilton was replaced by Lewis Gilbert (who'd directed You Only Live Twice), Gilbert brought in his own guy, Christopher Wood, to do one last pass.

With so many cooks in the kitchen, it wouldn't have been surprising had The Spy Who Loved Me been a hot mess. Shockingly, it not only holds together extremely well, it hit 1977 screens with guns blazing and completely revitalized the Bond series as popular entertainment. It's easily my favorite of the Moore films that embrace his style (as opposed to For Your Eyes Only, which is my most favorite of his movies, but precisely because it's the least Moore-like).

The villain's scheme is right out of You Only Live Twice and I used to call Spy a remake of that movie, but that's not really fair. There's a significant change in motive and the rest of the plot is totally different.

The biggest external influence on the movie was Jaws. In fact, Broccoli apparently approached Steven Spielberg about directing Spy, but wouldn't agree to all the creative control that Spielberg wanted. Instead of having the actual guy, Spy settles for the ocean theme and a henchman named after the shark movie. There's even a Jaws vs Jaws scene when the assassin falls into a shark tank.

In accordance with tradition, Spy also includes some new technology from the time period. Jet skis had been around for a few years, but the smaller WetBike brand makes its debut in Spy. It wouldn't go on the market until the following year; Bond is riding the actual prototype in the film.

How Is the Book Different?

The Spy Who Loved Me is famous for discarding almost the entire novel that it's based on, but it does pay homage to Fleming's story with Stromberg's assassins, Jaws and Sandor. The novel features two thugs named Horror and Sluggsy. Horror is a tall guy with steel-capped teeth (though not weaponized like Jaws) and Sluggsy is a short, bald guy.

Other than that though, we're in entirely new territory.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



Roger Moore's Bond isn't known for being ruthless, but that quality does show up from time to time. Like when he gets the information he needs from Sandor, then lets the guy fall to his death. It's not entirely cold-blooded, but it's close.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



Jaws' teeth may have been inspired by a Fleming character, but the rest of him is a cartoon. His method of killing is unnecessarily weird and he's invulnerable to the point of ridiculousness. Fleming had some strange villains, but Jaws is over the top.

Cold Open



Like the previous Moore teasers, Spy's is not only connected to the story, it sets it up. We see a British sub go missing in a nicely tense, mysterious way, then hear that a Soviet sub has also disappeared. The Soviets assign XXX to the case and there's a nice fake out when it looks like XXX is a man, but then turns out to be the woman he's in bed with. (The man, by the way, is played by Michael Billington, who was Broccoli's top choice to play Bond had Roger Moore not been available for Live and Let Die. In fact, Billington tested for Bond three more times after Spy when Moore's contract went movie-by-movie and his returning wasn't always a sure thing. Looking at Billington in Spy, it's easy to imagine him as Bond, though we don't get any sense of his personality.)

Meanwhile, M assigns the submarine case to Bond who is already on assignment in the Swiss Alps. Bond extricates himself, but not before a team of Soviet agents show up, led by XXX's boyfriend. An awesome ski chase ensues, beating out the one in On Her Majesty's Secret Service for thrills. There are gadgets, there are stunts, and of course there's the Disco Bond Theme (a source of controversy among Bond music fans, but it gets zero complaints from me). All of this culminates in arguably the best stunt from any Bond movie: skiing off a cliff and escaping via Union Jack parachute. In the process, Bond kills XXX's boyfriend, setting up a conflict for later in the movie.

Easily the best cold open so far and it raised the bar for future teasers to an almost impossible level.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Thunderball
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
4. Goldfinger
5. The Man with the Golden Gun
6. From Russia With Love
7. Diamonds Are Forever
8. You Only Live Twice
9. Live and Let Die
10. TBD

Movie Series Continuity



The Spy Who Loved Me really ushers in the Moore era in a proper way. Not only does it give us the first huge teaser sequence, it also introduces both General Gogol and the British Minister of Defense who will become recurring characters in the next several films. Though M makes the initial call to activate Bond, it's the MoD who actually briefs him. Not the last time that'll happen either.

M doesn't disappear though. He continues to pop up, even in the field, which is still a habit of his. He, Q, and Moneypenny all hang out in the Cairo office for major chunks of the movie. Q is also present at the field briefing, offering technical consult on how the missing subs were possibly tracked.

[UPDATE: After watching The Spy Who Loved Me again, I realized that Robert Brown plays Admiral Hargreaves, so in my head canon it's Hargreaves who replaces Miles Messervy after he dies.]

Bond's time at Cambridge is mentioned again. In You Only Live Twice he mentioned that he studied Oriental langagues there and in Spy we meet one of his former classmates, a sheik named Hosein.

Bond is a know-it-all about a couple of things in this one, but has some holes poked in his omniscience. His knowledge of Carl Stromberg's activities (which gets an appreciative comment from the usually annoyed M) is proven incomplete by XXX. And Bond knows enough about fish to pose as a marine biologist in front of Stromberg, but isn't totally confident pulling up that information.

The jokey tone of the movie gives us a couple of gags that will recur in future films. When Bond drives the Lotus out of the water and onto the beach, he scares the crap out of a dog and gets a drunk to think twice about the bottle he's been consuming. The drunk shows up in the next couple of films and the dog sets a precedent for an even more ridiculous animal reaction in Moonraker.

Finally, when XXX is reciting Bond's dossier back to him, she gets to his marriage and his wife's death before he interrupts her, clearly hurt by the memory. It's one of a couple of great, dramatic moments in the movie. It also makes it obvious that Moore is playing the same character that George Lazenby did, who was playing the same character that Connery did. The James Bond Is a Code Name Theory doesn't hold up.

The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming once explained the oddity of The Spy Who Loved Me as his response to young readers' seeing Bond as a hero. Fleming had a different opinion of Bond, so instead of letting readers into the agent's head as usual, The Spy Who Loved Me presents him completely through the eyes of other people.

Mostly that's the first person narrator of the novel, Vivienne Michel, who's left as the sole occupant/caretaker of an isolated motor lodge in the Adirondacks. The novel takes place over the course of an evening. Vivienne spends the first part of it alone, reminiscing over her life and especially her experiences with a couple of men. Then in the middle of the novel, a couple of gangsters show up, sent to burn down the motel for the insurance money, murder Vivienne, and frame her for the "accident." In the last third of the story, Bond shows up and becomes a deadly fly in the gangsters' ointment.

When I first read The Spy Who Loved Me as a teenager, I was impatient with it. It's so different from the other Bond novels not just in structure, but in tone. The first third reads sort of like a romance novel, then the second part becomes a horror story with Bond finally bringing things home at the end. As an adult though, I found a lot to like in the shifting genres. Vivienne is a great character on her own and I enjoyed spending time with her. Fleming's attitudes about women still creep in, but he's written a beautifully complicated person whom I was able to relate to and feel for.

My fondness for Vivienne led me to feeling discouraged though when the novel was wrapping up. She'd been emotionally devastated by a couple of men in her life, so it's kind of heart-breaking to see her fall so hard for Bond who's completely incapable of having a healthy relationship with a woman. (I still don't know what happened with Domino, dang it.) She claims to understand that Bond isn't for keeping, but I despaired a little that her worship of him - because that's what it amounts to - is going to affect her ability to find happiness in future relationships.

She thinks at one point, while watching him sleep after they've had sex, "I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn't care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn't care, because none of them would ever own him - own any larger piece of him than I now did. And for all my life I would be grateful to him, for everything. And I would remember him for ever as my image of a man."

Holding Bond as her image of a man is understandable after the weasels Vivienne had previously known, but it's still sad. He was kind and charming to her and they had great sex, but that's still a pretty low bar to get over. And knowing why Fleming wrote the novel, I believe that's exactly his point. He was concerned that some of his readers were like Vivienne, idolizing Bond and turning him into their image of a man.

So after Bond takes off the next morning, leaving Vivienne asleep, but with a very nice note, Fleming lets the story continue as Vivienne interacts with the police whom Bond has sent to wrap up the affair. She has a long conversation with a middle-aged captain who sees her as a daughter figure and is worried about her. He intuits that she's infatuated with Bond and warns her against romanticizing the experience. Bond, he claims, is no different from the gangsters who threatened Vivienne's life the night before. He operates on the side of the angels, but he's just as cold and just as ruthless as the people he fights.

It's impossible not to hear Fleming's voice in this speech. It's the same message he introduced back in Casino Royale when Bond was recovering from Le Chiffre's torture and struggling to differentiate himself from the villains. But all the lecturing about Bond's being "a different species" and not fit for normal human interaction is undercut by the way Bond actually acts in the novel. No, he's not going to commit to a long, meaningful relationship with Vivienne, but he's also not the same man we met in Casino Royale.

We've been tracking his growth all through the series and The Spy Who Loved Me is an important check point in that development. On the surface, Bond is bad news. The police captain believes it and even Vivienne feels it in those thoughts above. Right after she declares Bond as her image of a man, she realizes the silliness of that and adds, "He was trained to fire guns, to kill people. What was so wonderful about that? Brave, strong, ruthless with women - these were the qualities that went with his calling - what he was paid to be. He was only some kind of a spy, a spy who had loved me. Not even loved, slept with. Why should I make him my hero, swear never to forget him? I suddenly had an impulse to wake him up and ask him: 'Can you be nice? Can you be kind?'"

And yet, we've seen Bond be nice and kind. He's done it with Vivienne, but also with Honey and with Domino and with M and with Felix. Over the course of the series, he's become more human. Earlier, when Bond explains his job to Vivienne and how he just completed a mission to protect a double agent, he talks about the spy business in negative terms. He describes it as a foolish, complicated game that no one will stop playing. Vivienne concurs and says that her generation finds ideas like nationalism and power struggles to be idiotic. To which Bond replies, "As a matter of fact I agree, but don't spread your ideas too widely or I'll find myself out of a job."

There's another part where Vivienne asks Bond why he didn't kill the two gangsters when they were sitting ducks. His response is that he's never been able to kill in cold blood. I've pointed out before how that's clearly false, but it is something that Bond's been claiming for a while and he's obviously uncomfortable with killing outside the heat of battle.

The answer to Vivienne's question then is that yes, Bond can be nice and he can be kind. He's not a shining hero and he should be nobody's "image of a man," but he's getting better and The Spy Who Loves Me bears that out even as it warns us that he's not quite there yet. In that way, it's a perfect leap off spot for the next novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.