“This is gold, Mr. Bond. All my life I’ve been in love with its colour… its’ brilliance, its’ divine heaviness.”
Goldfinger / 1964
September 2024 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the film that arguably changed not just Bond. Director Guy Hamilton’s 007 debut Goldfinger also changed action cinema.
Almost singlehandedly, Goldfinger and 1964 lent a new gait, poise and pace to adventure cinema. It was an instant phenomenon that changed the scope of how films were constructed, how Bond was branded, how Bond was embellished and designed, how Bond was cast, how Bond was scored, and how escapist 007 could be in a moddish era. Goldfinger was when the Bond series starting moving. Goldfinger represents movement – the sets, the cars, the titles, the story, and the soundtrack. With the previous Dr. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963) being cut from a Kennedy era, late 1950s cloth, the cinematic Sixties – and arguably the Bond franchise – starts with Goldfinger.
Art / Mark O’Connell
‘It was all done in the camera, which is the way I like to do films, you know. I hate storyboards and scripts. It’s nice just to have an idea and go on the floor and play around with the camera and the lights, and then shoot what you want.’
– Robert Brownjohn
Artist Robert Brownjohn not only created the graphical overtures for From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. He was also one of the sharpest ad minds of a new era of commercial art, its crossovers into cinema and poster designs. His simple scribblings, costings, shot notes and test imagery offer insight into one of cinema’s most elaborate, game-changing overtures that defined more than just a franchise’s third spin of the DB5.
Movie success is about a lot of things, but timing is vital. And the timing of Goldfinger is possibly the Bond series’ most serendipitous of moments. Yet, serendipity cannot be bought. It needs foresight and talent. Anyone can make a film whose ingredients boil down to the very earliest and winning DNA of cinema – chase scenes, portly villains, damsels in distress and heroes strapped to railway lines (or laser tables).
Goldfinger is nothing if not an echo of what got the very first audiences of cinema excited. But the communal Midas touch from Goldfinger‘s production team is that they knew what to do and – just as crucially – what not to do. Ken Adam’s sets show themselves off but are not shot with too much reverence by director Guy Hamilton, John Barry’s score is like a deliberate party-blower in your ear but does not lose its functionality and the film requires larger than life characters, but is not cast with flashy, marquee names.
‘And I have not even mentioned the Aston Martin DB5? It has its own iconic moments every time its homing beacon, ejector-seat or Ben Hur tyre-shredders switch into action. The Aston is a vital supporting character in Goldfinger, as narratively functional as From Russia’s Kerim Bey or You Only Live Twice’s Tiger Tanaka. Aside from CIA linchpin Felix Leiter, it is the nearest to a returning sidekick the solitary Bond character has.
Of course the 007 films have featured cars before. Dr No and From Russia With Love have fun with their perfunctory car chases (and Expositional Chauffeurs). But these are often against Pinewood back-projections where Connery and the subsequent pursuit feel very studio-bound. Compared to them, Goldfinger‘s DB5 is like a bullet out of a gun.
Again, it is all about the movement – with extended action scenes holding a wider logic and geography than Bond had used before. The Aston is also a vehicular extension of Bond himself – of his metallic grey tailoring with its jacket-pocket side gills, a front breastplate of stitched metal grillwork and a bulletproof back-window raised like a lapel to divert all menaces.
Without turning proceedings into The Aston Goes Bananas or The Aston Goes To Monte Carlo (which actually it does later in 1995’s GoldenEye), the DB5 is given a sleek mind and character of its own. It is certainly a presence so durable in Goldfinger that it becomes symbiotic with 007 and the Bond brand forever more.
And despite suffering an embarrassing demise in Goldfinger (Bond crashes the DB5 into an easily collapsible Pinewood “brick wall” unaware the oncoming car is in fact a mirror reflection) the Aston Martin – like James Bond himself – can be regenerated.’
‘The Designer Bullets’, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan
Goldfinger also represents the moment was forever gilded with a new sense of sadism, death and kink. It is when the Bond series knew to show itself as much as tell itself. It is also one of the defining visual beats of cinema, the 1960s, pop-culture and Bond.
Art / Mark O’Connell
‘Like all institutions that must safeguard their survival, the Bond series adapts, adopts and learns. Three films in and we already recognise where the villains, heroes and those in-between will be positioned. The film’s calling-card of dousing Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) in gold paint is not just a proficient, glossy and nasty way of telling the audience all we need to know about Auric Goldfinger. It tells us what this film series now wants to be – bespoke action adventures, a little bit kinky, a little bit violent, often original, always stylish, yet forever aimed at mass audiences. The Bond films are now in the business of showing their intent rather than telling it. Gone are the cerebral exchanges of From Russia With Love.
The visual shorthand of a very dead Morning After Jill covered in gilded Dulux is a defining moment for the Bond series. It is when the films become truly cinematic with a visual momentum of their own making and design.’
‘The Designer Bullets’, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan
‘Where’s my Bentley?’
‘Oh, it’s had its day, I’m afraid. M’s orders, 007. You’ll be using this Aston Martin DB5 with modifications.’
Catching a toy icon and a fun mission building a Bond icon in plastic in the year GOLDFINGER marks its sixtieth anniversary.
Catching LEGO – NO, MR. BOND. I EXPECT YOU TO BUILD!
