You Only Live Twice (1967)

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You Only Make LXG Once

Director Lewis Gilbert

Stars Sean Connery, Donald Pleasence, Mie Hama & Akiko Wakabayashi

Things You Might Like

• Inspired volcano set
• Most layered and memorable Bond score
• Entertaining fights and chases

Things You Might Not Like

• Lethargic pacing
• Disappointing Blofeld revealed
• Ninja training school
• No character for Bond, despite…
• Most women he sleeps with die

Conclusion
Entertaining but thin and glacially paced entry in the series.  Brought to life with career best sets from Ken Adams and score from John Barry.

3 out of 5 Cosmonauts Rescued

Luke McGrath will return in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

***

Faced with a star actor who had become disillusioned with the series and an audience demanding ever greater returns, 1967 was a tipping point for the James Bond franchise.  It was with You Only Live Twice (YOLT) that the most enduring phase of the series truly began.  It also heralded the start of a new attitude to the films; while Goldfinger had been overblown but perfectly formed, YOLT only managed the former.

Capturing the mood of the time wonderfully, YOLT sees Bond assigned to investigate the theft of American and Russia spacecraft…from space.  Yes, someone else has entered the space race and constructed a ship capable of swallowing other ships whole.  SPECTRE is suspected by the British, who act as unlikely mediators between US and Russian diplomats.

Bond fakes his own death to get the shadowy agency off his back for a while and starts spying around Japan for clues.  By a combination of luck and bad disguises he locates a secret rocket base hidden inside a volcano.  With the world on the brink of war, Bond comes face to face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld for the first time and does his best to sabotage some typically grandiose plans.

Space was hardly the final frontier for Bond, having already disrupted Dr. No’s rocket disturbing plans a few years earlier, but it was a natural progression in terms of set pieces.  YOLT starts well, the staged death of Bond echoing previous pre-title sequences without rehashing them.  In the context of the series as a whole it makes sense that Bond would be targeted by SPECTRE as their main hurdle to success.  While Bond began life stumbling across private beaches, it is fascinating to see his status cemented as the world’s greatest secret agent.

Yet in creating the myth for themselves, the producers took the man from audiences.  Bond is reduced to giving throwaway lines about the temperature of sake and the taste of Chinese girls. Whereas they once highlighted his playboy credentials, their use in YOLT only serve to paint Bond as an insufferable sexist bore. Attitudes were changing and the franchise was never one to change with; see previous references to The Beatles’ musical efforts.  It’s all too easy to look back and scoff at sixties misogyny but even the bum slapping of Goldfinger’s Miami scene was easier to digest than some of this.

Where Bond did move ahead of the curve was technology; the Ken Adams designed volcano lair remains the greatest man made setting for any movie ever.  Complete with monorail, helipad, viewing area, piranha pool, fake water cover and coloured jumpsuits it really has everything that defines the series.  Years before Austin Powers parodied anything, YOLT did it all with a straight face and set the mould for countless Bonds and spy thrillers far beyond the series.

The score is similarly a notch above predecessors, John Barry orchestrating a pitch perfect blend of recognisable themes with Japanese tropes.  The scenes where the SPECTRE space ship encloses around other vessels are accompanied by the booming brilliance of Space March, the only music in the franchise that comes close to the James Bond Theme itself.

Whilst the production values and returns increased, the scripting and editing sufferd. YOLT runs for half an hour too long, the whole of the Japanese disguise and ninja training section should have cut.  While we can accept that Bond stumbles forwards rather than detects anything, making up for this with a week of intensive training at a ninja academy is ridiculous.  So too is the apparent urgency to make the twenty foot Bond passable as a Japanese fisherman with a Scottish accent.

When the middle act finally comes to a close and the volcano is discovered, there is little to cheer beyond the set design.  Pleasence’s Blofeld only has a few minutes on screen but disintegrates the commanding presence he had before his identity was fully revealed.  The expected tension between the two arch enemies falls flat and both seemed annoyed to have to talk to each other.  When you think back to the exchanges between Bond and Julius No or Auric Goldfinger, the tragedy of the wasted opportunity is clear.

YOLT is still an entertaining addition to the franchise; its production design and score far outweigh the second act slog and disappointing conclusion.  Accepting the lightweight was something audiences would do for two decades so it’s hardly surprising the series wasn’t derailed here.  Bond would be done smarter and much slicker but never against such incredible production.

Buy You Only Live Twice or pre-order the James Bond blu-ray collection from Amazon