On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The Other Fellow

When Sean Connery walked away from Bond after You Only Live Twice, the producers took a gamble. They cast George Lazenby, an Australian model who’d never acted in a feature film, and built a film around him that was more faithful to Ian Fleming’s novel than any Bond before it.

The pre-title sequence tackles the change head-on. Bond rescues a woman on a beach, she drives off, and he turns to the camera and says that this never happened to the other fellow. It’s a cheeky, knowing wink at the audience, and it announces that this Bond, and this film, will be a little different.

Peter Hunt, who’d edited the earlier Bonds, directed it in 1969, and he brought a kinetic, fast-cut energy to the action and an unusual seriousness to the story.

Tracy

The film’s heart is Tracy di Vicenzo, played by Diana Rigg. She’s a reckless, unhappy countess, the daughter of a Corsican crime boss, Marc-Ange Draco, and when Bond first meets her, she’s driving into the sea, apparently trying to end her life. He saves her, and she keeps running away from him.

Rigg, fresh from The Avengers on British television, is magnificent: witty, sad, strong and completely Bond’s equal. Tracy doesn’t need rescuing so much as understanding, and patience, and the romance between them grows slowly, through montage, conversation and shared danger, until Bond does something he’s never done before or since. He asks her to marry him.

It’s the most believable love story in the series, lending the film an emotional weight no other Bond had attempted.

Blofeld’s Mountain

The spy plot is excellent, too. Bond tracks Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played here by Telly Savalas, to Piz Gloria, a clinic on top of a Swiss mountain, where Blofeld claims to be curing allergies in a group of beautiful young women. In fact, he’s hypnotising and brainwashing them to spread a biological agent that will devastate agriculture around the world unless his demands are met.

Bond infiltrates the clinic disguised as Sir Hilary Bray, a stuffy genealogist from the College of Arms, and the scenes of him in tweed, kilt and spectacles, surrounded by flirting patients, are very funny. Savalas makes a physical, menacing Blofeld, less a cat-stroking mastermind than a tough, bald brute who can ski, fight and bobsled with the best of them. Ilse Steppat is terrific as his henchwoman, Irma Bunt.

The Ski Chase

The action is some of the best in the series. Bond’s escape from Piz Gloria, skiing down the mountain at night with Blofeld’s men in pursuit, is thrilling, fast and beautifully shot, with stuntmen hurtling down real slopes and flares lighting up the snow. Hunt’s editing, cutting fast between close-ups and wide shots, gives it tremendous speed.

There’s also a wild stock-car race, as Tracy drives Bond through a demolition derby to escape, an avalanche, a bobsled fight between Bond and Blofeld and a helicopter assault on Piz Gloria led by Draco. The final act is relentless and exciting, all done practically, with real stunts on real mountains.

Lazenby

Lazenby is the film’s weak link, but he’s much better than his reputation suggests. He’s physically superb, and he handles the fights and stunts with real conviction. He’s also stiff in the dialogue scenes, and his line readings are sometimes flat, and he never quite has Connery’s easy, dangerous charm.

But he has something Connery rarely showed: vulnerability. In the romantic scenes, and especially in the ending, Lazenby’s Bond is open and wounded in a way that works beautifully for this story. He’s a Bond who could fall in love, and you believe it. Connery’s Bond, for all his brilliance, never seemed to need anybody. Lazenby’s does, and the film is built around that need.

Lazenby famously quit after one film, convinced by his agent that the Bond series was out of date. Film history has few bigger what-ifs.

We Have All the Time in the World

John Barry’s score is his best for the series, driving, orchestral and full of synthesised menace, and the main theme, an instrumental, is one of the great action themes. The film also has a love song, We Have All the Time in the World, sung by Louis Armstrong in one of his final recordings.

The song plays over the montage of Bond and Tracy falling in love, and it’s gentle, sad and beautiful. Its title becomes the film’s final words, and it gives the ending an almost unbearable, lingering poignancy.

A Wedding in Portugal

Bond and Tracy marry in Portugal, in a lovely, sunny, happy scene with M, Q and Moneypenny in attendance, and drive away in Bond’s Aston Martin. They pull over at the side of the road to remove the flowers from the car, and Blofeld and Irma Bunt drive past, firing a machine gun. Tracy is killed instantly, a bullet through the windshield.

Bond cradles her in his arms, and when a policeman arrives, he tells him quietly that it’s all right, she’s having a rest, and they have all the time in the world. Then, finally, he breaks down in tears. It’s the most devastating ending in the series, and Lazenby plays it perfectly.

No other Bond film had dared to end on such a bleak note, and few since have come close. It gives the character a wound that haunts the series ever after, from For Your Eyes Only’s opening at her grave to the Craig films’ echoes of loss.

Fleming’s Favourite

Few films have adapted Fleming as faithfully as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It follows the novel’s plot closely, keeps its romance and its tragic ending and captures the melancholy tone of the later books.

For years, it was dismissed as the one with the other actor. Its reputation has grown enormously since, and many fans and critics now put it at the very top of the series. Christopher Nolan has cited it as one of his favourites, and its influence is visible in Inception’s snow fortress and in the emotional stakes of the Craig era.

Draco

Gabriele Ferzetti plays Marc-Ange Draco, Tracy’s father and the head of a Corsican crime syndicate, and few characters in any Bond film are as likeable. He’s a gangster, but a loving, worried father, and he offers Bond a million pounds to marry his daughter and give her a reason to live.

Bond refuses the money and asks instead for information about Blofeld, and the deal sets the story in motion. Draco becomes an ally, leading the final assault on Piz Gloria, and his warmth, and his obvious love for Tracy, make the ending even harder to bear.

Hunt’s Cutting

Peter Hunt had edited the early Bond films and worked as a second-unit director on them, and his directing style comes straight out of the cutting room. The fights are shot in fast, jagged bursts, with sound effects punching every blow, and the ski chases use rapid cuts and speeding camerawork to create a sense of real velocity.

It was startling in 1969, and it still feels modern. Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh have both praised the film’s style, and you can see its influence on action films decades later. Hunt only directed one Bond, and it may be the best-directed of them all.

Not Perfect

The film runs over two hours, and the middle section at Piz Gloria drags a little. Lazenby’s inexperience shows in several scenes, and his voice is dubbed by George Baker when Bond is disguised as Sir Hilary. The romance montage is a touch syrupy.

Those complaints hardly register. The film’s heart, its action and its ending make it a high point of the whole series.

Craft Note

All the Time in the World

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a 9: the most romantic and emotional Bond, with Diana Rigg’s magnificent Tracy, thrilling Alpine action, John Barry’s finest score and an ending that still breaks hearts. Lazenby isn’t Connery, and the film sits near the top of the series anyway.

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