Goldfinger

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Film ♠ Novel ♣ Soundtrack ♥ Song ♦ Comic ♠ Auric Goldfinger, Villain ♣ Video Game

Main Title Theme

Goldfinger movie poster
Goldfinger
James Bond	Sean Connery
Directed By	Guy Hamilton
Written By	Ian Fleming
Screenplay	Richard Maibaum, Paul Dehn
Editing by	Peter R. Hunt
Music By	John Barry
Budget	$3 million
Gross	$124,900,000
Distributed By	United Artists
Released	1964
Running Time	110 min.
Preceded By	From Russia with Love
Followed By	Thunderball
Song	"Goldfinger"
Composer	John Barry Leslie Bricusse Anthony Newley
Performer	Shirley Bassey

Goldfinger is a 1964 British spy film. It is the third film in the James Bond series, and the third to star Sean Connery as the MI6 agent. The main cast was rounded out by Honor Blackman and Gert Fröbe. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and was the first of four Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton.

The film is generally regarded as the first official Bond blockbuster as well as being the template for all future Bond films; it is usually credited with triggering what is known as the "James Bond craze".^[1] The film made cinematic history when it recaptured its production costs in record-setting time, despite a budget equal to that of the two preceding films combined. Goldfinger was also the first Bond film to use a pop star to sing the theme song during the titles, which would follow for every Bond film since except On Her Majesty's Secret Service.^[1]

1 Plot summary
2 Cast & characters
3 Crew
4 Soundtrack
5 Trivia
6 External links

Plot summaryEdit

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

After a pre-titles "mini-adventure" in which Bond destroys the base of a drug lord and defeats a thug in a bathroom brawl, the film proper begins in Miami with Bond foiling the plan of Goldfinger to cheat at gin, when he chats up the girl, Jill Masterson, who is watching the card game through a telescope. Bond and the girl have sex and afterwards, as Bond goes into the kitchen to get some fresh champagne, he is knocked unconscious by Goldfinger's henchman, Oddjob. When Bond comes to, he discovers that Jill has been covered with gold paint and she is dead. Later in London, Bond is told to investigate Goldfinger to discover his means of shipping gold internationally as Goldfinger is under suspicion of illegally smuggling his gold by Colonel Smithers who is in charge of the Bank of England. Bond goes to a golf course where he plays a round of golf with Goldfinger luring him with the prospect of getting a German gold bar from WW2 era that Smithers supplied him with. He foils Goldfinger's cheating (although by switching the ball, he was cheating himself), and Goldfinger has to pay Bond. Oddjob at this point shows his ability to throw his hat which cuts the head off a stone statue, then he crushes a golf ball in the palm of his hand.

Bond installs a homing device on Goldfinger's car, and follows him to Switzerland. While there he meets the sister of the girl who was killed at the start of the film, who tries to shoot Goldfinger with a sniper rifle although she is 'a lousy shot'. Bond is chased around Goldfinger's factory by cars full of Asian men, and Bond using gadgets in his car to lose them, including the famous scene of the passenger side ejector seat, although he is finally brought to a stop by Oddjob's car with its bright yellow beams, and Bond crashes into a brick wall. The girl tries to escape, and Oddjob kills her with the hat he throws at her.

Bond bluffs his way out of being killed by the laser by pretending to know what 'Operation Grandslam' is that he overheard. He is saved from being lasered, but is shot in the neck with a stun gun, and wakes up on Goldfinger's plane, where Pussy Galore introduces herself. Bond activates a homing device in the heel of his shoe. They are flying to Kentucky, where Bond is taken to Goldfinger's ranch where he races horses. While there, Bond sees the plan of Goldfinger to attack Fort Knox, tries to drop a note off to the CIA by putting it in the pocket of one of the mob members who was going to help Goldfinger, although he ended up being shot by Oddjob and crushed when his car was crushed into a cube. Bond managed to convince Pussy Galore to change the nerve gas canisters in the planes about to attack Fort Knox with dummies, so that it has no effect on the soldiers there. In addition, the army are warned about the attack by Pussy, although this is not revealed until after Goldfinger has broken into the building, where they were all playing dead. But Goldfinger escapes because he is wearing a US uniform disguise under his coat.

Bond is chained to the small atomic device, and is able to free himself when Oddjob throws a guard down several stories next to Bond, and Bond retrieves the key. Bond and Oddjob then battle it out, Oddjob throws his hat at Bond which misses but get stuck in some metal bars. Bond then electrocutes him with a live wire that had been previously severed. Bond prepares to defuse the bomb, and just before he is about to pull some wires, the bomb defuser has arrived, and turns the right switch, disarming the bomb with the clock reading '007' seconds remaining.

Bond then flies off to meet the President, but he finds that Goldfinger has hijacked the plane and is planning to fly to Cuba. After a struggle, Goldfinger fires his gun, breaking the window, and he is sucked out of the plane. Bond quips that he is flying with his golden harp. The plane goes down, but Bond and the girl escape on parachutes.

Cast & charactersEdit

CrewEdit

Directed by: Guy Hamilton
Written by: Ian Fleming
Screenplay by: Richard Maibaum, Paul Dehn
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman
Music composed by: John Barry
Film editing by: Peter R. Hunt
Cinematography by: Ted Moore
Production design by Ken Adam

SoundtrackEdit

Main article:Goldfinger (soundtrack)

Vehicles & gadgetsEdit

Main articles: List of James Bond vehicles and List of James Bond gadgets

Aston Martin DB5 - The most famous of James Bond's company cars. It was his first car in the films, and is equipped with all of Q Branch's usual refinements (carried from adventure to adventure), including bulletproof front and rear wind screens, oil slick dispenser, smoke screen burner, front wing machine guns, rotating licence plate, and, most famously, the passenger ejector seat, which would again be used in Die Another Day, but in an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish. While being the most recognized Bond car, it's actually only appeared in four Bond films: Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, and Tomorrow Never Dies. The car would also be driven by George Lazenby in the 1983 made-for-TV film The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair and by Roger Moore in the 1981 spoof The Cannonball Run. This makes Timothy Dalton the only official Bond actor who has yet to be shown driving the DB5.
The Tilly Masterson character drives the then all-new Ford Mustang in a duel with the gadget-laden Aston.
Homer - Bond is issued two homing devices by Q Branch. The first, is the larger, and used by Bond to track the villain's Rolls Royce automobile to his base. The second, is the smaller, and allows MI6 to track Bond's whereabouts; it is hidden in the secret compartment in the heel of one shoe. He later slipped it on to the person of Mr. Solo who was taking his leave from Goldfinger's Fort Knox scheme, hoping that MI6 could then follow and capture Solo and question him about where he got the device. Unfortunately, the tracer was destroyed when Solo was murdered and his body was crushed in a car crusher along with the car he was in.
The Jumbo Jet-like airplane is an Aviation Traders Carvair, an aircraft which was built for transporting automobiles and well-off passengers. This is confusing since only 21 Carvairs have been built and therefore is rather unknown, and the Boeing 747 first flew in 1969, five years after the movie came out.

LocationsEdit

Film locationsEdit

Shooting locationsEdit

Pilatus Aircraft Factory, Stans and Furka pass (compare the pictures on [1])

Miami, Florida
Louisville, Kentucky
Stoke Poges Golf Club, Buckinghamshire, England
Fort Knox, Kentucky - exteriors only

Asphyxiation argumentEdit

Although James Bond films are not known for their technical accuracy, but rather for outlandishly plausible action, one incident in this film bears mentioning.

In one scene, the villain's girlfriend, Jill Masterson, is murdered by "skin suffocation." She was painted with gold paint and died, because her skin was unable to breathe. According to urban legend, the concept was based on the death of Swiss fashion model who painted herself and asphyxiated.

Though this is a plausible explanation for this unusual method of killing, it has been argued whether or not it is possible. Humans, being mammals, achieve respiration via their mouths and nostrils to fill their lungs with air. The only animals that breathe through their skin are insects and worms. In fact, were it true that people breathe, in auxiliary fashion, through their skin, it would, therefore, be impossible for people to engage in extended bathing, mud baths, scuba diving and, indeed, body painting - activities requiring extended covering of the skin. If one did try murder via gilding, the victim would die of heat stroke, but only after a long period and not in the manner shown in the movie. The gold paint would clog the pores and prevent perspiration, rendering the body unable to properly regulate its temperature. Dying in this fashion, however, would take several days and is a very inefficient manner of killing.

The Discovery Channel series, MythBusters has twice attempted to prove or disprove whether skin suffocation due to paint was possible. In both experiments one of the hosts of the series was covered head-to-toe in gold paint. The first experiment was called off when the subject began experiencing breathing and blood pressure problems. In a follow-up experiment, a different subject was covered but this time showed no ill effects.[2]

TriviaEdit

Sean Connery in *Goldfinger*
Added by Gram123

The villain's name was borrowed from the architect Ernö Goldfinger, and his character bears some resemblance. Ernö Goldfinger consulted his lawyers when the book was published, prompting Fleming to suggest renaming the character "Goldprick", but eventually settled out of court in return for his costs, six copies of the book, and an agreement that the characters' first name Auric would always be used.
The film's opening teaser sequence is based on the novel's opening where Bond is in the Miami Airport lounge thinking about the recent killing of a drug smuggler.
The character "Pussy Galore" was named after Ian Fleming's pet octopus.
Concerned about censors, the film's producers thought about changing Pussy Galore's name to "Kitty Galore". They kept the original name when British newspapers began to refer to Honor Blackman as "Pussy" in the lead up to production.
Ian Fleming also contributed to the original draft screenplay for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. television series, in which one of the heroes was named "Napoleon Solo". That name originally came from the novel: Napoleon Solo is one of the crime bosses Goldfinger invites to participate in his scheme to steal the gold from Fort Knox, however, the character appearing in the film is a gangster referred to only as "Mr. Solo" (coincidentally a working title for The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), he exits the story due to "a pressing engagement."
Ford supplied the Lincoln Continental which is unceremoniously crushed in a junkyard compactor (causing much anger among American audiences) in return for the all-new Ford Mustang being showcased in the Swiss mountain driving sequence.
In the end sequence, when the atomic bomb is defused, the original ending countdown shown was "003" seconds remaining to detonation. When the film was released in the U.S., the producers changed it to 007 seconds, but the dialogue line remained: "Three more ticks and Mr. Goldfinger would have hit the jackpot".
For an unknown reason Jill and Tilly's surname was changed from Masterton to Masterson for the film.
The gold-painted girl in the opening credits is actually Margaret Nolan who also plays Bond's Miami masseuse, Dink.
Sean Connery never traveled to the United States to film this movie. Every scene where Bond is in America was shot at Pinewood Studios in London.
For security reasons, the filmmakers were not allowed to film inside Fort Knox. All sets for the interior of Fort Knox were designed and built from scratch.
The 3D map Goldfinger used during his mission briefing is now on display at Fort Knox.
Bond is not a fan of those other British 1960s icons The Beatles. He tells Jill Masterson that they should not be listened to without earmuffs.
Script co-writer Paul Dehn would later be hired to write most of the entries in the Planet of the Apes film franchise, in part due to his work on Goldfinger.
Scenes from the film are shown during the opening credits sequence, although footage from the helicopter chase in From Russia with Love is also featured.
The film was temporarily banned in Israel due to Gert Fröbe's connections with the Nazi Party. The ban, however, was lifted many years later when a Jewish family publicly thanked Fröbe for protecting them from persecution during World War II.
Gert Fröbe was chosen for the villain's role because producers Saltzman and Broccoli had happened to see his performance in a German thriller named 'Es geschah am hellichten Tag' ('It happened in broad daylight', 1958), which is based on the story Das Versprechen (literally The Pledge) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. In that movie, Fröbe performed the role of a psychopathic serial killer named Schrott, who lets out his frustrations about his overly dominating wife on helpless children.
The iconic slow aerial shot that follows the opening credits is that of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, which still stands. The big band piece accompanying that is John Barry's "Into Miami."

External linksEdit

The James Bond films
Connery Dr. No \| From Russia with Love \| Goldfinger \| Thunderball \| You Only Live Twice \| ... \| Diamonds Are Forever
Lazenby On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Moore Live and Let Die \| The Man with the Golden Gun \| The Spy Who Loved Me \| Moonraker \| For Your Eyes Only \| Octopussy \| A View to a Kill
Dalton The Living Daylights \| Licence to Kill
Brosnan GoldenEye \| Tomorrow Never Dies \| The World Is Not Enough \| Die Another Day
Craig Casino Royale \| Quantum of Solace \| Skyfall
Unofficial films Casino Royale (1954 TV) \| Casino Royale (1967 spoof) \| Never Say Never Again