*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
The dastardly villain Auric Goldfinger has hatched an evil plan to detonate a nuclear device inside Fort Knox. This will render the gold reserves of the Western World unusable for generations to come, and will drive up the value of Goldfinger's own stash of bullion. However, this is one ruthless criminal who has reckoned without the resourcefulness of James Bond ...
Cars, girls, jet planes, lasers and more gadgets than you can shake an electronic homing device at fill this watershed Bond adventure to overflowing with lovable 60's kitsch. I say watershed because this is the film in which the Bond phenomenon finds its definitive expression. The delightful sunshine which drenches the locations of Miami, Geneva and Kentucky is the ideal symbol of early 60's optimism. Those dour Austerity years of the previous decade have been conclusively sloughed off, and the cheap materialism of the Beatles Age has yet to be comprehended in all its true tackiness.
The best storyline of all the Bond films, the best theme song and the best interpreter of the Bond character combine to make this a special film. To the innocent cinema audience of the period, yet to experience foreign travel via the package holiday, and increasingly turning to icons of youth for its totems, this big-budget festival of sex and opulence hit with an emotional impact that the later (and infinitely duller) Roger Moore spying-by-numbers projects could not hope to emulate. "Goldfinger" caught us as cinema-goers at a unique moment in our collective cultural development. Never again would we be this naive, never again would we yearn quite so earnestly for this brash consumerism. Bond's car is a sleek, expensive accessory which gets casually trashed, and the same fate befalls Jill Masterson, his sleek, expensive female accessory. Death by gold is the ultimate immolation: venal consumerism can offer nothing beyond this.
It would require an essay some thousands of words in length to deal with the many absurdities of the plot. In a way, the silliness of the narrative is its very strength. Just as James Bond is a flippant young stud, it is meet that he should embody a flippant new genre. Goldfinger has built an amazing model of Fort Knox, its hydraulics governed by a snazzy 60's console of buttons and flashing lights. He uses his elaborate and rather-too-showy model to explain in detail to a bunch of American hoodlums exactly how Operation Grandslam will work. Moments later, he murders the gangsters with poison gas. Why didn't he just kill them anyway, without going to all the bother and expense of having the model built? What was the point of the model? It really doesn't matter. Rejoicing in the gadgetry is an end in itself. Indeed, it's the core of the film.
The dastardly villain Auric Goldfinger has hatched an evil plan to detonate a nuclear device inside Fort Knox. This will render the gold reserves of the Western World unusable for generations to come, and will drive up the value of Goldfinger's own stash of bullion. However, this is one ruthless criminal who has reckoned without the resourcefulness of James Bond ...
Cars, girls, jet planes, lasers and more gadgets than you can shake an electronic homing device at fill this watershed Bond adventure to overflowing with lovable 60's kitsch. I say watershed because this is the film in which the Bond phenomenon finds its definitive expression. The delightful sunshine which drenches the locations of Miami, Geneva and Kentucky is the ideal symbol of early 60's optimism. Those dour Austerity years of the previous decade have been conclusively sloughed off, and the cheap materialism of the Beatles Age has yet to be comprehended in all its true tackiness.
The best storyline of all the Bond films, the best theme song and the best interpreter of the Bond character combine to make this a special film. To the innocent cinema audience of the period, yet to experience foreign travel via the package holiday, and increasingly turning to icons of youth for its totems, this big-budget festival of sex and opulence hit with an emotional impact that the later (and infinitely duller) Roger Moore spying-by-numbers projects could not hope to emulate. "Goldfinger" caught us as cinema-goers at a unique moment in our collective cultural development. Never again would we be this naive, never again would we yearn quite so earnestly for this brash consumerism. Bond's car is a sleek, expensive accessory which gets casually trashed, and the same fate befalls Jill Masterson, his sleek, expensive female accessory. Death by gold is the ultimate immolation: venal consumerism can offer nothing beyond this.
It would require an essay some thousands of words in length to deal with the many absurdities of the plot. In a way, the silliness of the narrative is its very strength. Just as James Bond is a flippant young stud, it is meet that he should embody a flippant new genre. Goldfinger has built an amazing model of Fort Knox, its hydraulics governed by a snazzy 60's console of buttons and flashing lights. He uses his elaborate and rather-too-showy model to explain in detail to a bunch of American hoodlums exactly how Operation Grandslam will work. Moments later, he murders the gangsters with poison gas. Why didn't he just kill them anyway, without going to all the bother and expense of having the model built? What was the point of the model? It really doesn't matter. Rejoicing in the gadgetry is an end in itself. Indeed, it's the core of the film.