You Only Live Twice

The Mission
MI6 travel abroad as Bond (Sean Connery) faces his 'biggest mission yet' - finding out who is behind the theft of U.S. and Soviet shuttles before the world erupts into widescale nuclear war! MI6 track the theft to somewhere in Japan, and Bond must fake his own death and go undercover to find the whereabouts of a secret shuttle launch site. It's a mission that will finally bring him face to face with the brains behind SPECTRE - Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasance).

Jimmy Bond Yo!
Bond has never been to Japan before but can speak Japanese (he studied oriental languages at university). He also holds the naval rank of Commander, and is seen in uniform for the first time after MI6 fake his death and intercept his funeral casket via submarine. Connery plays Bond's scenes in Japan rather unenthusiastically (perhaps owing to his real-life negative experiences in the country at the time of filming), and Bond seems unimpressed with sumo wrestling. Bond shows off to his Japanese contact by giving the correct temperature that sake should be served at.

He also seems to take great delight in Japanese attitudes towards women (EG. They should be subserviant) and demonstrates a wryly chauvinistic attitude of his own (once agian, it's hard to tell if this is a reflection of the character as-written, or if it's Connery's performance). He lies to his new girl rather casually, and is dismissive of her jealousy. He also doesn't seem too upset when she's later killed, simply moving on to the next Japanese girl he's teamed up with. Amusingly, he's resolutely against the idea of an ugly fake wife, and decides not to bother eating oysters if his fake wife won't share a bed with him. He picks up the skills of the ninja rather easily and is something of a master of disguise throughout You Only Live Twice.


Villainy
Blofeld, SPECTRE's Number 1, finally makes a proper appearance after two films of build up. He doesn't really show up until halfway through the film, and for the first time in the franchise the audience isn't told SPECTRE's plans right from the outset. Donald Pleasance plays Blofeld as slightly effiminate with a menacingly soft-spoken and cultured voice. He also has a fluffy white cat and a muscly blond bodyguard named Hans (I wonder what other duties he performs...?) Blofeld has a massive base hidden inside a volcano crater and keeps a pool of bloodthirsty piranhas in his appartment (as you do). Modern viewers will no doubt recognise Blofeld as the template for Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers films, with his bald head, white nehru suit and facial scar.

Bond also tussles with the new Number 3 (Burt Kwouk), a serious-looking Japanese businessman, and Number 11 (Karin Dor), a redheaded european femme fatale who has a few big scenes in the middle of the film before Blofeld feeds her to his piranhas as punishment for failure.

Hans (Ronald Rich) is the main henchman this time around. He's a massive unit, has no lines, and just shows up in the background a few times before having a big fight with Bond in Blofeld's office.

Buddies and Babes
Bond's main two contacts in Japan are Henderson (Charles Gray), a gone-native Englishman, and 'Tiger' Tanaka (Tetsuro Tenba), a rather rich Japanese spy with his own private train and access to just about everything. Bond and Tanaka become fast friends, sharing an interest in women and the finer things in life. Tiger calls him 'Bond-San'.

The main Bond girl in You Only Live Twice is Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), a wiley Japanese agent who gives Bond a traditional Japanese massage and becomes infatuated with him. She is later replaced by another pretty Japanese agen, Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama), who pretends to be Bond's wife when he goes undercover as a Japanese man. Kissy is more resistant to Bond's charms but he wears her down nonetheless (as expected).

M (Bernard Lee), Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) and the rest of MI6 set up shop inside a naval submarine for the purposes of the mission. They're all seen in naval uniforms.

Locations
The film starts out briefly in Hong Kong before relocating to Japan for most of the narrative. You Only Live Twice gives us a fairly comprehensive tour of Japan... big businesses, ninjas, sumo wrestlers, bath houses and idyllic country villages all get a look in, with only the briefest of glimpses at the Tokyo city lights and night life.

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Bond carries with him an electronic safe-cracking device and later picks up a 'baby' rocket launcher disguised as a cigarette. Q (Desmond Llewylen) meets Bond in the field after Bond requests 'Little Nelly', a miniature helicopter that comes in a small kit. It comes equipped with machine guns, heat-seeking rocket-launchers, flame-throwers, smoke-spray and air mines. Predictably, Bond gets to use each and every one of these in an aerial battle with enemy helicopters.

Bond also shows a hitherto unseen flair for disguise and identity-assumption... he poses as an entrepeneur/industrial spy-for-hire, a Japanese assassin, a SPECTRE astronaut, and (most unconvincly) as a Japanese man.

Licence to Kill
Bond is no longer as merciful as he once was in his previous films... he kills a Japanese assasin with their own knife, shoots dead at least eight men, fires a mini-rocket into a SPECTRE guard, blows up a SPECTRE shuttle by remote, kills a man with a ninja star, stabs a sparring partner who turns out to be an enemy agent, destroys four helicopters and their pilots, and throws Hans into a pool of hungry piranhas (quote: "Bon apetit").


Shag-Rate
Bond's very first scene shows him all post-coital with a Chinese agent. Whilst in Japan he then gets overly familiar with Japanese contact Aki, and they seem to become a bit of an item (though Bond doesn't treat the relationship all that seriously). Most bizarrely, Helga Brandt (SPECTRE agent Number 11) decides to have sex with him whilst midway through interogating him. Bond makes advances towards his fake wife, Kissy Suzuki, though she shrugs him off right up until the final scenes, where the two are seen getting cosy in a rubber dinghy shortly before being 'rescued'.

Quotes
BOND (before having sex with Helga Brandt): The things I do for England.

TANAKA (to Bond): For a European you are remarkably cultured.

(Upon discovering Bond's dead body in a hotel bed)
SOLDIER 1: We're too late.
SOLDIER 2: Well, at least he died on the job.
SOLDIER 1: He'd have wanted it this way.

BOND (referring to his hairy chest): Japanese proverb says "Bird never make nest in bare tree"

How Does It Rate?
The idea of a Japanese-set James Bond scripted by Roald Dahl sounds a lot better than the actual result. Dahl was apparently given a mandate to stick very closely to the formula established by previous Bond films and therefore decided not to take the assignment very seriously. Sadly, for a film that finally pits Bond directly against Blofeld, the first half is almost completely bereft of any real villains. There's a lot more emphasis on the location rather than plot or characters, so it lacks a certain dramatic thrust.

Also, certain scenes seem patently designed for spectacle and hence don't make much sense in terms of plot or motivation... one such scene is the one where Number 11 leaves Bond in a nosediving airplane and then parachutes out to escape. Destroying a whole plane seems a pretty expensive way to kill someone! Also, the idea of Sean Connery passing as someone of Japanese descent is ridiculous... his Japanese is heavily accented with Scottish and aside from brushing his hair down in an awkward manner he doesn't look even remotely asian.

Kudos to the filmmakers and Dahl for using the then-relevant space race between America and the U.S.S.R. as a point of tension for the film to exploit. We get the same nuclear cold war shenanigans that fed the plot of Thunderball, and the massive set used for Blofeld's rocket base is impressive to behold. Overall though, the film just isn't tight enough and Connery seems to be getting a little visibly tired with the role. It could've done with more Blofeld and less bluescreen effects work.

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DIRECTOR: Lewis Gilbert
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Roald Dahl with some story input by Harold Jack Bloom, based on the novel by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Sean Connery, Donald Pleasance, Tetsuro Tanba, Karin Dor, Burt Kwouk, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Charles Gray, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel You Only Live Twice, which was Ian Fleming's last James Bond novel before he died. The film is only very vaguely based on the book, sharing some character names and the setting but that's about it.
- As mentioned, the look of the Dr. Evil character from the Austin Powers films is based on Donald Pleasance's portrayal of Blofeld.
- Blofeld returns as the primary villain in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever.

AWARDS
BAFTAs - nominated Best Art Direction.