My favourite Bond film: Goldfinger

Goldfinger has the most sinister villain and best soundtrack but it's the inept fumbling of 007 that truly sets this Bond film apart

Anne Billson
Tue 2 October 2012

The first time I laid eyes on James Bond, he had just emerged from the ocean with a fake seagull on his head. He then blew up a drug lord's laboratory, peeled off his wetsuit to reveal an immaculate white DJ, snogged an exotic dancer, clocked in her eyeballs the reflection of a bad guy sneaking up behind them, tipped said bad guy into the bathtub, threw an electric heater in after him, and quipped: "Shocking, positively shocking!" All this, and the credits hadn't even started. My 12-year-old self thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Many years later, Goldfinger (1964) remains not just my favourite Bond movie, but the standard by which all other Bond movies must be judged. It has Sean Connery, of course, and the best theme song, incorporating Shirley Bassey and lashings of John Barry brass.

James Bond / Golfinger / Review by Peter Bradshaw

James Bond

Goldfinger

4 / 5 stars4 out of 5 stars.

Peter Bradshaw
Friday 27 Jul7y 2007

"Y

ou ekshpect me to talk?" - "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to DIE!" Then why doesn't Goldfinger just shoot 007, an army of pedants have asked, instead of setting up this elaborate laser-beam creeping up to Sean Connery's penis? Perhaps he's just a procrastinator like the rest of us. Here is a revival of what could be the best Connery Bond, from 1964, facing up to sinister bullion-dealer Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) with his plan to detonate a nuclear bomb inside Fort Knox. It has Shirley Bassey's operatic theme, the Aston Martin and Shirley Eaton, killed with that magnificently macabre gold paint.

It also has, I fear, the most sexist scene in cinema history. "Man talk," says Bond to his masseuse as Felix Leiter arrives for a conference, dismissing her with a smack to the bottom. (My theory is that a feminist art director made Connery wear that bizarre poolside terry-towelling hot-pants suit in revenge.) Sir Sean was the screen Bond who tried most to replicate the worldly connoisseurship of Fleming's original; he embarrasses M with a superior knowledge of brandy, and as for drinking improperly refrigerated Dom Pérignon: "That's like listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!" Earmuffs? Well, 007, you grumpy old square: in those days, action movies were addressed to an older generation. And Connery's Bond was the last action hero to wear a three-piece suit.

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Honor Blackman

Honor Blackman: an elegant, witty star who never took herself too seriously

With memorable roles in Goldfinger and The Avengers, Blackman became an icon of British cinema through her formidable, no-nonsense persona

Peter Bradshaw
Monday 6 April 2020

‘M

y name is Pussy Galore.” “I must be dreaming.” The cool appraising glance of Honor Blackman falls on Sean Connery’s preposterous, smirking Bond as he awakens aboard Auric Goldfinger’s private jet, and she becomes that rarest of things: a Bond girl who is allowed to introduce herself by name, and perhaps unique as one who is as old or older than Bond.

Honor Blackman, James Bond's Pussy Galore, dies aged 94

Actor also known for role in Avengers praised as ‘hugely prolific creative talent’ by family

Simon Murphy
and Andrew Pulver
Mon 6 Apr 2020 18.57 BST

Honor Blackman, the actor best known for playing the Bond girl Pussy Galore, has died aged 94.

Blackman, who became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in The Avengers and had a career spanning eight decades, died of natural causes unrelated to coronavirus.

Blackman’s family called her an “adored mother and grandmother” who possessed “an extraordinary combination of beauty, brains and physical prowess”.

James Bond / Goldfinger / Review by Philip French

James Bond

Goldfinger

Philip French

Sunday 29 July 2007

M

ade in 1964 and now back on the big screen, Goldfinger is a crucial work in the development of the Bond legend. For the first time Connery was truly relaxed and drove the Aston Martin DB5, that year's must-have toy for every boy in the land. Ken Adam came from creating one iconic American set (the War Room in Dr Strangelove) to another (the interior of Fort Knox), and established himself as co-auteur of the Bond movies. Screenwriter and ex-movie critic Paul Dehn (who the following year co-scripted The Spy Who Came in From the Cold) helped to establish the franchise's special combination of suspense and tongue-in-cheek schoolboy sophistication, though it was Fleming, of course, who came up with the name Pussy Galore. The name Goldfinger led to a threatened libel action by architect Erno Goldfinger (he of the controversial high-rise council house block), and the film was briefly banned in Israel because of Gert Frobe's one-time membership of the Nazi party. And of course Shirley Bassey belted out the title song, the first of her three 007 assignments.

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