Saturday Is Bond Day #3: Goldfinger

The Wheeler boys continued on with their march through the cinematic oevure du Jacques de Liens with Goldfinger this past weekend. I thought the boys got a little antsy during the middle part, but then The Wife asked "did they sit through it?" and I had to admit they did. Eight- and ten-year-old boys don't sit through movies that they're not enjoying -- they just up and leave -- so I guess they did like it.

This is one of the big famous movies in the series, and the boys knew some of the plot points from that Mythbusters episode that got them interested in Bond in the first place. (Notably the girl covered in gold paint, and I think they knew about the souped-up Aston Martin as well.) I remembered it pretty well myself, though, again, I was surprised at how long it took before the main girl (Pussy Galore, snicker snicker) showed up -- possibly even later in the film than Ursula Andress in Dr. No. Luckily for Bond, he had a couple of disposable sisters -- I'm only slightly exaggerating, and remember this is still the early '60s -- to keep him warm earlier in the movie.

(Tangentally, the boys are still innocent enough -- or have good enough poker faces, which I doubt -- not to even crack a smile at "Pussy Galore." Thank Ghu for small favors.)

The movie itself is still solid, starting nicely in medias res and throwing Bond into conflict with the fiendish Auric Goldfinger (whom the filmmakers had the good sense not to try to tie in with the overall SPECTRE plotline, though that must have been a possibility). Again, the caper is pretty smart, though I wonder if it was possibly to so easily overfly Fort Knox even in 1964.

The "rape turns bad girls good" scene near the end is very uncomfortable these days -- it might not be quite rape, if you throw a lot of special pleading at it (I'd like to think Pussy Galore could have gotten away, if she wanted to), but it's so close as to make no difference. James, when there are as many willing women as there seem to be in your world, forcing yourself on an unwilling one is not just morally wrong, it's ungentlemanly.

All in all, the boys and I were happy, which means I expect we'll be back next week for Thunderball, if we can manage to get a copy of it. (No library nearby has it on DVD, for whatever reason.)