For Your Eyes Only (film)

Before the project was postponed in favour of Moonraker, Tom Mankiewicz had written a storyline and Christopher Wood submitted a first draft in January 1978. However, their screenplay did not influence the final film.[17][18] Richard Maibaum was once again the scriptwriter for the story, assisted by Michael G. Wilson.[26] According to Wilson, the ideas from stories could have come from anyone as the outlines were worked out in committee that could include Broccoli, Maibaum, Wilson and stunt coordinators.[27] Much of the inspiration for the stories for the film came from two Ian Fleming short stories from the collection For Your Eyes Only: Risico and For Your Eyes Only.[28] Another set-piece from the novel of Live and Let Die—the keelhauling—which was unused in the film of the same name, was also inserted into the plot.[27] Other ideas from Fleming were also used in For Your Eyes Only, such as the Identigraph which comes from the novel Goldfinger, where it was originally called the "Identicast".[29] These elements from Fleming's stories were mixed with a Cold War story centred on the MacGuffin of the ATAC.[26] An initial treatment for this film was submitted by Ronald Hardy, an English novelist and screenwriter in 1979. Hardy's treatment included the involvement of a character named Julia Havelock whose parents were assassinated by a man named Gonzales.[30]

The pre-title sequence of For Your Eyes Only has been described as either "out-of place and disappointing"[26] or "roaringly enjoyable".[31] The scene was shot to introduce a potential new Bond to audiences, thus linking the new actor to elements from previous Bond films[27] (see casting, below).

The sequence begins with Bond laying flowers at the grave of his wife Tracy Bond, before a Universal Exports helicopter picks him up for an emergency. Control of the helicopter is taken over by remote control by a bald man in a grey Nehru jacket with a white cat. This character is unnamed in either the film or the credits, although he looks and sounds like Ernst Stavro Blofeld as played by Donald Pleasence or Telly Savalas.[26] Director John Glen referred to the identity of the villain obliquely: "We just let people use their imaginations and draw their own conclusions ... It's a legal thing".[4] Originally the character was going to be explicitly identified as Blofeld, but was deliberately not named due to copyright restrictions with Kevin McClory, who owned the film rights to Thunderball, which supposedly includes the character Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the organisation SPECTRE, and other material associated with the development of Thunderball.[8][32] Eon disputed McClory's ownership of the Blofeld character, but decided not to use him again: the scene was "a deliberate statement by Broccoli of his lack of need to use the character."[13]

Maibaum later said "We tried to return to the earlier films with For Your Eyes Only but we didn't have Sean to make it real. And I was very disappointed with the way the love story was handled. The whole idea was that the great lover James Bond can't get to first base with this woman because she was so obsessed with avenging her parents' death. Nothing was ever done with it. It was as if the director didn't feel there was a love story there at all."[33]

Roger Moore had originally signed a three-film contract with Eon Productions, which covered his first three appearances (Live and Let Die in 1973, The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974 and The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977). Subsequent to this, the actor negotiated contracts on a film-by-film basis starting with Moonraker in 1979.[27] Uncertainty surrounding his involvement in For Your Eyes Only, considering his age, led to other actors being considered to take over, including Lewis Collins, known in the UK for his portrayal of Bodie in The Professionals;[34] Ian Ogilvy, known for his role as Simon Templar in Return of the Saint (played by Moore in the original series);[35] Michael Billington, who previously appeared in The Spy Who Loved Me as Agent XXX's ill-fated lover Sergei Barzov, (Billington's screen test for For Your Eyes Only was one of the five occasions he auditioned for the role of Bond)[36] and Michael Jayston, who had appeared as the eponymous spy in the British TV series of Quiller[27] (Jayston eventually played Bond in a BBC Radio production of You Only Live Twice in 1985).[27] Timothy Dalton was strongly considered but Dalton declined, as he disliked the direction the series was taking at the time.[35][37][38][39][40] Also Dalton did not think the producers were seriously looking for a new 007,[37] and explained his idea of Bond was different.[41] When Moore discovered that Broccoli was screen-testing actors without his knowledge, he announced in the Daily Mail that he would not return to play Bond.[42] However, the producer convinced him to return just two weeks later.[43]

Bernard Lee died of cancer on 16 January 1981, after filming began on For Your Eyes Only, but before he could film his scenes as M, the head of MI6, as he had done in the previous eleven films of the series. Out of respect, no new actor was hired to assume the role as Broccoli refused to have the character recast and, instead, the script was re-written so that the character is said to be on leave, letting Chief of Staff Bill Tanner take over the role as acting head of MI6 and briefing Bond alongside the Minister of Defence.[44] This is only the second time M has been omitted from a Bond production, the first being the 1954 TV adaptation of Casino Royale. Ironically, the original "For Your Eyes Only" short story dealt with Bond being given a personal mission by M, one of the few times in the Fleming canon that 007 did his superior a direct favour.

Chaim Topol was cast following a suggestion by Broccoli's wife Dana, while Julian Glover joined the cast as the producers felt he was stylish—Glover was even considered to play Bond at some point, but Michael G. Wilson stated that "when we first thought of him he was too young, and by the time of For Your Eyes Only he was too old".[20]

Italian actress Ornella Muti was considered for the movie, but she turned down the lead role (later given to Carole Bouquet) because her costume designer, Wayne Finkelman, was not hired by the production.[45] Carole Bouquet was a suggestion of United Artists publicist Jerry Juroe, and after Glen and Broccoli saw her in That Obscure Object of Desire, they went to Rome to invite Bouquet for the role of Melina.[46]

A Citroën 2CV 007, the one used in the film

Production of For Your Eyes Only began on 2 September 1980 in the North Sea, with three days shooting exterior scenes with the St Georges.[20][47] Although the previous film had been shot almost entirely outside of the United Kingdom, the new Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's tax cuts allowed the shoot to return to Britain.[8] The interiors were shot later in Pinewood Studios, as well as the ship's explosion, which was done with a miniature in Pinewood's tank on the 007 Stage.[48] On 15 September principal photography started on Corfu at the Villa Sylva at Kanoni, above Corfu Town,[24] which acted as the location of the Spanish villa. Many of the local houses were painted white for scenographic reasons.[49] Glen opted to use the local slopes and olive trees for the chase scene between Melina's Citroën 2CV and Gonzales's men driving Peugeot 504s.[46] The scene was shot across twelve days, with stunt driver Rémy Julienne—who would remain in the series up until GoldenEye—driving the Citroën.[50] Four 2CVs were used, with modifications for the stunts—all had more powerful flat-four engines, and one received a special revolving plate on its roof so it could get turned upside down.[51][52][53]

In October filming moved to other Greek locations, including Meteora and the Achilleion.[54] In November, the main unit moved to England, which included interior work in Pinewood, while the second unit shot underwater scenes in the Bahamas. On 1 January 1981, production moved to Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy, where filming wrapped in February.[20] Since it was not snowing in Cortina d'Ampezzo by the time of filming, the producers had to pay for trucks to bring snow from nearby mountains, which was then dumped in the city's streets.[55]

Many of the underwater scenes, especially involving close-ups of Bond and Melina, were faked on a dry soundstage. A combination of lighting effects, slow-motion photography, wind and bubbles added in post-production, gave the illusion of the actors being underwater.[24] Actress Carole Bouquet reportedly had a pre-existing health condition that prevented her from performing underwater stunt work.[20] Aquatic scenes were done by a team led by Al Giddings, who had previously worked on The Deep, and filmed in either Pinewood's tank on the 007 Stage or an underwater set built in the Bahamas. Production designer Peter Lamont and his team developed two working props for the submarine Neptune, as well as a mock-up with a fake bottom.[56]

Roger Moore was reluctant to film the scene of Bond kicking a car, with Locque inside, over the edge of a cliff, saying that it "was Bond-like, but not Roger Moore Bond-like."[20] Michael G. Wilson later said that Moore had to be persuaded to be more ruthless than he felt comfortable.[4] Wilson also added that he and Richard Maibaum, along with John Glen, toyed with other ideas surrounding that scene, but ultimately everyone, even Moore, agreed to do the scene as originally written.[20]

The Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Meteora served as a location

For the Meteora shoots, a Greek bishop was paid to allow filming in the monasteries, but the uninformed Eastern Orthodox monks were mostly critical of production rolling in their installations. After a trial in the Greek Supreme Court, it was decided that the monks' only property were the interiors—the exteriors and surrounding landscapes were from the local government. In protest, the monks remained shut inside the monasteries during the shooting,[20][49] and tried to sabotage production as much as possible, hanging their washing out of their windows[9] and covering the principal monastery with plastic bunting and flags to spoil the shots, and placing oil drums to prevent the film crew from landing helicopters. The production team solved the problem with back lighting, matte paintings and building both a similar scenographic monastery on a nearby unoccupied rock, and a monastery set in Pinewood.[47]

Roger Moore said he had a great fear of heights, and to do the climbing in Greece, he resorted to moderate drinking to calm his nerves.[20] Later in that same sequence, Rick Sylvester, a stuntman who had previously performed the pre-credits ski jump in The Spy Who Loved Me, undertook the stunt of Bond falling off the side of the cliff.[57] The stunt was dangerous, since the sudden rope jerk at the bottom could be fatal. Special effects supervisor Derek Meddings developed a system that would dampen the stop, but Sylvester recalled that his nerves nearly got the better of him: "From where we were [shooting], you could see the local cemetery; and the box [to stop my fall] looked like a casket. You didn't need to be an English major to connect the dots." The stunt went off without a problem.[20]

Bond cameraman and professional skier Willy Bogner Jr. was promoted to director of a second unit involving ski footage.[55] Bogner designed the ski chase on the bobsleigh track of Cortina d'Ampezzo hoping to surpass his work in both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Spy Who Loved Me.[20] To allow better filming, Bogner developed both a system where he was attached to a bobsleigh, allowing to film the vehicle or behind it,[57] and a set of skis that allowed him to ski forwards and backwards to get the best shots.[24] In February 1981, on the final day of filming the bobsleigh chase, one of the stuntmen driving a sleigh, 23-year-old Paolo Rigon, was killed when he became trapped under the bob. The incident, which took place a week after the FIBT World Championships 1981 where USA-1 bobsled driver James Morgan was killed in a crash during the four-man sled competition, resulted in the shortening of the track for future FIBT events.[9]

The pre-credits sequence used the churchyard of the Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire as a cemetery, while the helicopter scenes were filmed at the abandoned Beckton Gas Works in London.[54] The gas works were also the location for some of Stanley Kubrick's film, Full Metal Jacket (1987).[58] Director John Glen gained the idea for the remote-controlled helicopter after seeing a child playing with an RC car.[20] Since flying a helicopter through a warehouse was thought to be too dangerous, the scene was shot using forced perspective. A smaller mock-up was built by Derek Meddings' team closer to the camera that the stunt pilot Marc Wolff flew behind and this made it seem as if the helicopter was entering the warehouse. The footage inside the building was shot on location, though with a life-sized helicopter model which stood over a rail. Stuntman Martin Grace was a stand-in as Bond when the agent is dangling outside the flying helicopter, while Roger Moore himself was used in the scenes inside the model.[46][59] The helicopter G-BAKS, an Agusta-Bell 206B JetRanger II, crashed in fog on 14 November 1997, killing the pilot at Cocking, West Sussex; it was built on 28 December 1972 for Galliford Construction.[60]

The score of For Your Eyes Only was written by Bill Conti, who retained some John Barry-influenced brass elements in the score, but also added elements of dance and funk music.[61] While one reviewer observed that "Bill Conti's score is a constant source of annoyance",[62] another claimed that "In the end, For Your Eyes Only stands as one of the best James Bond film scores of the 1980s."[61]

The title song, written by Conti and Michael Leeson, was sung by Sheena Easton, who was the first title song artist to appear on screen in a Bond film,[29] as designer Maurice Binder liked Easton's appearance and decided to add her to the opening credits.[63] The producers of the film hired Debbie Harry to sing Conti and Leeson's song, but she quit when the producers refused to allow her band Blondie to write and perform an original song for the film.[64] Blondie's rejected song, titled "For Your Eyes Only," can be found on their 1982 album, The Hunter.[65]

For Your Eyes Only had its US television premiere during The ABC Sunday Night Movie on November 13, 1983.[78] It delivered a 16.3 household rating, a 26% audience share, and nearly 25 million viewers in Nielsen Media Research results, and finished as the 37th ranked program of the week. It was the first James Bond movie premiere on ABC to finish in third place in its time period instead of in second or first place since the two night premiere of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in February 1976; however, it also ran against stiff competition including the network premiere of Airplane! on NBC (18.9 rating, 29 share) and the first part of the highly rated CBS miniseries Chiefs (25.1 rating, 36 share).[79] A For Your Eyes Only repeat on January 27 1985 had stronger results, with a 19.4 rating and 28 share.[80]

Derek Malcolm in The Guardian disliked the film, saying it was "too long ... and pretty boring between the stunts", although he admitted that the stunts were of a high quality.[81] According to Malcolm, Bond "inhabits a fantasy-land of more or less bloodless violence, groinless sex and naivety masked as superior sophistication", with Moore playing him as if in a "nicely lubricated daze".[81] Although Malcolm tipped the film for international box office success, he observed that he "can't quite see why the series has lasted so long and so strong in people's affections."[81] Writing in The Observer, Philip French commented that "not for the first time the pre-credits sequence is the best thing about the film."[82] French was dismissive of Moore's Bond, saying that Bond was "impersonated by Moore" and referred to Moore's advancing years.[82]

David Robinson, writing in The Times bemoaned the fact that the "dramatic bits between the set pieces don't count for much." Like other critics at the time his praise was more directed towards the stunt crews; they were "better than ever in this one."[83] The film critic for the magazine Time Out was brief and pithy: "no plot and poor dialogue, and Moore really is old enough to be the uncle of those girls."[84]

For the US press, Gary Arnold in The Washington Post thought the film was "undeniably easy on the eyes", and further added "maybe too easy to prevent the mind from wandering and the lids from drooping."[85] Arnold was also critical of the large set pieces, calling them "more ponderous than sensational" and that there was "no equivalent of the classic action highlights that can be recalled readily from From Russia with Love or You Only Live Twice or The Spy Who Loved Me or Moonraker. This is a Bond waiting for something inspired to push it over the top."[85] The New York Times critic Vincent Canby said that "For Your Eyes Only is not the best of the series by a long shot" although he did say that the film is "slick entertainment" with a tone that is "consistently comic even when the material is not."[86]

Jack Kroll in Newsweek dismissed the film, saying it was "an anthology of action episodes held together by the thinnest of plot lines", although he did concede that these set pieces are "terrific in their exhilaratingly absurd energy."[87] For Time magazine, Richard Corliss concentrated on the stunts, saying the team "have devised some splendid optional features for For Your Eyes Only" whilst also commenting on Roger Moore, saying that his "mannequin good looks and waxed-fruit insouciance" show him to be "the best-oiled cog in this perpetual motion machine."[88] Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail included it on his list of the year's worst films,[89] calling it "repellant"[90] and "ambitiously bad".[89]

French filmmaker Robert Bresson admired the film: "It filled me with wonder because of its cinematographic writing ... if I could have seen it twice in a row and again the next day, I would have done."[91][92] Elsewhere Bresson said he also loved the film's ski chase.[93]

Opinion on For Your Eyes Only has improved with the passing of time, though some reviews are still mixed to positive: as of March 2023, the film holds a 69% 'fresh' rating from Rotten Tomatoes,[94] being ranked eleventh among the 24 Bond films.[95] Ian Nathan of Empire gives the film only two of a possible five stars, observing that the film "still ranks as one of the most forgettable Bonds on record."[96] In 2006, IGN chose For Your Eyes Only as the sixth-best Bond film, claiming it is "a good old-fashioned espionage tale",[97] a placement shared by Norman Wilner of MSN, who considered it "the one Moore film that seems to reach back to Connery's heyday",[98] and Entertainment Weekly chose it as the tenth best in 2008, saying it was a "return to low-tech, low-key Bond [with] ... some of the best stunts since the early days".[99] In October 2008 Time Out re-issued a review of For Your Eyes Only and observed that the film is "admirable in intent" but that it "feels a little spare", largely because the plot has been "divested of the bells and whistles that hallmark the franchise".[62]

James Berardinelli wrote that the film was "a solid adventure, although it could have been better",[100] while Danny Peary thought "There are exciting moments, but most of it is standard Bond fare," going on to describe For Your Eyes Only as "an attempt to mix spectacle with [the] tough, believable storylines of early Bond films ... [it] is enjoyable while you're watching it. Afterward, it's one of the most forgettable of the Bond series."[101] Raymond Benson, the author of nine Bond novels, thought For Your Eyes Only was Roger Moore's best Bond film.[102]

Although Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly ranks Carole Bouquet playing Melina as the "worst babe" of the seven Roger Moore James Bond films,[103] his colleague, Joshua Rich disagreed, putting her tenth in the overall 10 Best Bond Girls listing from the 21 films released up to that point.[104] Entertainment Weekly also ranked Lynn-Holly Johnson as Bibi Dahl as ninth on their list of the 10 worst Bond girls from the 21 films that had been released.[105] After 20 films had been released, IGN ranked Bouquet as fifth in their 'top 10 Bond Babes' list,[106] and The Times thought she was sixth on their list of the Top 10 most fashionable Bond girls after 21 films had been released.[107]

In 2004 the American Film Institute nominated the song "For Your Eyes Only" from the film for AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs.[113]