Don't get me wrong, Goldfinger is a great movie, but I've never thought of it as being the best James Bond. That honor goes to From Russia With Love, Sean Connery’s masterful previous outing.
I have to admit, though, rewatching the first half of Goldfinger, I was beginning to wonder if it was, after all, the greatest of them all.
There's no doubt in my mind that Shirley Bassey's stirring rendition of "Goldfinger" is the best song of all the movies. Connery is also still on top form, although by his own admission, he enjoyed making the first two Bonds more. By the time he reached the 1964 film, he believed the movies had a set formula.
What made the first two films, Dr No. and From Russia with Love, so interesting for both Connery and us, is that the makers had not settled on the formula. Take gadgets, something everyone associates with the secret agent, but in Dr No., 007 barely has one, and in From Russia With Love his main gadget is nothing more than a fancy trick suitcase.
By Goldfinger, Bond and Q had settled into their routine, with Q talking 007 through his gadget-filled Aston Martin DB5. Bond: "Ejector seat, you must be joking!" Q: "I never joke about my work, 007." The first half of Goldfinger is electric, moving swiftly from one iconic moment to the next. There's 007 finding his lover and villain Auric Goldfinger’s card-cheating helper Jill Masterson covered in gold paint — murdered by skin suffocation!
Then there's the legendary moment Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) straps Bond to a table with a laser beam slowly going closer and closer towards him. "Do you expect me to talk?" asks 007, to which Goldfinger gives the epic reply: “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die.”
There’s also the wonderful golf match, where Goldfinger sinks what he believes to be the winning putt only for a smug Bond to point out he's been playing the wrong ball and, under the strict rules of golf, he wins the match and £10,000. Plus, henchman Oddjob removing a head from a statue with his trusty bowler hat skills.
What stops Goldfinger from being the best Bond movie?
The problem is that the second half of the movie loses the pace of the first. Although there are some great scenes between Honor Blackman’s ridiculously named Pussy Galore — the makers had thought about changing her name to Kitty Galore to please the censors, but eventually stuck with Pussy — the movie gets a little bogged down while Bond is held captive by Goldfinger at his American estate.
It then takes quite a long time for Goldfinger to explain his plan to place a small nuclear device inside Fort Knox.
Ultimately, I believe one of the reasons From Russia with Love is a more satisfying and gritty Bond movie is that Red Grant carries much more of a threat than Goldfinger.
Red Grant vs Auric Goldfinger
Grant (Robert Shaw) is a genuine match for Bond. Outwitting him as he helps SPECTRE masterfully get 007 to deliver the Lektor machine to them on a plate. Connery and Shaw also share one of cinema’s greatest fight scenes as they slug it out on the Orient Express.
There’s a brutal coldness about Grant. Goldfinger, for the first half of the movie, possesses that coldness and genius. Bond is informed that the British government suspects Goldfinger of smuggling vast quantities of gold, but that he's too clever to get caught.
But then his plan to launch an assault on Fort Knox turns him into more of a comedy villain. It’s so ridiculous and unlikely to work that you lose a bit of respect for his evil genius. We do get a great fight scene at the end of Goldfinger, but it’s between Oddjob and Bond, not Goldfinger. Poor Goldfinger suffers the indignity of being sucked to oblivion through a plane window.
Goldfinger is still incredible
We’re comparing gems here. Both From Russia with Love and Goldfinger are great Bond movies and ones that none of the later movies have ever quite matched. I think with a better final act, Goldfinger could have been the best of the lot, but it lacks the menace of From Russia With Love. I’d far rather face Auric Goldfinger than Red Grant.
