December 30, 2024

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Goldfinger (1964, directed by Guy Hamilton)

“That’s my James!” Welcome to the James Bond blockbuster. With the massive success of From Russia With Love came an even bigger budget (and a new director). Goldfinger gave us franchise staples, like the pre-credits action scene, the bouncy Bond quips, infinite gadgets (including the loaded Aston Martin), the epic theme song, and multiple exotic locations (including rural Kentucky). And of course there are multiple women who are branded as Bond “girls” in the film who find their way into 007’s beefy arms.

The box office smash surely benefited from the 1964 British Invasion and the American obsession with all things English. Bond even has a snarky line about the Fab Four after he beds Goldfinger’s girl Jill Masterson, chiding her not understanding his standards for chilled Champaign. “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Pérignon ’53 above 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.” (It should be noted that two of the actors in Goldfinger, Richard Vernon (Colonel Smithers) and Margaret Nolán (Dink), had just appeared in the Beatles’ film A Hard Days Night and the Beatles 1965 film, Help!, would be a send up of Goldfinger.)

Goldfinger cemented the formula for what a Bond film would be for decades to come. It was released in September of 1964, in a world that was increasingly surrendering to the ennui of the East-West Cold War, the same month as Lyndon Johnson’s apocalyptic “Daisy” campaign ad that ended with a mushroom cloud. I had been born 7 months earlier and would be socialized into a world that saw Bond as the modern model of masculinity. Let’s check Goldfinger with our five reference criteria.

Driver of Action – Goldfinger is the archetypical Bond film, the begins with him blowing some shit up in Mexico and ends with him making sweet love to Bond Girl #3 Pussy Galore on a desert island, telling her “This is no time to be rescued.” There is no “buddy,” as in the previous two films, just Bond, and his MI-6 and CIA supporters (who play minimal roles). Even the nefarious plotting by Goldfinger (played by former Nazi Gert Fröbe after Orson Welles proved to be too expensive) to irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox is a minor subplot. Goldfinger is all about watching Sean Connery as Bond move from scene to scene; Mexico, Miami, London, Switzerland, Kentucky. In the opening scene, he steps out of his wetsuit dressed in a white dinner jacket and you know this going to be 110 minutes of pure Connery.

Role of Violence – Again, Bond has a relatively low bodycount in this film. People do die, especially women, including Jill Masterson. For her flirtation with Bond, she is painted gold and dies of “skin suffocation.” Her sister Tilly is killed by Oddjob, Goldfinger’s Korean henchman. But Mr. License-to-Kill is mostly restrained. A Mexican assassin gets an electric fan tossed into his bathtub. Some henchmen go over a cliff in a fiery crash after Bond shoots slick oil out of his Aston Martin. In the climatic scene in Fort Knox, Bond throws a henchman off a ledge and electrocutes Oddjob. (Apparently actor Harold Sakata was severely burned in the stunt.) Mostly Bond is the recipient of violence, including a laser beam aimed at his most manly parts while he is strapped to a table.

Vulnerability – Yeah, no. You wonder if we have to wait until the ‘90s to get new age sensitive James Bond. Whether strapped to a table with a laser heading toward his junk or locked in a Kentucky holding cell, or in a plane plummeting to the earth, we never see James break a sweat. 

Sexual Potency – Goldfinger is balls out on the message that Bond is the conquerer of women. In the opening sequence, he goes after a Mexican dancer and then uses her body to deflect an assassin. In Miami, he’s getting a poolside massage from his Florida fling, Dink (who’s cleavage was also featured in A Hard Days Night). Then there’s the romp with Jill who gets painted gold. In Switzerland, when a blonde passes him by in a ’64 Mustang convertible, he resists the urge to chase after her. “Discipline, 007, discipline,” he says to himself. She turns out to be Jill’s sister and they have a moment before Oddball kills her with his killer hat.

That brings us to Pussy Galore (the character, not the male fantasy). The Bond double entendres hit a new level here and Pussy’s name is mentioned constantly in the second half of the film. Galore is played by Honor Blackman, who was Diana Rigg’s predecessor on the highly popular British spy show, The Avengers. So she was coming in to Bondland a Judo-flipping badass, not a submissive DID (Damsel In Distress). In Goldfinger, she’s the leader of Goldfinger’s team of female pilots, playing a role in his grand slam plan. But there’s a scene in Goldfinger’s barn where James manhandles Pussy and the subsequent judo fight ends up with the two literally rolling in the hay. Galore tries to push Bond off her, but no woman can resist 007 and his assault ends in a passionate kiss. Woot, there it is.

Connection – Unbeknownst to the viewer, Pussy Galore’s Stockholm Syndrome turns her into an ally of Bond’s and Goldfinger’s evil plot is thwarted. As has already become an uber-cliche in Bond films, their end scene, making out under the parachute, casts no allusion that it’s the beginning of a beautiful relationship between James and Pussy. We know how this works. Women are transitory and co-workers are support players. Does Bond have any friends? A love that got away? He is supremely untethered. A man alone.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 7

Summary –  Like an explosion of everything that was 1960s before LSD, Goldfinger is a magnum opus of a spy action film. The clever crime attempted (to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox to drive up the value of personal stocks of the metal) takes a back seat to watching Connery leap frog from woman to woman, often with his suped-up Bondmobile (Oh, to have stock in Aston Martin in 1964). Connery’s Bond is the Id unrestrained. One wonders what MI-6’s HR department would say about the workplace flirtations between Bond and Miss Moneypenny in the post #metoo era. But it’s the scene between Bond and Galore in the barn that reminds us that the debonair spy is not immune from the misogynistic value of male entitlement. A generation of boys learned women are to be taken by men, even if they resist. Pussy galore, indeed.

While contemporary audiences my get a bit of a creepy vibe from Goldfinger’s Bond, there’s a creeping trend that may be less noticed today. The third Bond film sees 007 more dependent on the technology provided by his employer. It may be a homing device in his shoe or an ejection seat in his car, but 1964 Bond is becoming less a man left to his own devices and more to the devices Q builds for him. Bond is the halfway point between the archetypical cowboy, fending for himself on the frontier, and Modern Man, juggling apps and monitoring social media, never not wired to the electronic collective. Where would Bond be without Q? Where would we be if the internet went down? One imagines that Bond would be better off, but not by much.

Next: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project: #1 – Dr. No (1962)
The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)