I’ve seen this movie probably 7 or 8 times, but now that I’m reading the book, there’s something that doesn’t make sense me about the movie.
Namely, why does Goldfinger invite all the mob bosses to take part in “Operation Grand Slam”?. He shows them the cool Fort Knox model, but then proceeds to gas them all. They all seemed pretty much game for the big heist (except for the one guy who ended up in the car crusher). Am I forgetting something?
In the book, he needs all the mob bosses to provide an “army” for the assualt on the depository.
He does it because he built this cool diorama of Fort Knox–think of all those late nights with the Testors and those finicky little bars–and he couldn’t stand to not show it off to someone. Once having shown it to them, he had to have them killed, of course. Except for Mr. Solo (get it?), who had to be separated from his money. (Notice that the car he drives out in is not the same car that is compacted.)
Actually, the entire plot of Goldfinger doesn’t make a lick of sense. Does Mr. Goldfinger think that the NATO powers won’t pursue him after his transparent attack on Fort Knox? I doubt his bullion would be of much use to him in Communist China.
And if you notice, throughout the entire film, Bond repeatedly falls flat on his face in his attempts to stop Goldfinger or hinder his plan; in fact, he gets two women killed (the Masterson sisters), nearly gets himself castrated and cautorized, repeatedly fails to warn the CIA of Goldfinger’s intentions, and generally just sits around mucking things up. The only thing he does successfully in the entire film is convince the lesbian Pussy Galore (implied in the film, explicit in the book) to renounce her Sapphoric ways and betray her employer. (Well, I suppose he successfully cheats at golf, and by shear luck manages to electrocute Oddjob, but heck, he doesn’t even disarm the bomb…and all he has to do is flip a switch. Oh, James.)
One can understand why M is always threatening to put 008 on the job; “He follows orders, not instincts.” Presumably, he isn’t banging away at anything that moves and dowsing his incompetence in vodka martinis, either.
BTW, I love Bond movies in spite of, or perhaps because, all of their manifest flaws. But one must be brutally honest, sometimes, to those one loves.
I have long suspected the real Pussy Galore had been replaced by a double as a result of an ultra top secret deep cover assignment. So deep cover, M , James Bond and Felix Leiter were kept unaware. So deep cover that even John Steed was unaware of the real reason Cathy Gale was at Fort Knox.
They realized that the plot of Goldfinger doesn’t make a lot of sense – that’s why Bond says to Pussy “He’s quite mad, you know.” He sn’t just trying to get her on his side – he’s correct.
Goldfinger was the perfect Bond villain. He was a showoff megalomaniac with a penchanty for grand schemes. He built the whole Fort Knox display so he could show it off to people he knew he was going to gas , just because he knew he was going tro gas them, and it didn’t matter. His factories have a ludicrous amount of floor space just so he can put in the laser in an interesting display. (Cutting gold with a laser!* – snerk–Gold reflects a lot of laser bands and isn’t going to be really good at absorbing red (which the one shown seems to be) or IR (the closest laser in real life to the abilities shown). You’d be better off cutting it with a band saw.) He loves toys – he’s the perfect cinematic villain.
Goldfinger’s scheme in the film would kinda make sense, if he didn’t get caught and couldn’t be traced (he iced his fellow mobsters, recall). But would Goldfinger, the gold lover, be satisfied just with his gold increasing in value? (A point – I simply can’t buy that Goldfinger forced his way into the Fort Knox vault and then didn’t even touch the gold. C’mon – you know that he would be taking samples because of his love of the stuff. And he wouldn’t be able to resist showing it off in the future – “You now, this is one of only six remaining pre-nuclear Fort Knox bars.”)
In the book, Goldfinger was a Soviet paymaster who really was going to boost gold from Fort Knox into a Soviet submarine, with the aid of mobsters straight out of Dick Tracy. The mind boggles. The movie, in this one case, certainly was an improvement on the book.
The thing that always annoyed me in Goldfinger is that Bond has this incredibly tricked out car – smoke screen, oil slick, machine guns – and he STILL can’t get away from Goldfinger and his henchmen. They might as well just have given him a Lada.
The execution (no pun intended) of Goldfinger’s plan wouldn’t work either. By the plan, Pussy Galore’s Pointy-Boobed Flying Circus is supposed to gas (i.e. kill) the entire Army division stationed at the Fort. As it’s shown, the planes fly over the compound, spraying as they go, and the people just drop. The problem therein is the extreme difficulty of aerosolizing a chemical weapon that won’t be dispersed by the wind and will still be (instantly) lethal by the time it reaches the ground. Inside Goldfinger’s rec room is one thing, because it’s an enclosed space, but outside? No way, not going to happen.
Then, of course, we’re supposed to believe Galore had a change of heart because Bond forced himself on her?
There’s also the point that more government bullion is stored in Manhattan than in Fort Knox. The whole story, book and movie, had more holes in it than the Albert Hall.
How many people already knew that Robert Vaughn’s character in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was named for the Mr. Solo (Napoleon to be precise) in Goldfinger?
Any idea where Ilya Kuryakin (sp?) got his name and who played the character?
IIRC, the name was supposed to be a Russian equivalent of John Smith. UNCLE was shot during the Cold War and having a Russian character was supposed to represent peace and harmony and all that stuff. Same with Chekov on Star Trek.
Slight Goldfinger related hi-jack. My middle son (age 7) and I have been watching the James Bond festival (he loves Bond because, in his words, “when he’s around things either explode or people do kung fu”) and I send him out of the room when things get a bit gruesome or romantic (although the films they are showing are so heavily edited as to make little sense at all in places) - and he loved Goldfinger. Just went nuts over it. He’s given now to walking around the house proclaiming “So, you expect me to talk” “no Mister Bond, I expect you to dieeeeeee.” He even tries the accents.
He also refers to Jaws as “The Man With The Golden Gums”. Ha!
My girlfriend, whose family owns a hotel in Jamaica and supplied craft services for Dr. No, says Gert (Goldfinger) Frobe was completely dubbed for that movie.
She also has a nephew named “Kananga”, which makes him quite the novelty in Norway.
Gert Frobe’s performance makes this movie. You know the cliche scene where the villain is describing his evil plan to the hero. Usually it’s ridiculous, but Goldfinger just looks so incredibly pleased with himself that he can’t help telling someone. That’s why he tells all the mobsters about his plan (but only part of it, remember?); he wants to brag to them that he’s going to do something that they never had the ambition or the guts for. Then with Bond later, he leads him on as he’s figuring it out. (Bond cites the statistics about how hard it would be to remove the gold, Goldfinger smirks and says “who said anything about removing it?”) When Bond finally puts all the pieces together and says “my apologies, Goldfinger, it’s an inspired plan.” I think that means almost as much to Goldfinger as it would to actually pull it off.
Gert Frobe is also good as Baron Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (also from an Ian Fleming story). From what I’ve read, he was successful as a comic actor in Germany for years before he was discovered outside his native country. At the film museum in Berlin, I saw footage of him from when he was skinny.
