Most definitely the best book written by Ian Fleming, also one of the later ones, and quite possibly the best movie. As every James Bond aficionado should know, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is George Lazenby's first and final James Bond film. Now, something that is not taken into account is the fact that in the order the books were written, this one published in 1963, OHMSS is in fact one of the last books to be released. They don't ever really portray this in the movie, but the loss of his wife and the subsequent killing of Ernst Stavro Blofeld left Bond an empty crust, actually causing total amnesia and an attempt to kill the man he was personally loyal to throughout his career.
As far as the movies go, I feel that this is possibly the best one done. Sure, some events are exaggerated as they are in all movies, but this one stuck most to the plotline of Fleming's original story, thankfully without throwing some extravagant 'Q' Branch gadgets in. Bond is actually portrayed as a human being, with real thoughts and emotions. I say this because this is the only movie where he, that is Bond, shows compassion and love beyond the meaningless sex with the hot Bond girls. Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, the daughter of the Capo of the Union Corse; Draco Marc Ange. preferred to be known as Tracy, she is the one woman to capture Bond's heart so completely that he proposes to her. The very unfortunate incident causing this to be dubbed my favorite Bond film and book is the fact that Tracy is killed not an hour after the wedding by none other than the notorious Blofeld.
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Yes, indeed. Bond manages to get beyond the slick spy image and become a real character, which is the sign of an author breaking out of easy composition and trying to do something real with his own creation.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, one of the best satires of the spy novel ever was by Trevanian, whose Jonathan Hemlock was a cold and calculating art collector who apparently couldn't really love anyone and who only ever got into two novels--The Eiger Sanction and The Loo Sanction--and yet managed to meet a girl in the second novel who--yep, you guessed it--got herself killed by the bad guy. So it seems that Trevanian thought pretty highly of OHMSS as well, considering how much he borrowed from it to produce his satire of the spy novel.
And if you care, read Shibumi, also by Trevanian, and one of the most outstanding novels of any kind ever created, but a worthy assassin genre book in its own right.
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