James Bond in the cinema by John Brosnan

Author:John Brosnan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6. You Only Live Twice

Fleming's novel You Only Live Twíce is a strange and bizarre book. At the beginning we find Bond recovering from a breakdown which resulted from his wife being murdered by Blofeld at the end of the preceding novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Bond has gone to seed and good old M is prepared to throw him out of the Service, but he relents and instead sends him on a minor mission to Japan as a last chance. Here, for most of the book, Bond wanders around soaking up the atmosphere of the place and generally acting like a tourist. Not until the last third of the novel is there any real action.

A certain Dr. Shatterhand, whom the Japanese authorities want suppressed, transpires to be none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld. But like Bond, Blofeld too has changed. No longer involved with plots to ransom the Western world he has come to Japan more or less to retire and indulge in his hobbies. But Blofeld being Blofeld his hobbies are a little out of the ordinary . . . he has bought an island off the Japanese coast, complete with castle, and has constructed a garden of death. The garden is full of poisonous plants, pools of man-eating fish and boiling mud holes. The object is to provide the many suicidally inclined Japanese With a variety of unusual and challenging opportunities for self-destruction. Blofeld's chief pleasure in life now is to wander through the garden dressed in full Samurai armour.

Thirsting for vengeance Bond breaks into Blofeld's establishment but is captured by his guards. During their final confrontation Blofeld, dressed like Fu Manchu, explains to Bond that he is getting old and bored with life. He then tries to dismember Bond with a Samurai sword but instead Bond strangles him to death and then blows up his castle. The book closes with Bond, his memory gone, living in a Japanese fishing village and being cared for by a local diving girl, while back in England he's considered as dead and his obituary appears in The Times. Bond has symbolically died but has been reborn as a virtual innocent into a new life.

The film, You Only Live Twice, combines a great deal of money and impressive talent, including newcomers to the series like Director of Photography Freddie Young (long associated with David Lean), writer Roald Dahl and director Lewis Gilbert (Reach for the Sky, The Greengage Summer), but it had little to do with either Ian Fleming or James Bond. The name was the same but the plot had been changed to protect the box-office.

The budget this time was £3 million (after all, the preceding films grossed, up to 1967, a staggering total of £125 million so United Artists weren’t exactly risking the money). A million of it went on location work in Japan and it seems as if Production Designer Ken Adam was allocated the remainder — one set alone cost almost £4oo,ooo, which was more than the total cost of the first film Dr.

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