The Spy Who Loved Me has always been my favorite Roger Moore Bond film, and I’m not alone. When you look at almost any ranking of Bond films, this is always his highest ranking film. It’s the highest rated Roger Moore Bond film on Rotten Tomatoes, and my own very unofficial survey found that to be the case as well. And why not? After a couple of well-intentioned efforts that fell short of the series’ earlier excellence, the series once again hit its stride in its third film with Moore.
If there is one problem with this film, it is that it has become more dated than almost any other film in the series, and that’s mainly due to the music. Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better was a huge hit in 1977, but it’s not nearly as timeless as Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die. The composer also added a very 70’s sounding disco electric guitar riff over the Bond theme throughout the picture, and that definitely serves to date the film as well.
The film itself, however, has some of the best work in the series. It has an intricate plot that is woven together well. Bond has to ally himself with a Russian femme fatale (more on her later), and there is some classic Cold War gamesmanship going on as Bond has to stop a madman from using Russian and American nuclear missles from destroying Moscow and Washington, D.C. It also takes place in a variety of exotic locations all around the world and has scenes that are filled with action and tension, and it brings back the motif of the cool car and the high tech gadgets.
The Spy Who Loved Me has one of the great Bond girls of the series. Major Anya Amasova/Agent XXX was played by Barbara Bach. This was her first major role, and it launched her on a series of popcorn movies that gave her a fine career for the next 10 years. This role, however is the one she’s known for and it should be. She’s not the best actress in the world, but she fit the role of Soviet Agent very well with a dark and brooding personality and a sexiness not seen in the series since Honey Ryder. The film makers also gave her role more depth as she finds out that Bond has earlier killed her lover and she vows to kill him once their mission is over.
The villain in this film is Karl Stromberg, a madman who wants to destroy mankind and start a new civilization that will live entirely underwater. Played by Carl Jurgens, Stromberg is the best villain in the series since Goldfinger was hording away his bullion. Stromberg is sadistic, clever and conniving, and a worth addition to the pantheon of great Bond villains.
The film would also introduce General Gogol, who would be a recurring character throughout the next decade. And then there was Jaws, the giant with metal teeth who became an icon in the series as a seemingly indestructible brute with a sadistic craving to kill people by using his metal teeth to bite through their necks. He was one of the great Bond villains who was able to mix menace and comedy without one adversely affecting the other.
I believe that one of the things that makes this film so successful is that it utilizes the Hero’s Journey more effectively in its storytelling than the previous three films did. The early Connery films, as well as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service all had well-defined Hero’s Journey’s with archetypal characters that seamlessly were woven into well crafted stories. The last Connery film and the first two Moore films that followed were much more forced in their storytelling. There were probably a lot of reasons for that, as the series was working itself awkwardly through the transition from Connery to Moore. But with The Spy Who Loved Me, Moore finally came into his own as Bond, much like Connery did with Goldfinger. Moore seems much more comfortable with Bond and the film makers feel much more comfortable with him. Director Lewis Gilbert was making his second foray into the series, having previously directed You Only Live Twice, and he seemed to have a better grasp on the series as well.
What all of that allowed to happen was to create a Bond that the audience cared about in a way not seen since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It doesn’t matter what kind of film you’re making, whether it’s a one off production or an installment in a successful series. The audience has to care about the characters, and the Bond film makers had forgotten about that for a couple of films. Whether consciously or not, they were relying on the previous success of the series to carry a couple of relatively sub par installments. With The Spy Who Loved Me they returned to their roots and created a film that was one of the very best in the series to date.
There is one interesting note that I will close on and expand upon in the next blog entry. At the end of the credits it says that James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only. However with the success of Star Wars which came out that same year, Moonraker was put on the fast track for production, and that film would unfortunately stall the momentum that was created with The Spy Who Loved Me.