A number of months ago, ML Kennedy and I had a bit of a discussion on the Staff Forum in regards to the relevancy of Roger Ebert. Ebert, considered the nation’s preeminent film critic, has been the target of much debate amongst fans and foes alike. His opinions have inspired much debate amongst all portions of movie-goers. Debating taste in films is an age-old past time amongst film buffs, obviously, so it’s interesting to see what Ebert has declared to be the best in film.
Instead of having to search through archives from the man, he’s made it simple with his Great Movies list. This month, we present an alternative to the dreary and often repetitive summer previews that are trendy and cliched and present “The Great Movies,” our look at the films Ebert has tabbed as Great. Are they great, or did he get it wrong somehow?
We here in the Popcorn Junkies have decided to embark upon the ultimate test of the man who redefined the art of movie criticism. For this month’s special feature, we’re taking a look at the films that Ebert has dubbed his “Great Movies” and will decide whether or not the man is right (at least in our eyes). While everyone else is tackling the trendy and all too clichéd “summer preview” and deciding which movies are and are not worth watching, we’ve decided to give a serious look at the films the man whose opinion has been trusted for over four decades. Are they truly cinematic classics, or is he wrong? We’ve watched the movies, now you get to read the results.
Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
Guy Hamilton
Cast :
Sean Connery……….James Bond
Honor Blackman……….Pussy Galore
Gert Frobe……….Auric Goldfinger
The test of a great movie, it seems, can sometimes be found in a parody of it. And when Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery came out, itself a parody of the entire Bond franchise, the similarities in terms of plot and structure to Goldfinger made the film a delight to watch in how ruthlessly it parodied the film. And while Austin Powers may have lost a bit of steam in its parody of bond films over two sequels, Goldfinger remains as the standard by which the Bond franchise has evolved from and is judged by.
Goldfinger is the third film in the Bond franchise, following Dr. No and From Russia with Love, and is the one that every Bond film seems to emulate if only because it has the Bond formula perfected. James Bond (Sean Connery) is hot on the trail of Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), a gold magnate looking to contaminate the gold supply of the U.S at Fort Knox. Initially sneaking his way into Goldfinger’s world by disrupting a scheme to defraud someone in a card game, the British secret agent with the license to kill finds himself held hostage by the man whose scheme he’s trying to stop.
What makes Goldfinger so remarkable 40 years after its initial release in theatres is that it became the template for every Bond movie that followed up until 2006’s franchise reboot Casino Royale. Every movie that followed Goldfinger essentially tried to match the quality script and characters, as well as the best performance of the man who was the best Bond of them all.
The film’s script is easily the best in the franchise because of how well it uses the Bond formula. Every Bond film is similar if only because there is no recurring story that is followed. Bond is charged with saving the world from a bad guy, gets to use cool gadgets and always gets a multitude of gorgeous women to go to bed with him. He’s the dream of every 13 year old boy as well as the 13 year old inside every man; being James Bond is the ultimate heterosexual male fantasy. Bond gets to save the day and get any girl he wants while foiling a diverse range of evildoers and their henchmen. Goldfinger represents the perfect balance of formula, as the film isn’t gadget obsessed as the later films became, and became the template by which the future of the franchise was mostly based off. Goldfinger is the best written of the Bond bad guys, and the film progresses very smoothly as the cat and mouse game between Goldfinger and Bond gets deadly quickly. The film’s iconic moment, wherein Goldfinger has Bond hooked up to a table with a laser threatening to cut him in half crotch-first, has become a scene paid homage to for years.
Partly because of the soundness of the script, Bond and the characters that inhabit this world have become the templates by which the series has based its remaining cast on. Connery’s turn as Bond has become the stuff of legend; Connery is forever known as Bond and his portrayal of the legendary secret agent/lothario has been the one copied by Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton, Roger Moore and others. It’s terrifically written and Connery lends his swagger and confidence to the role that would somehow manage to be his trademark and the sort of suave sophisticate typecast it brought with it that he has embraced over the last four decades. By the same extension Gert Frobe’s Goldfinger is one of the most memorable of the Bond villains. Coupled with Oddjob, a Korean bodyguard with a razor-sharp hat, Goldfinger became the archetype of every villain in the series afterwards. While Frobe would forever be remembered as Goldfinger, and his voice dubbed by Michael Collins, Auric Goldfinger remains the standard for Bond villains.
Goldfinger remains the pinnacle of the Bond franchise if only because it is the best representation of the formula that comprises it. It remains a terrific action film and one of the great movies of our time, if only because it established perhaps the most successful and endearing formula of the last 20 years.
