They don’t make them like this anymore.
They don’t really make them at all.
Hard to remember the plot of 1967’sYou Only Live Twiceeven while you’re watching it.
Credit: Everett Collection
There are spaceships and submarines, because this was the fifth film in a very successful franchise.
(Bond goes undercover as a Japanese fellow, and that’s just the racist stuff thatisn’tsexist.)
Then, though, the final act.
Bond is newly fake-married to another secret agent (Mie Hama), for vague subterfuge reasons.
They’re investigating mysterious doings around a dormant volcano.
The pair go on a long hike over rocky terrain.
Connery wears fishing clothes; Hama wears a white bikini.
The fate of the world is at stake, so they onlyalmosthave sex, before a helicopter passes overhead.
It disappears downwards into the volcano’s basin.
From high up, the lake looks merely beautiful, like any astounding place that’s hard to visit.
The water is a metal mirage, though.
Underneath, the most evil people on Earth are planning World War III.
The volcano is real.
(Actually, Mount Shinemoedake erupted just a few years ago.)
The Bond producers could afford location shooting in southernmost Japan.
The helipad’s adjacent to a rocketship platform.
A monorail circumferences the whole HQ.
There are men in yellow uniforms and men in red uniforms.
It’s futuristic in a way that probably looked retro by mid-January 1970.
He comes off like a cold fish, but wow, hereallywanted those impressive stairways.
Everything’s carved right out of pure rock, like the living room of any freshly divorced Nixon-boosting tycoon.
“ASTRONAUTS TO DRESSING ROOMS!
ASTRONAUTS TO DRESSING ROOMS!”
the loudspeaker announces; the astronauts have dressing rooms.
Director Lewis Gilbert was no genius, but there was no wrong way to point the camera.
So the last 25 minutes ofTwiceare majestic beyond parody.
They throw grenades until it’s time for swords.)
Will any silly action movie ever build a set like this again?
Do modern movie heroes go anywhere that doesn’t offer a sweetheart tax break?
The fake lake doesn’t look even remotely like actual water.
A 2020s movie would digitalize it: “argh, they have holograms!”
But its tangible physicality carries a secret authenticity.
You have to respect SPECTRE.
They hire the best phony-water painters.
I have a terrible fondness forDie Another Day’s ice castle, but that interior set looks somehowtoorealistic.
That film was a crater, all right.
Return, forever, to the sublime layout of Blofeld’s study inTwice.
Or maybe it’s his foyer?
Great no-doubt-stolen works of art hang on the rock face.
The quill might be ornamental, but work certainly gets done at that desk.
No one who criticizes the James Bond franchise on moral grounds will ever be wrong.
But at leastYou Only Live Twicebuilt its man a glorious cave.
