You Only Live Twice (1967) | Music

Maurice Binder is back to create the title sequence for You Only Live Twice, this time using a Japanese umbrella motif over images of volcanoes and the faces of Japanese women. The umbrella design is introduced in a cool way, exploding in red from a patch of blood at the end of the cold open, then turning black and shrinking into a woman's eye. In spite of that strong opening though, I get bored watching faces and lava. I'm much more interested in the song.

John Barry brought back Leslie Bricusse to help with the theme song and this one was less troubled than the song for Thunderball had been. There was one version with mostly different words and sung by Julie Rogers, but Barry ended up going with Nancy Sinatra whose "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" had just come out the year before. Barry redid the orchestra part of the song to fit Sinatra's range and mellowed out the Japanese strings in the process.



The final version is great. It swells beautifully and Sinatra's voice is lovely. Barry of course uses it in the soundtrack and the musical theme is great over scenes of the Japanese countryside.

The lyrics work well, too. Unlike the songs for Goldfinger and Thunderball, "You Only Live Twice" isn't directly related to characters or events in the movie. It follows the From Russia With Love model in that it repurposes the movie's title into a love song (my favorite kind of Bond theme). In the novel, Bond writes the title as part of a haiku: "You only live twice: Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face." In the film, it's a reference to Bond's second chance after his faked death. But in the song, it's about romance and taking hold of your dreams before they disappear.

Barry's getting even more sparing with the Bond Theme in You Only Live Twice, but he uses it to great effect. The only time it appears is during the dogfight between Little Nellie and the SPECTRE helicopters. It's a highlight of the movie, not only because it's a great fight, but because it uses that music and I go, "Ah! This is Bond."

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. You Only Live Twice
2. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
3. Dr No
4. Thunderball
5. Goldfinger
6. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. Dr No
2. Thunderball
3. Goldfinger
4. From Russia With Love
5. You Only Live Twice
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

You Only Live Twice (1967) | Villains

What a letdown Donald Pleasance is after all the buildup the series has been doing towards revealing Blofeld's face. The creepy, mysterious head of SPECTRE with the silky voice is now a tiny, non-blinking madman with a high-pitched screech. When he yells, "Kill Bond! Now!" it's not threatening, it's sad. He sounds hysterical. Blofeld is my least-favorite thing in a movie full of bad decisions.



Like I said yesterday, Helga Brandt is the lite version of Thunderball's Fiona Volpe. She may be pretty and have red hair, but she's an incompetent assassin. Fits right in with the rest of these goons.



Actually, there's nothing really incompetent about Hans, but that's a low bar when he has so little responsibility. All he's really in charge of is feeding Blofeld's fish and holding the destruct key. He does both of those things well though and Bond actually has to expend some energy to beat him. He's the best bad guy in the movie.



I have a hard time figuring out Osato's role in all of this. He gets to hang out with Blofeld who treats Osato like an underling, so I assume he's part of SPECTRE. But that doesn't explain why Osato's corporate logo is proudly displayed on the SPECTRE astronauts' suits as if Osato is some kind of corporate sponsor.

I'm also confused about who's making all the decisions in regards to stopping Bond's investigation. Henderson's killer seems to have been working for Osato and numerous attempts on Bond's life are made on Osato property, so it feels like Osato himself is responsible for that incompetence. In Thunderball, Fiona stops Largo from trying to kill Bond because she knows it would let Bond's allies know he was on the right trail. In You Only Live Twice, every single time Bond gets close to a bad guy, Osato tries to have him killed, even if Bond is literally in the Osato parking lot.

But before we judge Osato too harshly, we need to realize that Blofeld's just as bad. When Bond flies Little Nellie out to recon the area he thinks the bad guys might be operating from, SPECTRE totally confirms his suspicions by sending out attack helicopters. Every step of the way in this plot, all Bond has to do is accidentally get close to the next clue and the villains will let him know he's on the right track. Stupidist bad guys ever.

I'm actually sorry I still have spaces left at the bottom of my Top Ten Villains and Henchmen lists, because none of these guys deserve to be on the lists even temporarily. What I'm going to do though is separate Blofeld out by portrayals. It's not that I consider each version to be a different character, but most of them are different enough that they should be ranked separately. I don't want You Only Live Twice Blofeld dragging down From Russia With Love/Thunderball Blofeld.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Doctor No (Dr. No)
4. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
5. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
6. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)
7. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (You Only Live Twice)
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
2. Grant (From Russia With Love)
3. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
4. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
5. Professor Dent (Dr. No)
6. Morzeny (From Russia With Love)
7. Hans (You Only Live Twice)
8. Helga Brandt (You Only Live Twice)
9. Vargas (Thunderball)
10. Count Lippe (Thunderball)

You Only Live Twice (1967) Women

The first woman we see Bond with in You Only Live Twice is "Chinese Girl." Her name isn't the only mystery about her; the movie doesn't even care what side she's on. In fact, Bond's whole fake death is hard to figure out. Is Chinese Girl working for SPECTRE to lure Bond into a trap or is she MI6 and in on the charade? What about the guys who shoot Bond? They're apparently not using real bullets, so they have to be good guys, right?

The only thing I can figure is that M must hope that someone witnessing Bond's "death" is going to report that information back to SPECTRE. Otherwise, M could just plant a fake obituary in the paper and be done with it. So if the gunmen aren't SPECTRE agents, CG must be a good guy too. If she were actually working for SPECTRE, why would she contact M's fake assassins to kill Bond? It doesn't make sense that she'd have a real person in SPECTRE to report Bond's death to, but then have to call bogus killers. Even if she thinks she's working for SPECTRE, her actual contact with the organization has to be part of an elaborate sting.

So, who does M hope will provide an eyewitness account of Bond's death? The only thing that makes sense to me is that it's one of the policemen who arrives after Bond is shot. MI6 must know there's a mole in that group. Which may also explain why they go to the trouble to actually bury Bond at sea. Maybe the mole - or another like him - has enough access to have actually seen the burial preparations.

Which is all way more thought than Roald Dahl put into the caper or the character of CG.



Tiger Tanaka's agent Aki is pretty cool. She's apparently a top spy in the organization and she saves Bond's bacon a number of times. But she's too easily dismissed before the ship chase and there's no real chemistry between her and Bond. That is, Bond doesn't really have chemistry with anyone in this movie, but actor Akiko Wakabayashi also delivers a confusing performance. Aki is smart, resourceful, and instigates the romance with Bond, but she kisses him with chaste little pecks that suggest she's not as into him as she pretends to be. Or maybe she's just a bad kisser. Either way, she and Bond don't feel right as a couple and it feels like they're thrown together because that's what's supposed to happen in a Bond movie.



I used to think of Helga Brandt as a sexier substitute for Irma Bunt, Blofeld's wife in the novel, but other than the similar names they don't really have anything in common. There's not a hint of romance between her and Blofeld - quite the contrary, actually - and Bunt doesn't do anything in the book. Brandt is much more active.

That's mostly only true in relation to Bunt though. Brandt is supposed to be an assassin in the spirit of Thunderball's Fiona, but she's nowhere near as cool or efficient. She bungles her easy chance to kill Bond by trading it in for a chance to sleep with him. Like Aki though, there's no motivation for her to do that. She's just doing it because that's what hot villains are apparently supposed to do.



Finally, there's Kissy Suzuki, who isn't that interesting either. The coolest thing about her is that she's all business at first. In fact, "It's business" seems to be her motto and that's really endearing. But after spending a day with Bond she succumbs to his... I don't know, stone-faced staring? Anyway, they make out a couple of times. She serves the plot, but doesn't turn out to be much of a character either.

One nice thing is that none of the women suddenly turns incompetent partway through the movie. That's still not a thing yet in the series. But of all the women of You Only Live Twice, the only one to crack my Top Ten is Aki. Her relationship with Bond is weird, but she's a cool spy and I wish there was a whole separate movie series of her adventures.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
2. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
3. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
4. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
5. Honey Rider (Dr. No)
6. Sylvia Trench (Dr. No and From Russia With Love)
7. Aki (You Only Live Twice)
8. Pussy Galore (Goldfinger)
9. Tilly Masterson (Goldfinger)
10. Jill Masterson (Goldfinger)

You Only Live Twice (1967) | Story

Plot Summary

Someone is stealing US and Soviet rockets from orbit and the superpowers aren't happy! Can James Bond and Britain solve the mystery before those maniacs blow up the earth?!

Influences

Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli's plans to produce On Her Majesty's Secret Service had been postponed by the sudden availability of Thunderball as source material, but they didn't come right back to it afterwards. Instead, wanting to take advantage of the Bond movies' huge popularity in Japan, they decided to adapt You Only Live Twice.

I wasn't able to find out exactly why Terence Young didn't return to direct YOLT after Thunderball, but I did learn that even though the previous movie had been a huge financial success, Young had become frustrated with all the underwater shooting and had pretty much abandoned Peter Hunt to finish editing the film alone. Maybe that had something to do with it. Whatever the reason, he was replaced by director Lewis Gilbert. who originally turned down the job, but was convinced to do it because of the huge built-in audience it would bring him.

Richard Maibaum, the defining voice on the first four screenplays, wasn't available for YOLT either, so the producers hired Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, etc. He'd been a close friend of Ian Fleming, but he was an untried screenwriter and didn't think the YOLT novel had a filmable plot. He jettisoned most of it, keeping primarily the Japanese setting, a few characters, and some nods to particular story elements.

How Is the Book Different?

Since the US-Soviet space race had captured the world's attention, Dahl made that the center of the movie. Fortunately, it fit well with a change that Cubby Broccoli wanted to make concerning Blofeld's hideout. Broccoli had scouted Japan for a seaside castle like the one in Fleming's novel, but learned that Fleming had made that up. Tsunamis make it foolish to build castles on the coast. Instead, Broccoli discovered a dormant volcano with a lake in its crater. That would be the site of Blofeld's operation.

In addition to Blofeld, Dahl kept Tiger Tanaka and his organization (including the ninja training facility) and diving girl Kissy Suzuki (though she's one of Tanaka's agents and an orphan in the film instead of a former actresss living with her parents as in the book). He also kept Bond's disguising himself as a Japanese fisherman, though that doesn't work at all onscreen. All that remains of Blofeld's garden of death is the piranha pool in his office, but there's also sort of a nod to Bond's obituary from the end of the novel, since the movie opens with Bond's supposed death and a newspaper headline reporting it.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



Of the various elements from the novel that sneak their way into the movie, the biggest one is when Tanaka takes Bond out for a bath. It's not an exact replay of the scene from the book, but it serves the same purpose in the story.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



The movie does weird things with a couple of characters. Dikko Henderson isn't a racist Australian bastard in the movie, but a snooty Englishman who's adopted some Japanese culture while refusing to give up all of his own. As much as I dislike the movie Henderson though (more on that tomorrow), the real crime is what they've done to Blofeld. I'll have more to say about that on Friday, but dang that is not the villain Fleming wrote.

Cold Open



Dahl's newness to the Bond series is felt right away with the cold open. Instead of continuing the previous films' trajectory of increasingly more exciting sequences, YOLT opens with a plot-heavy series of three scenes. First is the space walk in which a mysterious rocket opens up and swallows a US capsule (killing an astronaut in the process). There's a good two minutes of boring control room chatter before the second rocket even shows up. I imagine that might have been fascinating to audiences in the mid-'60s, but it's a long, slow, two minutes today.

After that, the movie cuts to some kind of summit meeting where the US and USSR stubbornly threaten each other over the crisis while Britain calmly, but sternly encourages them to focus their attention on finding a third party. Britain's portrayed as a powerful mediator, which is really interesting considering the novel's theme about Britain's declining influence in the post-WWII world.

Finally, the cold open cuts to Japan where Bond is supposedly investigating the rocket's disappearance, since the mysterious rocket supposedly landed somewhere around there. But we don't see any investigating, because Bond is immediately shot and killed in bed. There's no action anywhere in the cold open; just this cliffhanger. Sadly, that lack of excitement will plague the rest of the film.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. Thunderball
2. Goldfinger
3. From Russia With Love
4. You Only Live Twice
5. TBD
6. TBD
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Movie Series Continuity



Bond obviously didn't die before the credits. It's all MI6's trying to fool SPECTRE into thinking they'd got rid of him. Which makes sense because they've known all about him since From Russia With Love. What doesn't make any sense is that MI6 actually goes to the trouble to bury the real Bond at sea. Couldn't they just have dumped a dummy or something? The way Bond gets on board the submarine is convoluted and unnecessary.

Once he's there though, we get another hatrack gag when he tosses his naval cap onto one in Moneypenny's office. And we've now set a precedence for M's taking his entire office and staff into the field. This will happen a few more times in the series and it's never convincing to me.

After his briefing, Moneypenny tries to give Bond a Japanese phrase book, but he tells her that he "took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge." The obituary in the novel doesn't mention Cambridge, but it comes up again later in the movies.

Following up on Bond's excellent knowledge of alcohol from Goldfinger, Bond knows the correct temperature for serving saké. And speaking of alcohol, there's a strange bit of discontinuity when Bond meets with Henderson, but I think I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Finally, Blofeld makes an odd comment about Bond's being the only agent SPECTRE knows who uses a Walther PPK. I thought it was pretty firmly established in Dr. No that those were standard issue for Double-O agents, of whom we saw in Thunderball that there are nine. I might be adding 2 and 2 and getting 5, but this looks like a ridiculous case of the movie series' getting too big for itself. Audiences associate the Walther PPK with Bond, so the villains apparently do too. The snake is eating its own tail.

If you haven't guessed yet, I really don't much care for You Only Live Twice.

You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

As I've been rereading the Bond series, I've had On Her Majesty's Secret Service in my head as the pinnacle of Bond's character development. My memory of You Only Live Twice and The Man With the Golden Gun was that they're both very dark books and represent a descent for Bond into the narcissistic selfishness that marked him in the early novels. That's not true though. At least not for You Only Live Twice.

The novel opens understandably with Bond completely shattered and depressed after the murder of his wife by Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He's bungled his last couple of assignments and M is at a loss for what to do with him. Even Moneypenny is openly hostile to him and has apparently forgotten the out of character crush Fleming tried to foist on her back in Thunderball. Not to be overly harsh on Bond, but good for her.

M is actually to the point of wanting to fire Bond when he has a conversation with Sir James Molony, the same neurologist who diagnosed Bond back in Dr. No. As Molony justifies Bond's shock to M, it struck me that Bond's always been prone to depression. That's especially clear in the first couple of novels and his anxiety attack in the airplane during Live and Let Die leaps to mind. Tracy's death has sent the already unstable agent spiraling.

But as often as Bond has succumbed to dark thoughts, he's always been able to fight his way through them and Molony believes that's still the case. What Bond needs is a really tough, impossible assignment. Something that will either leave no room for his current depression, or at least will put it into perspective. After giving it some thought, M comes up with the perfect mission. As he describes it to Bond, it's "totally improbable of success" and will be very different from what he's used to. "There won't be any of the strong-arm stuff," he says, "None of the gun-play you pride yourself on so much. It'll just be a question of your wits and nothing else."

The assignment gives Fleming a chance to explore a couple of things he had on his mind. One is the decline of Britain as a major world power after WWII. Bond's mission is to get information about the Soviet Union from the Japanese secret service. Japan apparently has a strong source of Soviet intelligence, but only shares it with the United States. Britain's feeling a bit left out, so Bond's job is to meet with Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese service, and convince him that Britain can be good friends too.

Which leads us to Fleming's other major interest in the book: Japan itself. Fleming had briefly visited the country in 1959 on his Thrilling Cities tour, but returned for a longer stay in '62. That trip became the basis of You Only Live Twice with the other journalists he was traveling with inspiring characters in the novel. Tiger Saito became Tanaka while Richard Hughes was the inspiration for Australian spy Dikko Henderson. (Incidentally, Dikko has way more in common with Joe Don Baker's Jack Wade in the Pierce Brosnan Bond films than he does with Charles Gray's stuffy Henderson in the movie version of You Only Live Twice.)

Long sections of the novel are devoted to Bond's introduction and acclimation to Japanese culture. At first, he's judgmental and racist and I suspected he was just imitating Fleming's own feelings about the country. Bond and Fleming both seem curious about Japan without seriously considering the country on its own terms. That made me impatient with the book and for a while I felt the same way about it as I did about From Russia With Love, which seemed less interested in telling a spy story than in scratching other itches of Fleming's.

As the novel progresses though, it becomes clear that Fleming's doing more than just writing a travelogue. Bond becomes less and less snarky about Japanese life and by the end of the book he's completely relaxed and embracing it. He's self-confident and cheerful. M's scheme has worked, though the credit goes less to the mission itself and more to Japan.

Things take a dark turn though when Tanaka conditionally agrees to give Bond the information he wants. The condition is that Bond needs to do a personal favor for Tanaka and assassinate a wealthy European named Shatterhand who's causing problems for the Japanese government. Shatterhand has bought a castle in one of the southern islands and surrounded it with a garden of the most poisonous flora and venomous fauna imaginable. Visiting the garden has become a popular way to commit suicide, which is somehow so embarrassing to the Japanese government that they want Shatterhand murdered.

I never quite understood why Tanaka decided that assassination was the best solution to what seems more like a social problem than a criminal act. It's the weakest part of the book, but after that glitch things get back on track when Bond discovers that Shatterhand is actually Blofeld. However weak Tanaka's reasons are for wanting him killed, Bond's are completely understandable.

The final chapters of the book are strong for a couple of reasons. One is Bond's infiltration of the garden and castle. Both are horrifying places, made even more weird and terrible by Blofeld's striding around them in samurai armor, accompanied by his awful wife, Irma Bunt. As evocative as that is though, my favorite bits of the novel's end are Bond's time on a fishing island with Kissy Suzuki.

Bond goes to the island because it's close to Blofeld's and can be used as a base from which to strike, but once he gets there, his transformation is profound. Not his physical transformation, which reads as unconvincing as Sean Connery's looks in the movie version, but his spiritual transformation. Away from the cynical, irony-loving Tanaka and surrounded by people who just genuinely love their way of life, Bond finds peace. He never considers not killing Blofeld, but by the time he sets out to do it, the sense is that he's doing it out of duty. It's no longer about revenge for him. Those thoughts have vanished and as a reader I'm just hoping that he can survive and maybe get back to Kissy. She has a ridiculous name, but I like her more than any of Bond's romances since Domino. She's Bond's equal and brings out goodness in him.

I wish the book ended with Bond's going back to her and settling down on his own. I mean, without his having amnesia and Kissy's taking advantage of it to deceive him and keep him there. That's a crappy thing for her to do and it makes me like her less. Part of me appreciates the pulpiness of it and how it leads into a cliffhanger for the next book to resolve, but more than that I want a happy ending for Bond. Sadly for me, You Only Live Twice gives just a little taste of one before snatching it away.

Some final comments on things I've been tracking through this project. One is that Blofeld calls Bond a "blunt instrument" in the novel. I don't remember if that's the first time Fleming has used the term (M uses it in Die Another Day, which is where I first noticed it), but it's significant and it does more or less describe Bond's approach to assassination, even though he's pretty sneaky about getting into the castle.

Another thing I've been tracking is how Fleming reveals Bond's status as an orphan. You Only Live Twice is where that happens, in an obituary M writes for Bond when the agent is presumed dead. Bond's parents died in a climbing accident when he was 11 and he went to live with an aunt. That explains some of Fleming's other statements about Bond's teen years, which didn't seem to be particularly dark in From Russia With Love, though he did need a surrogate father in "Octopussy".

Finally, Fleming does something weird with Bond's obituary and turns Bond into a public figure. It's not just strange that M runs the obit in the newspaper with lots of details about Bond and his service to the government. He also mentions a series of popular novels that have been written by a friend of Bond. With his typical, self-deprecating humor, Fleming has M dismiss the books as exaggerated and not very good, but it's still an odd thing for Fleming to write himself into the series. It also means that everyone knows all about Bond and his adventures, however inaccurate the details. Fleming will deal with some of the consequences of that in The Man With the Golden Gun, which we'll talk about in a couple of weeks. It's interesting to me though that as the literary You Only Live Twice closes by thrusting Bond into the public eye, the movie version opens with an attempt to take him out of it again.