Yes: In The Present tour (2008)

I didn’t see this tour. I seldom go to rock concerts, because I love music too much to enjoy it in an environment with awful sound and in the company of annoying drunks. So there it is.

But I’ve heard a couple of bootlegs, so I can comment on the music.

In all honesty I hadn’t given the Benoit David/Oliver Wakeman edition of Yes much of a chance. I mean, after four years of trying and failing to tolerate each other long enough to squeeze a few more shillings out of an oldies tour, Messrs. Howe, Squire, White, and Anderson finally lay plans for a series of dates as Yes. Wakeman père is out, replaced by Wakeman fils, evidently in hopes of satisfying bloodthirsty Troopers. Then Anderson nearly goes to meet George Harrison, and all bets seem to be off. But evidently the lure of luchre is stronger than the demands of dignity, or in other words, the show must go on (although why this should be any more true in 2008 than it was in 2005, 2006, or 2007 is a mystery to me). And so they cast around for a substitute vocalist. They find a guy in Montreal singing in a Yes tribute band, and, presumably again hoping to fool the punters, snap him up. Then Jon goes ballistic from his sickbed, Spinal Tap asks for the movie rights, and the In The Present tour is announced: “Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White of Yes, introducing Oliver Wakeman & Benoit David.”

Is this a joke?

Surprisingly enough, it may not be. Listen to the music. It’s Yes.

Benoit David (not to be confused, of course, with David Benoit) is a phenomenal Jon Anderson impersonator. That wouldn’t necessarily be a plus, but the fact is, you listen to the tapes of these shows, and it just sounds like Yes. And that is a plus.

What’s more, and more important, David’s a good singer. He’s not just imitating Jon – I’m not sure he’s imitating Jon at all. He’s singing his parts, which is a different thing altogether. Yes, it’s disconcerting at first how closely his tone mirrors Jon’s, but when you listen closely you notice all sorts of subtle differences in timbre and expression. Differences that show that David, like Jon, is a skilled vocal musician. Example: David has to work a little harder than Jon to hit the highest notes in Jon’s vocal lines. But David at his best uses this as an excuse to draw a little more passion out of those notes, nudging them from ethereal to emotional. Not a bad trade. He’s also called upon to sing Trevor Horn’s lines, and he successfully captures their cold beauty – but from within a tonal quality that still has much of Anderson’s softness about it. The result lends his entire performance a sort of chilly melancholy that Anderson never had, coupled with an ease of expression that Horn lacked. Impressive. Effective.

Oliver isn’t quite as impressive, at least on the tapes I’ve heard. He acquits himself well, but only occasionally owns the material. I like, for example, how “Close To The Edge” now ends with some gentle piano ruminations after the Sounds of the Swamp fade away. Then again, as Yes have proved again and again, there’s not a whole lot of room in their compositions for a player to make his mark. Yes don’t allow themselves to improvise much, and all too often the embellishments they do allow themselves sound like variation merely for the sake of variation, rather than attempts at improvement. Like it or not, Yes have always been a compositional unit, not an improvisational one. Oliver plays the parts, and plays them well, and that’s enough for Yes as we know it.

The question is, so what? On their last two tours before they disintegrated in 2004, Yes had completed their degeneration into an oldies band. With no new album to promote, they resorted to digging deeper into their back catalog to make the setlists attractive to diehards. This made boots of the 2004 tour in particular interesting listening for the longtime fan, and that trend continues here. Anderson’s absence allows Squire, White, and Howe to dust off a couple of tunes from Drama, and they also play “Onward,” “Parallels,” and “Astral Traveler,” Anderson tunes that hadn’t been played in decades. But none of that makes them more than a canny oldies act – a tribute band to themselves.

The only new song is “Aliens (Are Only Us From The Future),” a Squire number that he wrote for another project and pressed into Yes service; it’s musically pleasant enough, with a welcome Squire lead vocal, and its lyrics are certainly silly enough to make it a latter-day Yes number. Time alone will tell if it’s a harbinger of the kind of new work this version of Yes could accomplish.

Just as time alone will tell if there is any answer to the so what question. Benoit and Oliver certainly have the chops; it remains to be seen if they have the compositional skills, but even if they don’t, the others may, still. If this version of Yes comes up with a new album, then it might show us that they’re a band worth caring about again. They just might bear out the hope that the In The Present tour is threatening to inspire.

If not – and there are all sorts of ways in which this could fall apart, from Jon insisting that he needs to be part of any official Yes product and then never being well enough or mollified enough to produce any, to somebody else quitting, to this lineup simply touring the oldies until the well finally dries up – then this version of the band will be remembered as a joke after all. Albeit one that made us smile.

Don't Leave Me This Way: Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes vs. Thelma Houston

So here's what you do the next time you have ten minutes to spare and a desire to further your musical edumacation, or just groove for a while. You dial this up on your youtube, and then this.

"Don't Leave Me This Way" is a classic Gamble and Huff record: their composition, their production. Performed by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, included on their last album with Teddy Pendergrass, 1975's Wake Up Everybody. It wasn't released as a single in the US, if you can believe that; maybe that's why this original version is somewhat less known now than Thelma Houston's cover.

But the Blue Notes' version is epic. Let's go through it. It starts off calm, with a soft electric piano (Fender Rhodes?) build-up, given a gentle tension by the congas. The rhythm guitar starts to add a few subtle licks, Teddy starts to hum over the top, then a couple of cymbal strokes bring in the groove, and just like that we're into the verse. Easy but insistent. The horns, the strings, all the hallmarks of a glossy, classy Philadelphia International production.

Then everybody comes together: big vamp, big fills, and boom, big loud chorus. "Don't leave me this way," and we sink back listlessly into the verse. Again to appreciate all the hallmarks of the Gamble and Huff approach: you could follow any one of the instrumental elements separately and have a satisfying listening experience, as each part builds and evolves on its own.

Each part tells its own story. That's what's going on with this record. Teddy, the Rhodes, the strings, the horns, and the Blue Notes are telling the story of why he doesn't want you to leave him this way. When they finally climax into the long vocal jam, listen to how everybody contributes a little detail to Teddy's plea. It's a fantasia on not wanting you leave him this way. Finally they break it down to just bass, congas, and Pendergrass. The Rhodes comes back in and boogies a bit in the spotlight, and Teddy says "you. can't. go." Are you gonna try and tell him otherwise?

Yes, this record is funky, yes it's danceable. It's a disco landmark, but at the same time it's both more and less than that. Because most of all it's soul: everything contributes to this total exploration of the emotions of the singer and the song, and that's why the narrative is important. It all brings you right back home to the humanity of the thing.

Thelma Houston's version was released as a single on Tamla in December of 1976, and I'm tempted to say it's a typical Motown thing, but I'm not as familiar with '70s Motown as I should be, so I'll refrain. (And I must apologize for the fact that the youtube version is truncated: it's the only fragment I could find of the single version on youtube, though, and besides, you've heard this record a million times.) What it is, is a typical disco record.

It keeps a lot of the elements of the Blue Notes version. That mellow beginning; here it's all mellow, though (besides the startling string glissando that cues Thelma's moaning), because the conga is absent. Electric piano, strings, and a gentle bass. But then, right away, things start to thump. The disco beat comes in. The arrangement is drastically stripped down and powered up compared to the Blue Notes': fewer musical elements here, and they're all subordinated to the groove, that drum and bass line.

They do the same sort of turnaround as they go into the chorus, but once they get there, it's all bass, that funky onetwothree-four-five figure that ends every line. And during the closing vamp, it's not the vocal but the bass that takes over, joined by a wicked little clavinet and the Motown tambourine.

Thelma's there, and she sings it magnificently, but her role is different from Teddy's. She's not there to tell you a story: she's there to serve the groove. Which is not to say there's no emotion in disco. But it's different from soul in that the emotion is not the focal point, it's another element in the groove. It's a mood-setter, basically.

This to me is the essence of disco, a ruthless concentration on getting your butt onto the dancefloor. This is where you get the secret connection between disco and its contemporary, punk: that merciless efficiency, getting straight to the point, no fluff, no nonsense. There's a kind of nihilism in disco, just as there is in punk. The difference is, the punks said, what is man that you should be mindful of him, so let's break stuff. Disco says, what is man that you should be mindful of him, so let's dance. I like them both, but I know which I prefer.

So who wins, Teddy Pendergrass or Thelma Houston? The Tanuki categorically rejects such false choices: it's a world of wonders, baby, not the least of which is the fact that we can have both versions. We don't have to choose, and don't trust anybody who tells you otherwise.

The Byrds: I Know My Rider (1966)

The Byrds were the real deal. I mean, listen to this. Recorded during the sessions for Fifth Dimension in 1966, but only released much later.

In classic Jim McGuinn fashion the record starts with an old folk song (check out this fascinating thread to see how old), and then in good early Byrds fashion they juice it up with electricity. Just like the Grateful Dead did to the same song - if you're a Deadhead at all, you'll know this song, and how glorious the Dead's arrangement was. The Byrds' version is very different, and just about beats it.

By the time of Fifth Dimension the Byrds were no longer just folkies with a backbeat: they were a real live, not to mention firebreathing, rock and roll band. This record starts with a riff that would do any garage band proud, and just gets better from there. Check out the way they raise the tension (that freight-train Michael Clarke drumbeat) with every line of the verse, then bring it all back home on the last line, with that dramatic slowdown of the rhythm underneath. Then the way the second verse introduces those groovy Beatles-like response vocals ("your window high" - the whole thing in fact sounds like a mutated, twangy gloss on "Paperback Writer").

Then we get that magnificent sitar-like guitar solo. During this period most of McGuinn's solos were heavy on the Coltrane sheets-of-sound idea, but this is different, very melodic, very simple in fact, emotionally direct. It's reprised, of course, at the end, bringing the song in for a perfect Byrds landing.

You can see why they couldn't release it in 1966. The world would have exploded from too much joy.

Phil Lesh: Searching for the Sound (2005)

I don’t let myself read music books that often. It’s self-preservation: I’m such a music obsessive that otherwise I’d never get any work done at all. So I’ve had this for three years but never got around to reading it until a couple of months ago. I didn’t even buy it to read: I got it because it was being sold with a bonus disc. That was worth getting: a studio version of “Cardboard Cowboy,” still otherwise unavailable. Yessir, a music obsessive.

I imagine Phil might have written this himself, with no ghostwriter. It reads like he might have – a little more uneven, a little more gonzo, than a pro might have left it. In a good way: you get a distinctive voice, and sentences like this:

"As Jerry's roommate, I was reintroduced every night to one of the great stentorian snores of our time: immense, turbulent, Druidic; rising to a climax, subsiding; then, one last huge percussive gahznrmpf! and a whistling diminuendo."

The music-language overtones of that sentence point to this book's main strength. Phil was the member of the Dead with the most formal musical training, and his perspective on the band's formative years shows just how hard, and how consciously, they were working on their music. Non-fans will never see the Dead as anything but a bunch of stoned hippies - and of course they were that, but they were also tremendously skilled and tasteful musicians genuinely trying to pioneer and perfect their own unique art. That comes out in Phil's account, in passages such as as the one where he describes dragging the band members to a 1967 performance of Charles Ives's Fourth Symphony ("Invisible bands march across the soundstage in two different directions at different speeds; a solo viola mutters an occult hymn-tune as the rest of the orchestra sprays fireworks in all directions; the chorus intones wordless transcendental benedictions as the music fades away into silence"), or the one where he describes the jam sessions that followed Mickey Hart's indoctrination into North Indian classical music (resulting, Phil says, in the band's philosophy that "The one...is always where it seems to be").

The book's main weakness is that this excitement lessens as the story takes us into the '70s, and then really disappears as the book speeds through the second half of the band's career. I don't imagine it's necessarily that Phil thinks, or thinks his audience thinks, that the band's later years were uninteresting; rather, this is a stance shared by most music bios I've read. The tendency is to concentrate on the formative years and climax with the moment of greatest success, and gloss over the later years. I suppose that makes a certain amount of narrative sense, but I'm more interested in an artist's mature years, what he or she does after the big breakthrough, even if it does happen to be a story of decline. Artistic decline is as interesting and instructive as artistic growth; failure can be as fascinating as success. You can even make a satisfying narrative out of it: I learned that from The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

The real story of the Dead's later years has yet to be told; I for one would love to read it.

James Bond review: You Only Live Twice (1967)

(For my other Bond reviews, and my apologia for the project, see the tags on the right.)

CUT TO THE CHASE: This is definitely the grooviest of the Bonds.

BOND, JAMES BOND: In which we learn that Bond took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge. And that he’s a Commander in the Royal Navy.

The producers knew this would probably be Connery’s last Bond, and as a result they really play up the character this time. Bond’s back to being a spy – there’s another commando assault at the end of this one, like in Thunderball, but overall Bond’s doing less fighting and more sneaking. He goes “undercover,” even. He fakes his own death, with MI6’s help. And he gets married, sort of. Everything you’ve never seen Bond do, he does here.

Connery looks fabulous in this movie, at least until he turns Japanese. His suits are wonderful. He even manages to look good when he puts on a bad guy’s saddle shoes. He even manages to look good in that pink dress shirt. Like I say, it’s a very groovy film.

But back to Bond and his “first in Oriental languages.” We’ve already noticed how Bond is, quite obviously, a (male) fantasy of a certain variety of maleness. But what we haven’t remarked on, and what becomes obvious in You Only Live Twice, is how Bond is a (British, at this point) fantasy of Britishness. In all the films up to this point, it’s up to British intelligence to save the world, with the CIA relegated to a supporting role. Maybe that’s why they never brought back Jack Lord as Felix Leiter: he was too charismatic, and that didn’t fit the series’s intentions for the Americans.

In this film, Britain’s role is even more pronounced: it’s up to the cool-headed, rational British to prevent the hot-headed Americans and Russians from going to war. Britain can do this because they have James Bond; but James Bond can do this because he’s British. Because he’s cool, stoic, determined, clever, resourceful, educated, cultured, at ease everywhere: in short, because he’s a modern English gentleman with all the benefits of an Imperial tradition behind him. Look at how in control he is in Japan: he’s no blundering American, no blunt instrument (despite what M would one day say). He knows his way around; he knows the temperature sake should be served at. His capability is mirrored, in this film, by Our Man In Japan, Henderson (played by Charles Gray, who has no neck); Henderson notes that he’s been in Japan for twenty-eight years. I.e., since before Pearl Harbor, which is when America began paying attention to Japan.

What Makes Bond Bond: He emerges from his burial-at-sea shroud with his uniform in perfect order.

What Makes Sean Connery Sean Connery: He can almost make you believe he passes for Japanese. Well, not really – but at least you don’t hate watching him try.

BAD GUYS: SPECTRE again, but this time Blofeld himself is the villain. And this means we finally get to see his face. This is both a welcome development and a problem. SPECTRE wasn’t going to be interesting much longer if they couldn’t bring Blofeld out of the shadows, but of course they minute they do he loses his mystique.

This problem could have been neutralized had they chosen the right actor to play Blofeld, but they chose Donald Pleasence instead. I might as well reveal here that my favorite Blofeld is the unofficial one, Max von Sydow in Never Say Never Again. But I think I would have been okay with anybody who managed to have presence in the role; I kind of like Telly Savalas’s performance, too. Pleasence sounds wonderful as Blofeld, simultaneously seductive and truly creepy. Dig the way he says something like “piranha fish.” But when you finally see him, he’s completely underwhelming. Mike Myers didn’t even need to parody him: he’s already a joke on himself.

Blofeld’s scheme this time around is to start World War III – he’s hired himself out to the Chinese (although they’re not named) as an agent provocateur. Fine and dandy, but how he’s doing this is by kidnapping American and Russian spacecraft. One of the powers will send up an orbiter, and Blofeld’s rocket will come up behind it, gobble it up, and then bring it back to earth to hide it in this hollow Japanese volcano. This is insane. I used to think it was a weakness in this movie.

Then I realized how completely and utterly groovy it is.

GRATUITOUS SEX: Karin Dor as SPECTRE underling Helga Brandt is a real letdown after the glories of the last four movies. She’s the first Bond girl I find just plain forgettable, although I know these things are subjective. They try for groovy with her red hair and black eyebrows, but it’s just weird.

Akiko Wakabayashi as Aki and Mie Hama as Bond’s “wife” Kissy, on the other hand, are great. Hama, especially, looks mighty fetching scampering around on the side of the volcano in her white bikini and deck shoes.

Oh, and GS: 3, unless you count (which Bond himself doesn’t seem to) the near miss with Ling in Hong Kong.

AND VIOLENCE: Another commando raid, except this time they’re, like, sixteenth-century commandos. The less said about the ninjas the better, I guess.

BOYS WITH TOYS: Another Q field trip; I like how he arrives with a smart squad of Q-juniors to assemble the gear. Little Nelly is the best gadget this time, an agile little gyrocopter. Connery looks like he’s driving a go-cart, but he makes it look good.

But my favorite gadget is Tiger Tanaka’s private train on which he rides around in luxury deep under the surface of Tokyo. And for a couple hundred yen, you too can ride it: it’s the Marunouchi Line of the Tokyo Metro, with its distinctive red cars. Doesn’t quite look like that inside, though, and it’s usually a bit more crowded…

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: Japan was certainly the most exotic locale they’d used yet; the problem is, they overdo it. At times it almost feels like you’re watching a documentary on Japan: Land of Enchantment (“Boy, do they do things different over there!”). Like, spending far too long on the “wedding ceremony,” or having Tôhô’s chanbara b-squad demonstrating their most basic moves. (“Look, that guy can split a block of ice with his hand!”) Whenever the series goes to an Exotic Locale it tends to give you a condensed Baedeker’s view of it – the Junkanoo in Thunderball, the bullfighting in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service - so we expect it. It just goes a little overboard here. Is that groovy, too?

On the other hand, when the film takes us through modern ‘60s Tokyo, it is groovy. This was Swinging Tokyo just when it was starting to enter its very own psychedelic era, and you get glimpses of that. Plus, Tiger Tanaka’s headquarters, with their big roundish video screens, hint at the Futuristic Tokyo we all know and love so well today.

ETC.: The theme song is one of the best in the series. John Barry outdoes himself with the elegant Orientalism and subtle fuzz-guitar of the arrangement, and Nancy Sinatra sings it fairly well, too… The title sequence itself is pretty stunning, cool geisha and hot lava… The cinematography in this film deserves special mention, with lots of lush colors and some fairly striking camera angles and cuts: remember the aerial shot of Bond fighting his way across the roof of the warehouse in Kobe?… Let me just say that Tiger Tanaka makes me smile every time: Tetsuro Tanba is as cool as they come. And he deserves special mention as perhaps the only actor in the Bond series to start his own religion. And if that's not groovy, I don't know what is.

RATING: 006.

The Godfather, Part III

So, I just saw The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II on the big screen, the new restorations that have been doing the revival house rounds. I was very excited to finally see them on film, although I was rather bummed that the Brattle didn't scrounge up an old print of The Godfather, Part III to show. I consider the Godfather movies to be among the treasures of the cinema. I know that this makes me a very typical American male...

I've seen the Godfather movies more times each than I've seen any other movie, probably, so I'm sure that while this is my first Godfather post, it won't be my last. But since it is the first, I thought I'd better establish my basic perspective on the films. What follows is a user comment I posted a number of years ago on a different website, under a different name. If I was writing it now I'd probably change a few things, but I'll let that be the subject for another time.

Here 'tis:

I don't consider Godfather 3 to be a sequel except in the strict, literal sense of the word: it came after the earlier movie. In the pejorative sense in which the word is usually used of movies - i.e., something that was thought up later to cash in on the success of the first one - this is definitely not a sequel.

Godfather 3 is, instead, just what it says it is: part three of a single, unified story.

I see the Godfather trilogy - stay with me now, stop rolling your eyes - as a tragedy along Greek or Elizabethan lines. Remember how they taught you in high school about the structure of the Elizabethan 5-act tragedy? The climax was in the third act, in the sense that in the middle the tragic hero did something that sealed his fate, and everything after that was just the relentless playing out of the consequences of that single deed.

Looked at in this way, Michael Corleone is the tragic hero of the Godfather movies. And as a tragic hero he's up there with the best of them - just as archetypal in his own way as Oedipus or Hamlet.

Michael is the man who can't live down his heritage, the man who can't escape his upbringing, or, ultimately, himself. Like all good tragic heroes, he has enough potential for good to make him a sympathetic figure- he wanted so badly to get out; even in part three, decades into a life of crime, Michael can make you believe he has always wanted out. But it's his own weaknesses, his own ambition - his own virtue, in a way - that ruins him.

His tragic act, the one which sealed his fate, was ordering Fredo's death at the end of part two. One might say that it came earlier, with the kiss of death he gave Fredo in Havana ("I know it was you, Fredo"), but still, up until the point that he actually ordered the execution, Michael could have turned back. But after that point, his own fate was sealed. He had destroyed, symbolically, the very thing that he had been fighting to protect all his life: his family.

So why make part three? Isn't this all understood at the end of part two?

Coppola had to make part three for the same reason the Elizabethans had to write the last two acts of their tragedies: the cathartic, morally instructive, and dramatically satisfying part was in watching what came after the turning point. You know, in act three, that the hero is doomed, but you have to watch his doom played out. That's emotionally satisfying, it's morally necessary, it's artistically beautiful.

And that's what Godfather Part III is all about. You know, if you paid attention to part two, that Michael is not going to live happily ever after. He can't: in the moral universe of the movie, but more importantly in the moral universe he has created for himself, he has committed an unforgivable sin, and he must pay. But he doesn't know it yet: being human, he can always convince himself that he'll be able to escape culpability for his actions - until, that is, his guilt is driven home to him.

Thus, when critics complain that Godfather 3 is anticlimactic, they're more right than they realize - it's not the climax of the trilogy. It's the long, tragically necessary playing-out of Michael's doom.

We know how it will end, thematically at least: but there's great beauty and pathos in watching Michael be utterly destroyed. We watch his grandiose plans to save the Church (!), knowing all the time that his hopes are in vain. He cannot be forgiven. Just like the cardinal his confessor says: he could be forgiven, but he himself does not believe it. This is great tragedy, folks. It's entirely appropriate that the last third of the movie be acted out to the backdrop of an opera, because that's what this is.

And this is how the movie's climactic scene should be seen.

When Michael's daughter is killed, he suddenly loses that which is most precious to him - and he realizes, you can see it in his eyes, that it's all his fault. This is a divine retribution upon him for killing Fredo. He wanted to protect his family, and only ended up ensuring their destruction. Michael's scream on the steps of the opera house is one of the great cathartic moments in movie history - moves me to tears every time I see it. You can just see the man's whole life melt there into one sustained cry of anguish. (A brilliant stroke of Coppola's directorial brush, the decision to make the first breath of his scream silent, only music - it makes it that much more intense, and private.)

Performances: uniformly excellent. Pacino's style, in the intervening fifteen years, had become much more demonstrative, but it fits the character, as the steely control of the young Michael Corleone relaxes into the benign self-confidence of the older man.

Diane Keaton, as she did before, gives unbelievable depth to what is still a fairly minor role - somehow managing to conjure up the entire non-Sicilian world in the single character of Kaye. Andy Garcia is fantastic as Sonny's son. Everybody, in fact, gives perfectly nuanced performances, except, of course, poor Sophia, and hers is the most important role!

Perfect conclusion to the best movie ever made.

James Bond review: Thunderball (1965)

(For my other Bond reviews, and my apologia for the project, see the tags on the right.)

CUT TO THE CHASE: How do you top Goldfinger? More of everything.

BOND, JAMES BOND: Which means that Bond gets more girls, and fights more bad guys, than in any of the first three movies. It’s over the top, to say the least, and turns Bond into more action hero than spy. Bond flies! Bond swims! Bond plays with sharks!

Connery does what’s required of him, and to his credit he does it in the only way that would really make this material work: lightly, sarcastically. Thunderball’s plot is the most serious to date, or at least the most bombastic, but Thunderball’s Bond is the lightest to date, as Connery walks around outclassing everyone, kicking all the guys’ asses, turning all the girls’ heads, and never breaking a sweat. If Connery had played it straighter, the movie would have collapsed under the weight of its own silliness; likewise if Connery had played it for laughs. Both mistakes would be made in future installments, but here Connery gets it just right.

What Makes Bond Bond: Fiona Volpe impugns his potency, and he just smirks and says, “Well, can’t win them all.” James Bond’s manhood is not threatened.

What Makes Sean Connery Sean Connery: He flies in with a rocket backpack wearing a stupid-looking helmet, and as he’s putting the gear away in the trunk of the Aston-Martin he says, “No well dressed man should be without one.” Heh.

BAD GUYS: SPECTRE again. An elaborate and fairly well-thought-out plot to capture a couple of A-bombs and hold them for ransom. Blofeld is around again, hiding behind a screen in SPECTRE headquarters in Paris. But that’s his last appearance; as in From Russia With Love, the real villain of the piece is one of Blofeld's top underlings. In this case it’s Emilio Largo.

He’s one of the big problems with the movie. He looks impressive, with his white hair and eyepatch and large, rangy frame. And he’s certainly menacing, with his pool of sharks and all. But he doesn’t have much personality. After Goldfinger, and even Dr. No, Largo is a pretty one-dimensional villain; certainly not an effective foil for Bond.

His henchmen are even less impressive; the only one with any presence at all is Vargas, who is said to avoid alcohol, tobacco, and sex. But he’s never given any scenes in which to develop this monklike behavior, or show that it makes him an effective killer, so his abstinence is reduced to a throwaway detail.

One other member of SPECTRE has a significant role, however, and she almost manages to hold Evil’s end up single-handedly. See below.

GRATUITOUS SEX: Four unforgettable Bond girls here, and each of them brings us something different.

In the early sequence at the health clinic, he beds Patricia (Molly Peters). This interlude harks back to the first two films, where Bond gets to pluck a little English rose before heading off to save the world. But with her pert nurse outfit, mink glove, and fetching way of wagging her finger, Patricia’s a bit more than just a memento of queen and country.

Then when he arrives in the Bahamas, Bond is seen in the company of local MI6 agent Paula, played by Martine Beswick – last seen as one of the gypsy combatants in From Russia With Love. She was Bond’s then, and if Bond’s familiarity with her adjoining room is any indication, she’s Bond’s now, too. This inaugurates the tradition of sexy female MI6 agents assisting Bond; see also, for example, Live And Let Die, The Man With The Golden Gun, Die Another Day, and Casino Royale. Unfortunately these liaisons tend not to live long…

Then there’s Domino (Claudine Auger), identifiable by the two moles in an unmissable place; she’s the main Bond Girl in this film, the one he saves, and the one in whose company he most often finds himself. With her innocent air, she’s pretty reminiscent of Honey Ryder in Dr. No – a connection that’s not hard to notice, since the same actress looped both characters’ dialogue. But Domino combines this innocence with a worldliness that comes from being Largo’s pet and mistress.

Finally we have Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), a SPECTRE assassin who seduces Bond in order to position him for a kill. When she reveals her true colors, she gets one of the best speeches in the series: “James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing – she repents and immediately returns to the side of right and virtue… What a blow it must have been: you having a failure!” (Bond’s response? See above.) She’s not the first female in the series to remain an enemy to Bond even after sleeping with him – see Miss Taro. And she’s not the first female in the series to taunt Bond for his inability to persuade her – see Pussy Galore. But she is the first female to sleep with him and then taunt him for his inability to persuade her. In that she’s new, if you see what I mean.

All are luscious in that uniquely wonderful mid-sixties, pre-anorexia, pre-silicone way. And to have them all four in one film – simply dizzying. The Bond girls are far and away the best thing about Thunderball.

Oh, and GS: 4, if you count Martine.

AND VIOLENCE: I gather that the underwater fight scenes were innovative for 1965. That must be why they devote so much of the movie to them. Unfortunately I find them utterly boring; always have. It’s the limitations of the form, I think: characters can’t really speak during these scenes, you can’t see anybody’s faces, the lighting is poor, and everybody’s moving slowly because, duh, they’re underwater. A little of this goes a long way, and in Thunderball there’s a lot of it. As a result, the last third of the movie really, really drags.

As I say, this turns Bond into more action hero than spy, and they exacerbate things by turning the climax into a quasi-military action. Once the cavalry dive in, there’s not much for Bond to do but fight. So when the fight scenes aren’t as effective as they should be, it hurts the movie.

On the other hand, the pre-title fight, between Bond and a French SPECTRE agent faking his death, is Bond for the ages.

BOYS WITH TOYS: They preserve the Q sequence as defined in Goldfinger, and in fact build on it, by giving Q his first field trip. Not his last. Nice repartee, nice array of gadgets, and Q gets to wear a stylin’ aloha shirt.

The rocket backpack is the immortal gadget from this film, though. So far-fetched (yes, I know it actually existed, but why would Bond use it there?), so over-the-top, so silly – and so perfect, so magnificently over-the-top. It’s an icon of the series, and deservedly so.

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: France, then the Bahamas, with a side trip to rural England. Yes, it’s back to the Caribbean setting of Dr. No; a bit of a repetition, but forgivable.

ETC.: Evidently, Dionne Warwick singing “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” was originally slated to be the title song; if so, replacing it with Tom Jones belting out “Thunderball” was an inspired choice. As a rule, women should sing the Bond title songs; when men sing them, they should sound like Tom Jones. And here’s what I was talking about with the Goldfinger theme song: it’s a hymn to somebody, either Largo or Bond, and in the end it doesn’t matter which… Maurice Binder is back for the title sequence, and it’s elegant in its simplicity. Nude women in silhouette, swimming through brightly colored water. Starts as beautiful, passes through cheesy and comes out on the other side as beautiful again… Another Felix Leiter; just as forgettable as the last one… To top Goldfinger, the producers tried to go bigger, louder, and all-around more. They almost make it. What’s weak here is pretty weak, but what’s strong is really quite strong indeed.

RATING: 006.