Information about Diamonds Are Forever (film)

Diamonds Are Forever
Diamonds Are Forever film poster
James Bond	Sean Connery
Also starring	Charles Gray Jill St. John Bruce Glover Putter Smith Bernard Lee Lois Maxwell
Directed by	Guy Hamilton
Produced by	Harry Saltzman Albert R. Broccoli
Novel/Story by	Ian Fleming
Screenplay	Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz
Cinematography by	Ted Moore
Music by	John Barry
Main theme	Diamonds Are Forever
Composer	John Barry Don Black
Performer	Shirley Bassey
Distributed by	United Artists
Released	December 17, 1971 (USA) December 30, 1971 (UK)
Running time	115 min.
Budget	$7,200,000
Worldwide gross	$116,000,000
Admissions (world)	70.3 million
Preceded by	On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Followed by	Live And Let Die (1973)
IMDb profile

Diamonds Are Forever is the 7th James Bond film, and the sixth to star Sean Connery as MI6 agent James Bond. Released in 1971, it is based mostly on Ian Fleming's novel of the same name. Connery returned for Diamonds Are Forever after his absence from the previous Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, starring George Lazenby in the lead role. In the film, Bond impersonates a diamond smuggler to infiltrate a smuggling ring. He soon uncovers a plot by his former nemesis Blofeld to use the diamonds to build a giant laser satellite that would be used to hold the world ransom. Diamonds Are Forever was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli. It was the second of four films to be directed by Guy Hamilton.

Plot

In the opening sequence James Bond is on the trail of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, who was the responsible for the death of his wife in the previous film. After interrogating several of Blofeld's associates, Bond traces him to a facility where he is having himself doubled. Bond enters the duplication room where a man is undergoing the procedure, submerged in a vat of mud. The man raises a gun at Bond who manages to quickly pull a lever that drops a large quantity of liquified mud on top of the man, drowning him. Bond is caught by Blofeld and two guards but manages to turn the tables on them, dumping Blofeld into a pool of superheated mud. "Welcome to Hell, Blofeld," he quips.

Believing Blofeld to be dead the focus switches to the matter of huge quantities of South African diamonds that are being stolen but not sold on the market. Suspecting that the stones are being stockpiled, to depress prices via dumping, M orders Bond to assume the identity of a professional diamond smuggler called Peter Franks to infiltrate the smuggling operation and find out who the stockpilers are. Meanwhile Mr. Wint & Mr. Kidd, involved in the diamond smuggling, are systematically murdering people who come into contact with the diamonds.

Bond, posing as Peter Franks, travels to Amsterdam to meet a smuggler called Tiffany Case at her apartment. Unsure if Bond is the real Peter Franks, she secretly checks Bond's fingerprints, but the results show that Bond is indeed Franks - Q, having anticipated such an eventuality, had issued Bond with fake plastic fingerprints. However it soon comes to light that the real Franks has escaped from custody and is on his way to Case's apartment. Bond, knowing he can't let Tiffany meet the real Peter Franks, heads for her apartment, where he encounters Franks in the lift (elevator), and Bond's cover is blown when he is about to attack him. A long and brutal fight then ensues, and Bond finally kills Peter by knocking him off a balcony with a fire extinguisher. Bond then switches his wallet with Peter's, to make Tiffany think he killed James Bond, thus maintaining his cover as Franks. The two then smuggle the diamonds to Los Angeles within the body of the late Peter Franks.

At the airport Bond makes contact with Felix Leiter and the body (and diamonds) are transported to Slumber Inc, a funeral home in Nevada, where Bond is almost burned alive by Wint and Kidd. However the process is stopped when another smuggler, a man named Shady Tree, realises that the diamonds are fake. Bond tells Leiter to ship the real diamonds while he heads for Las Vegas where Tree works as a stand-up comedian. However Tree is taken care of by Wint and Kidd while Bond meets up with Tiffany again. He sends her to retrieve the diamonds at a circus while he surveils her along with Leiter.

Tiffany discovers Bond's identity after an unsuccessful smuggling job in Las Vegas. But having survived an attempt on her life, she decides to assist Bond in uncovering the plot behind the diamonds. Disguised as a nuclear scientist, Bond enters a laboratory in Nevada owned by multi-millionaire Willard Whyte, the apparent final destination of the smuggled diamonds, where he notices a large quantity of diamonds and a marching music cassette. After being discovered he flees by stealing a workable model of a moon buggy and is soon rescued by Tiffany. They return to Vegas where Bond, equipped with a rappelling cummerbund and piton gun, scales the walls of the Whyte House to the top floor penthouse where the recluse Whyte lives. However Bond discovers that it is in fact Blofeld, posing as Whyte and using a voicebox, who is residing in the penthouse. To make matters worse there are two of them, as Blofeld had already doubled himself with Bond killing the prospective second double. Bond tries to force the issue by kicking Blofeld's cat into the arms of its owner and shooting them, however it turns out to be the wrong Blofeld.



The real Blofeld then, at gunpoint, allows Bond to leave only to render him unconscious by gassing him in the lift. Wint and Kidd then dispose of Bond in a pipeline which is then buried, but Bond manages to escape whereupon he contacts Blofeld posing as an employee Bert Saxby to find out the whereabouts of the real Willard Whyte. Whyte is rescued while back at the Whyte House Tiffany is captured by Blofeld (disguised as a woman) who is leaving the Whyte House. With the help of Whyte, Bond discovers Blofeld's plot to create a laser satellite capable of destroying any target on Earth, using the stolen diamonds. Blofeld uses this weapon to selectively destroy nuclear installations in America, Russia, and China, setting up an international auction with nuclear supremacy going to the highest bidder.

Bond tracks Blofeld to an oil rig off the coast of California, his base of operations. Bond manages to switch the cassette containing the codes which control the satellite with another tape, giving the coded one to Tiffany who is being held captive. With the deadline fast approaching Blofeld plans to attack Washington D.C., while Whyte and Leiter lead an air assault on the base. Blofeld tries to escape on a mini-sub which Bond gains control of, crashing it into the control room and destroying the satellite controls along with the rest of the base. The mission over, Bond and Tiffany head for home on a cruise ship but Wint and Kidd are also on the ship, disguised as waiters. Bond however sees through their disguise and finally eliminates them.

Cast

Main articles: List of James Bond henchmen in Diamonds Are Forever and List of James Bond allies in Diamonds Are Forever

• Sean Connery as James Bond: An MI6 agent who acts as a diamond smuggler to infiltrate a smuggling ring. He uncovers a plot by Blofeld to use the diamonds to build a giant laser satellite.
• Jill St. John as Tiffany Case: A diamond smuggler who hires Bond to smuggle some diamonds for her.
• Charles Gray as Ernst Stavro Blofeld: A megalomaniac, and the head of SPECTRE. He uses diamonds to construct a satellite weapon.
• Jimmy Dean as Willard Whyte: An entrepreneur on a vacation. His name and office are misused by Blofeld. He later assiste Bond in defeating the villain.
• Bruce Glover as Mr. Wint and Putter Smith as Mr. Kidd: Blofeld's henchmen who kill all diamond smugglers except Case.
• Bernard Lee as M
• Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny
• Desmond Llewelyn as Q'''
• Lana Wood as Plenty O'Toole: Bond's friend. She steals Case's wig and is mistakenly killed by Kidd and Wint.
• Bruce Cabot as Bert Saxby
• Margaret Lacey as Mrs. Whistler
• Leonard Barr as Shady Tree
• Laurence Naismith as Sir Donald Munger
• Lola Larson and Trina Parks (uncredited)
  as Bambi and Thumper

Production

According to the 'making of' documentary on the DVD the series producers originally intended Diamonds Are Forever as an extensive reboot of the Bond franchise to appeal to an American audience. Albert R. Broccoli claimed to have literally dreamed up the plot for this film. A close friend of Howard Hughes, Broccoli dreamed that Hughes had been replaced by an imposter.

Casting

George Lazenby was asked to come back as Bond for the film but declined. John Gavin, an American actor who had played Sam Loomis in Psycho for Alfred Hitchcock and Julius Caesar in "Spartacus" amongst many other credits, was originally cast as Bond. Adam West was also offered the role but turned it down. However, United Artists' chief David Picker was unhappy with this decision and made it clear that Sean Connery should be enticed back to the role and that money was, essentially, no object. When approached about resuming the role of Bond, Connery demanded the fee of £1.2 million (then $2 million, and over $20m inflation adjusted for 2005) and that UA agree to back two films of his choice. Both demands were met and Connery used the fee to establish, in collaboration with the Scots racing driver Jackie Stewart, a charity to help deprived children in Edinburgh. Gavin's contract was quietly bought out by UA. The first film made under Connery's deal was The Offence directed by his friend Sidney Lumet. The second was to be an adaptation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare using only Scottish actors and in which Connery himself would play the title role. This project was abandoned due to the Roman Polanski film version that was also in production at the same time. Sean Connery never played Macbeth on film, although his son Jason Connery later did.

Michael Gambon had been mentioned by Albert R. Broccoli as a possible candidate for Bond before Sean Connery returned. Although United Artists were reluctant to cast another relatively unknown actor, Gambon himself told Broccoli that he was "in terrible shape" and "had tits like a woman".

Charles Gray cast as master villain Ernst Stavros Blofeld in this film played a Bond ally called Henderson in You Only Live Twice (1967). David Bauer who plays Morton Slumber previously appeared uncredited as an American Diplomat also in You Only Live Twice.

Musician Paul Williams was originally cast as Mr.Wint. But when he couldn't agree with the producers on money concerns, Bruce Glover replaced him.

Willard Whyte is based on Howard Hughes. Hughes, however, played a more substantial role behind the scenes allowing EON to film inside his casinos and at his other properties. His fee was reputed to be one 16mm print of the film.

The woman in the bikini named "Marie", who in the beginning of the film is "convinced" by Bond to give up the location of Blofeld, was Denise Perrier, Miss World 1953.

Actresses considered for the role of Tiffany Case included: Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway. Jill St. John had originally been offered the part of Plenty O'Toole but landed the female lead after impressing director Guy Hamilton during screen tests. St. John became the first American Bond girl.

Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli cast Lana Wood as Plenty O'Toole after seeing her in Playboy Magazine although her voice was dubbed.

Script

This was the last Bond movie by Eon to use SPECTRE or Blofeld – elements that had not featured Ian Fleming's book, the content of which was almost entirely eschewed in the adaptation. After this, writer Kevin McClory's legal claim against the Fleming estate that he, and not Ian Fleming, had created the organization for the novel "Thunderball" was upheld by the courts. Blofeld is seen but not identified later in For Your Eyes Only (1981), as Eon's arrangements with the Fleming estate do not permit them to use McClory's works.

The original plot had Gert Fröbe returning as Auric Goldfinger's twin from Goldfinger (1964) seeking revenge for the death of his brother.

The death of Bond's wife Tracy was originally planned for the opening sequence of this film, but was later added to the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) to "tidy up loose ends".

The main villains from the source Ian Fleming novel were called Jack and Seraffimo Spang. In a rare occurrence in the EON Productions official series, they were not used for the film. But pretty much all the supporting villains (Shady Tree, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd) were.

Richard Maibaum's original idea for the ending was a giant boat chase across Lake Mead with Blofeld being pursued by Bond and all the Las Vegas casino owners who would be sailing in their private yachts. Bond would rouse the allies into action with a spoof of Lord Nelson's famous cry, "Las Vegas expects every man to do his duty." Maibaum was misinformed; there were no Roman galleys or Chinese junks in Las Vegas, and the idea was too expensive to replicate, so it was dropped.

Maibaum may have thought the eventual oil rig finale a poor substitute, but it was originally intended to be much more spectacular. Armed frogmen would jump from the helicopters into the sea and attach limpet mines to the rig's legs (this explains why frogmen appear on the movie's poster). Blofeld would have escaped in his BathoSub and Bond would have pursued him hanging from a weather balloon. The chase would have then continued across a salt mine with the two mortal enemies scrambling over the pure white hills of salt before Blofeld would fall to his death in a salt granulator.

Permission was not granted by the owners of the salt mine, and it also made the sequence too long. Further problems followed when the explosives set up for the finale were set off too early; fortunately, a handful of cameras were ready and able to capture the footage.

The character of Shady Tree (played by comedian Leonard Barr) is a reference to legendary old Las Vegas entertainer Shecky Greene.

The Willard Whyte kidnap plot was based on a dream of Albert R. Broccoli. He had known Howard Hughes in Hollywood and dreamt he was going to meet his old friend in Las Vegas, but when he entered Hughes's room it was occupied by an imposter. However he reportedly disliked the line "Alimentary, Dr. Leiter," which Bond says when asked the location of the diamonds in Peter Franks's body. He thought no one would understand it referred to digestion. At the film's premiere, two people in the front row burst out laughing at the line, and Broccoli quipped, "Big deal, they're doctors."

Blofeld's quote, "Humility is the worst form of conceit", was from French writer François de La Rochefoucauld.

Filming

The car chase where the red side-rolled car comes outside of the narrow street on the opposite side in which it was rolled, was filmed over three nights on Fremont Street in Las Vegas. The alleyway car roll sequence is actually filmed in two locations. The entrance was at the car park at Universal Studios and the exit was at Fremont Street, Las Vegas.



Lana Wood had to stand on a box for some of her scenes with Sean Connery because, even in high heels, she was too small to fit into the frame with him. During the filming of Plenty O'Toole's fall in the swimming pool, Lana Wood actually had her feet tied (albeit loosely) to a cement block on the bottom. Film crew members held a rope across the pool for her, with which she could lift her face out of the water to breathe between takes. Unfortunately, like most pools, this one had a sloping bottom, and the block was slipping into deeper water with each take. Eventually it reached a depth from which she could no longer get her face out of the water. Alert film crew members noticed this, and quickly jumped into the water to untie her feet, thus saving her from drowning for real. Wood, being a certified diver, remained calm during the ordeal, although she later admitted to a few "very uncomfortable moments" while she was unable to breathe.

The site used for the Willard Whyte Space Labs (where Bond gets away in the Moon Buggy) was actually, at that time, a Johns-Manville gypsum plant located just outside of Las Vegas. The home of Kirk Douglas was used for filming in the movie. His house was used for the scene when James Bond and Tiffany Case chat whilst Plenty O'Toole is dead in the swimming pool.

The film was shot primarily at the Universal City Studios and in other locations of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Besides the Pinewood Studios in London, other places in England were Dover and Southampton. The climactic oil rig sequence was shot at the Oceanside of California.

The scene where James Bond is climbing on the casino's external elevators was shot at the (now demolished) Landmark Hotel and Casino, which at that time was owned by Howard Hughes, whose reclusive personality and alliterative name served as a partial inspiration for the character Willard Whyte.

The filmmakers had an arrangement with Ford to use their vehicles in much of the film. Besides Tiffany's 1971 Mustang, Blofeld's chief scientist drives a Ford Econoline van, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd drive a Thunderbird, and during the moon buggy chase, the security guards are driving Ford Custom 500s. Among the non-Ford vehicles that appears in the scenes shot in America is Blofeld's Mercedes limousine, along with a Plymouth Fury III (used by CIA agents where 007 is sitting in a parked Galaxie 500 sedan). Bond uses a stolen Triumph Stag to travel to Amsterdam via the Seaspeed cross-Channel hovercraft.

Music

Main article: Diamonds Are Forever (soundtrack)

"Diamonds Are Forever", the title song, was the second James Bond theme to be performed by Shirley Bassey, after "Goldfinger" in 1964. Producer Harry Saltzman reportedly hated the song, and only the insistence of co-producer Cubby Broccoli kept it in the film. Saltzman's major objection was to the sexual innuendo of the lyrics. Indeed, in an interview for the television programme James Bond's Greatest Hits composer John Barry revealed that he told Bassey to imagine she was singing about a penis. Bassey would later return for a third performance for 1979's "Moonraker."

The original soundtrack was once again composed by John Barry. This was his sixth time composing for a James Bond film. The song has subsequently been sampled by rapper Kanye West in the track Diamonds from Sierra Leone. It was also used by hip-hop group Dead Prez on the song "Psychology" from Let's Get Free.

Release and Reception

Upon release, the film broke Hollywood's three-day gross record. Critic Roger Ebert on reviewing the film on January 1, 1972 praised the return of Sean Connery but criticised the complexity of the plot and moments of silliness, for example, Bond finding himself driving a moon buggy (antennae wildly revolving and robot arms flapping) across the Nevada desert. However he praised the Las Vegas car chase scene particularly the Mustang up on two wheels.

The film's sound was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost.

External links

• Diamonds Are Forever at Rotten Tomatoes
• Diamonds Are Forever at Box Office Mojo
• MGM Official website

•  • [ e] The James Bond Films

"Official" (EON Productions) films Dr. No • From Russia with Love • Goldfinger • Thunderball • You Only Live Twice • On Her Majesty's Secret Service • Diamonds Are Forever • Live and Let Die • The Man with the Golden Gun • The Spy Who Loved Me • Moonraker • For Your Eyes Only • Octopussy • A View to a Kill • The Living Daylights • Licence to Kill • GoldenEye • Tomorrow Never Dies • The World Is Not Enough • Die Another Day • Casino Royale • Bond 22 "Unofficial" (licensed, non-EON) films Casino Royale (1954 TV) • Casino Royale (1967 satire) • Never Say Never Again