In more ways than one, Diamonds are Forever tries to wash our minds of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The classic Shirley Bassey returns to provide deep, strong vocals to the title track once again, and Connery returns to the role he left four years prior. What’s more, Diamonds are Forever begins in Japan, where You Only Live Twice left off, almost completely erasing George Lazenby’s brief endeavor as the Lothario agent.
At the same time, the first 1970’s installment of James Bond takes a page or two from Lazenby’s performance. Connery, the formerly, athletically stiff Bond when it came to combat and stunts, has the camera trained on him much more often when it comes to action sequences. Previously, the frames had been sped up and it seemed as if Bond was witterquick, but the movements never really matched the proposed intensity. Connery’s stage combat, no matter how sped up, never really worked, and the quick cuts were often discontinuous.
The same cannot be said for Diamonds are Forever. Here, the camera spends a longer time on Connery. This is most apparent as he clashes with an enemy in the elevator. The camera follows each man’s action from the front of the cage to the rear and each subsequent blow.
The rest of the film, from a narrative perspective is similar to its predecessors. Blofeld, who just won’t die, orchestrates a plot to steal a cache of diamonds and use them on an Earth-roaming satellite to instigate a nuclear war amongst the United States and the Soviet Union. Because of this threat, Bond is enlisted to recover the diamonds and stop Blofeld. At the same time, there is a rather ironic subtext to Bond’s mission.
One of the reasons that 007 is sent to recover the diamonds is because the diamond’s “rightful” distributors are worried that the thief plants to flood the market with diamonds, thus depressing their value. In one sense, this sentiment is a tip of the hat to the nefarious practices that we know surround diamonds in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the potential problem also illuminates the fact that diamonds are overly-inflated to begin with, something that is proven by the abundant availability that is constricted by distributors and mining companies.
In short, there is no paucity of diamonds, so their inherent status as a symbol of wealth is manufactured, something that seems readily advertised in this quickly spoken conundrum.
Something doubly interesting about Diamonds are Forever is its evidence of Bond’s success through proceeding generations. As the sixties ended, Bond and its producers glided smoothly into the seventies, adopting common tropes that run the gamut of Keystone-cop-like incompetence, synthesized pre-disco music, Apollo 11 conspiracy theories, and Blaxploitation more akin to abject racism, but with a modicum of female and black empowerment.
As we approach the dawn of Roger Moore as Bond in Live and Let Die – a film that very much encapsulates the seventies’ genres, it’s interesting to see that Robert R. Broccoli and MGM both revitalized the series and bridged decade-gaps with Sean Connery before switching leading men for a second time.
