Diamonds Are Forever (film)

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For other uses of Diamonds Are Forever, see Diamonds Are Forever.

Diamonds Are Forever
Diamonds Are Forever film poster
James Bond	Sean Connery
Directed by	Guy Hamilton
Produced by	Harry Saltzman Albert R. Broccoli
Written by	Ian Fleming
Screenplay	Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz
Music by	John Barry
Main theme
Composer	John Barry Don Black
Performer	Shirley Bassey
Distributed by	United Artists (1971-1981) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1982-present)
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
Followed by	Live and Let Die
IMDb profile

Diamonds Are Forever is the seventh film in the EON Productions James Bond series. It was the sixth and final film in the series to star Sean Connery as British Secret Service Agent, Commander James Bond. Connery would later portray Bond again in the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again in 1983 and lend his voice for Bond in the 2005 video game adaptation of From Russia with Love.

Loosely based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name, it was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli and released in 1971. It was the second of four films to be directed by Guy Hamilton.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Cast & characters 3 Crew 4 Soundtrack 4.1 Track listing 5 Vehicles & gadgets 6 Production 6.1 Origins 6.2 Film locations 6.3 Shooting locations 6.4 Casting 7 Bloopers 8 Deleted Scenes and Alternate Endings 9 Trivia 10 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Relatively little of the original novel survives the adaptation to film, though many characters from the original book, plus the idea of Tiffany being a diamond smuggler, are retained, so it isn't a complete "rewrite."

The movie begins with Bond's worldwide pursuit of the head of SPECTRE, Ernst Stavro Blofeld in revenge for the murder of his wife, Tracy Bond with the implied permission of MI6, at the end of the previous adventure, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Cornering Blofeld in an underground lab where the villain is in the process of creating duplicates of himself (via a form of plastic surgery), Bond throws Blofeld into a vat of superheated mud. "Welcome to Hell, Blofeld," he quips.

Meanwhile, huge quantities of South African diamonds are being stolen but have not been sold on the market. Suspecting that the stones are being stockpiled to inflate prices, the Government 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.

With the help of fellow smuggler Tiffany Case, and amidst the bright lights of Las Vegas, he uncovers a plot by Blofeld (who didn't die in the cave; Bond had killed another duplicate instead) to create a laser satellite capable of destroying any target on Earth. He 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.

A notable part of the plot of the movie involves Blofeld's use of the industrial properties of a recluse Nevada multimillionaire (played by Jimmy Dean) by the name of Willard Whyte, the character being a thinly veiled version of Howard Hughes.

The film features a very unusual couple of henchmen: Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd. There is a strong suggestion that they are involved in more than just a professional relationship; they appear to be homosexual, although the film never explicitly makes that clear. Throughout the film, they use several interesting ways of assassinating their victims, from the use of a scorpion to kill a South African dentist, tying the feet of Plenty O'Toole to a metal plate and drowning her in a swimming pool, and attempting to incinerate James Bond alive in a crematorium furnace.

Also memorable are the female guards placed by Blofeld over Willard Whyte, named Bambi and Thumper, two martial art pros.

[edit] Cast & characters

• James Bond — Sean Connery
• M — Bernard Lee
• Miss Moneypenny — Lois Maxwell
• Q — Desmond Llewelyn
• Felix Leiter — Norman Burton
• Ernst Stavro Blofeld — Charles Gray
• Tiffany Case — Jill St. John
• Willard Whyte — Jimmy Dean
• Mr. Wint — Bruce Glover
• Mr. Kidd — Putter Smith
• Plenty O'Toole— Lana Wood
• Bert Saxby — Bruce Cabot
• Sir Donald Munger — Laurence Naismith

[edit] Crew

• Directed by: Guy Hamilton
• Written by: Ian Fleming
• Screenplay by: Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz
• Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman
• Composed by: John Barry
• Cinematography by: Ted Moore
• Production design by: Ken Adam
• Set decoration by: Peter Lamont

[edit] Soundtrack

Diamonds Are Forever
Soundtrack by John Barry
Released	1971
Recorded	October 1971
Label	EMI
Producer(s)	Frank Collura (Reissue)
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link
John Barry chronology
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)	Diamonds Are Forever (1971)	Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
James Bond soundtrack chronology
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)	Diamonds Are Forever (1971)	Live and Let Die (1973)
Alternate cover
Re-release cover

Main article: James Bond music

"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 hated the song and it only made the film due to co-producer Cubby Broccoli. One of Saltzman's major objections was to the sexual innuendo in the song, in an interview for the programme James Bonds Greatest Hits he 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 title song was later sampled by Chicago rapper Kanye West for a single titled "Diamonds from Sierra Leone."

The original soundtrack was once again composed by John Barry. This was his sixth time composing for a James Bond film.

[edit] Track listing

1. Diamonds Are Forever (Main Title) - Shirley Bassey
2. Bond Meets Bambi And Thumper
3. Moon Buggy Ride
4. Circus, Circus
5. Death At The Whyte House
6. Diamonds Are Forever (Source Instrumental)
7. Diamonds Are Forever (Bond And Tiffany)
8. Bond Smells A Rat
9. Tiffany Case
10. 007 And Counting
11. Q's Trick
12. To Hell With Blofeld
13. Gunbarrel and Manhunt
14. Mr.Wint and Mr.Kidd/Bond To Holland
15. Peter Franks
16. Airport Source/On The Road
17. Slumber, Inc.
18. The Whyte House
19. Plenty, Then Tiffany
20. Following The Diamonds
21. Additional and Alternate Cues

[edit] Vehicles & gadgets

Main articles: List of James Bond vehicles and List of James Bond gadgets

• Pocket snap trap — A small gadget hidden in a pocket to give a person performing an unwanted search on the wielder a painful surprise that would provide a critical distraction for the wielder to exploit for an attack.
• 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 — Tiffany Case picks up Bond after eluding some henchmen.
• Moon buggy — Used by Bond to escape from the laboratory.
• Fake Fingerprint — Bond uses a fake fingerprint that clings to his thumb to trick Tiffany Case into believing he is Peter Franks.
• Slot Machine Ring — Q created a ring that when used ensures a jackpot at the slot machines every time.
• Rappelling Cummerbund — When Bond rides on top of the elevator to the suite of Willard Whyte he uses for the last leg of this trip the rappelling cord built into his cummerbund. (A similar gadget is the belt used in GoldenEye.) Bond uses a special gun to fire the pitons needed to rappel, and later demonstrates that this can also be a deadly weapon.

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).

[edit] Production

[edit] Origins

• 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.
• 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.
• The expletives "God damn" and "bitch" are heard in dialogue, marking the first use of adult language in a Bond film (previous films never used words stronger than "damn" or "hell"). The film still retained its PG rating in the USA, though.

[edit] Film locations

• Japan and Cairo - feature in pre-credits sequence
• London, United Kingdom
• South Africa - Bond is not shown there, but part of the story involving Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd takes place there.
• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Los Angeles, California, United States
• Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
• Baja California, Mexico

[edit] Shooting locations

• Pinewood Studios — London
• Universal City Studios — Los Angeles
• Germany
• Netherlands
• France
• Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
• Los Angeles, California, United States
• Palm Springs, California, United States - Bond, Thumper and Bambi scene.
• Oceanside, California, United States - Oil Rig Sequence
• Dover, Kent, England, United Kingdom
• Southampton, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom

• The exterior for the Whyte House Hotel is the Las Vegas Hilton (then called the International Hotel).
• The distinctive round house where Willard Whyte was being held prisoner and where Bond fought Bambi and Thumper, supposedly just outside Las Vegas, is actually located in Palm Springs, California.

[edit] Casting

• John Gavin, an American actor who had played Sam Loomis in Psycho for Alfred Hitchcock amongst many other credits, was originally cast as Bond. 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 Sean 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 part of 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 Polański 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.
• 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.
• Connery was in a strong position for negotiations. The previous Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, had been the first Bond film (not counting the television special or spoofs) without Connery--George Lazenby had taken the role. However, that film had not performed as well at the box office ^{[citation needed]} or with critics (although it has come to be recognized later that it was one of the best, and that Lazenby suffered only because audiences strongly identified with Connery as Bond). Because he was the iconic figure, and because audiences themselves had vindicated (financially) this iconography, Connery knew he could demand the moon for returning to the role. He did, and, ironically, the studio nearly put him there in this film (as part of the plot revolves around a satellite in orbit).

[edit] Bloopers

• Willard White incorrectly states that the first laser was projected through a diamond. In reality, a ruby was used.
• At the end of the car chase on the Las Vegas strip, the Mustang Bond is driving ducks down an alley to escape the persuing sheriff. Bond half drives onto a ramp to raise the car on the two passenger side wheels to clear the narrow walkway between two buildings. When the car is shown exiting the alley, it is on the two driver's side wheels. As explained on the documentary "Inside Diamonds Are Forever" on the film's DVD this was because the two sequences were shot separately and the original stunt team was unavailable. The only replacement team who could do the shot could only make it on the other wheels. A closeup shot of the car interior in the alley is included that tilts from one side to the other, in an attempt to imply the car had switched wheels, although the alley is shown as too narrow for this.

[edit] Deleted Scenes and Alternate Endings

• Sammy Davis Jr.'s brief cameo appearance was cut from the theatrical release. It would later be restored on the DVD. A still photo of him can be seen in the program Bond reads when he notices Shady Tree has a stage show.

• Scenes also cut from the theatrical release include a wet, towel-clad Plenty O' Toole sneaking back into Bond's hotel room and searching through Tiffany Case's purse; Plenty breaking into Tiffany's house; Plenty with Bond at dinner; and Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd shooting Shady Tree. After killing him they quip, "Two's company . . . " ". . . and Tree's a crowd."

• The climax of the film was changed several times during pre-production. Early drafts included a boat chase on Lake Mead that ended with Blofeld getting trapped above Hoover Dam. When the climax was relocated to an oil rig, the original ending had Bond pursue Blofeld who was trying to escape in his mini submarine. They both would have ended up fighting each other in a salt mine.Blofeld would have ended up crushed.

[edit] Trivia

• This was the second film in which a character played by Lana Wood was sent out of a window. In the film The Searchers, where Lana played the young version of her older sister Natalie Wood's character, she is sent out of a window to escape being killed by rampaging Indians. In this film, Lana's character, Plenty O'Toole, is thrown almost completely naked out of a window to what was supposed to be her death, but survived, albeit temporarily, by landing in the pool.
• Two villains in the Cartoon Network's animated series Codename: Kids Next Door, Mr. Fibb and Mr. Wink, are spoofs of Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint.

[edit] External links

• Diamonds Are Forever (1971) at the Internet Movie Database
• MGM Official website