A Few Words About A few words about...™ Diamonds are Forever -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971), marked Mr. Connery's return to the fold, returning to the role he had created for the feature film series.

This film, the 7th in the series, is not one of my personal favorites. It has some stupendously poor acting, or possibly camp. I'm not certain.

As a Blu-ray, it fares a bit better than Goldeneye, which is almost a quarter century newer, but loses points in the color / contrast category. Shadow detail appears lacking in many scenes, with some awkward color to boot.

As the second film in the newest release that I've checked out, it once again isn't sending the message that might be, especially for a 50th Anniversary collection.

Audio, which is offered in both monaural as well as 5.1 is fine. I have no idea if the mono is the original or derived from the newer mix.

Image - 3

Audio - 4

RAH

I have a fondness for this one after getting to spend too brief a time with the co-author Tom Mankiewicz.
If anyone is a fan of his work on the Bond films, or Superman or Hart To Hart, his posthumous autobiography is positively crammed with wonderful stories about his life in Hollywood and as the son of one of the great directors (Joseph L)
I always get a chuckle from "alimantary, dear Leiter"

I do think the writing and acting in Diamonds Are Forever were meant to be camp...um...the odd gay hit men that finish each other's clichés and of course some fairly nutty to groan inducing Bond lines like "As long as the collars match the cuffs." a rather interesting pubic hair joke from Bond...and then of course the Plenty O'Toole "must be named after your father" line. We also have the cross dressing Blofeld and the plot twist involving a marching band cassette tape which Bond hilariously ejects from a cassette deck in the wall and then slides into Tiffany Case's bikini bottom.
"Your troubles are all behind you now." quips our man Bond.
It is Connery's last Bond for a reason I think as it is a pretty goofy film. Still fun to watch Connery make his way through it though.
Anyway, it is light-years better than the next Bond film Live and Let Die...which in terms of the drop in quality was like somebody threw the whole thing off a cliff as it looks and plays like a mystery episode of The Love Boat.

This film, the 7th in the series, is not one of my personal favorites. It has some stupendously poor acting, or possibly camp. I'm not certain.

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Completely the latter. DIAMONDS is Eon's way of saying "ok folk, you've seen the others spoof us... now let us show you how it's really done" and then pulling out all of the stops that they built.
DIAMONDS also has a killer Barry score—spot on Vegas style music, and some of the best outer space music he wrote for the series.

I've loved the John Barry score since I had the soundtrack on vinyl as a kid. The remastered CD contains extra tracks and is great.

Jack Theakston said:

Completely the latter. DIAMONDS is Eon's way of saying "ok folk, you've seen the others spoof us... now let us show you how it's really done" and then pulling out all of the stops that they built.
DIAMONDS also has a killer Barry score—spot on Vegas style music, and some of the best outer space music he wrote for the series.

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I agree, John Barry sparks on all cylinders with the DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER score. There's a dynamic rhythm under the moody keyboards and horns.
The movie was exhilarating when I was a little boy and seeing Bond for the first time. But I don't think much of it now, and I don't enjoy it at all. I have zero patience for the infantilism, silliness, self-parody and camp on display. The producers should have stuck with organizational and financial matters and stayed out of the creative process. Creatively every decision they made was wrong -- except for casting Connery, of course. They had no idea what they were doing. They liked Guy Hamilton, who exerted a bad influence over them. Hamilton set the wrong tone for the series. He thought James Bond was a stupid joke. When paired with writer Tom Mankiewicz their impact on the series was fatal. Just think what director Peter Hunt and writer Richard Maibaum could have done with James Bond if they were allowed to continue their collaboration after OHMSS. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER would have been a very different kind of film.
I watched the new Blu-ray. It looks desaturated. I'll probably never play it again, but I listen to the score occasionally.

Originally Posted by Reggie W /t/324222/a-few-words-about-diamonds-are-forever-in-blu-ray#post_3984765
I do think the writing and acting in Diamonds Are Forever were meant to be camp...um...the odd gay hit men that finish each other's clichés and of course some fairly nutty to groan inducing Bond lines like "As long as the collars match the cuffs." a rather interesting pubic hair joke from Bond...and then of course the Plenty O'Toole "must be named after your father" line. We also have the cross dressing Blofeld and the plot twist involving a marching band cassette tape which Bond hilariously ejects from a cassette deck in the wall and then slides into Tiffany Case's bikini bottom.
"Your troubles are all behind you now." quips our man Bond.
It is Connery's last Bond for a reason I think as it is a pretty goofy film. Still fun to watch Connery make his way through it though.
Anyway, it is light-years better than the next Bond film Live and Let Die...which in terms of the drop in quality was like somebody threw the whole thing off a cliff as it looks and plays like a mystery episode of The Love Boat.

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Don't forget Bond's "I'm afraid you caught me with more than my hands up" line.

Totally agree about both DAF and LALD. Watching DAF tonight, it struck me how "Avengers-ish" it plays. The diamond motif in the huge stained glass window of the funeral home; the proprietor named Morton Slumber, etc. This is a world John Steed and Emma Peel would be quite at home in, although they would have done it better, IMO.

The truth is I did laugh at those lines watching the new blu-ray. The thing I kept thinking watching Diamonds Are Forever was this film must have been the main inspiration for the Austin Powers films (I admit I have not seen them all) because there are so many moments and lines they could have lifted directly from Diamonds.
Even the sloppy parts of the film are funny. For example when the comic gangsters show up in Bond's room to toss Plenty O'Toole out the window so Tiffany Case can have him all to herself. In the scene where Bond enters the bedroom to find Case in bed waiting for him as they chat Bond gets up and walks out of frame. When Connery strides back into the shot he is supposed to be naked, he is carrying his suit on a hanger to block his nudity (Powers did use the well placed item to block nudity bit), but as Ms. Case says to him as she looks at his crotch "There's more to you than I expected Mr. Bond!" (I admit I laugh at that every time) you can clearly see Connery is wearing a very tight flesh colored panty...which is an obvious slip up but makes the scene even funnier. Plus we have Connery's full 1970s body hair in play which today's Hollywood actor would have "manscaped" away before stepping in front of a lens.
I have always sort of thought that due to the popularity of The Pink Panther films and the Bond knock offs they might have thought injecting parody/comedy into the series was a way to keep it fresh.
Diamonds Are Forever with Connery doing the shtick somehow works...well, at least for me. It is obviously his weakest Bond film but I can watch it and enjoy it for what it is far more than when the series went full camp/parody with Moore in the role...which I honestly thought was dreadful.
What I think is sort of interesting about the Bond films (and I confess I am a fan mainly of the first 7 films...these are the best of the entire series for my money) from this period is that On Her Majesty's Secret Service is such a great Bond film...really as good as anything in the series...and it comes between Connery's two weakest films.
Sort of odd that they recover from the weak You Only Live Twice with a fantastic On Her Majesty's Secret Service only to get Connery back to turn the whole thing into a running gag.

Mr. Harris, how would You compare the BD in relation to the UE DVD. Colours a quite different in my opinion - as with "YOLT"...

Even the sloppy parts of the film are funny. For example when the comic gangsters show up in Bond's room to toss Plenty O'Toole out the window so Tiffany Case can have him all to herself. In the scene where Bond enters the bedroom to find Case in bed waiting for him as they chat Bond gets up and walks out of frame. When Connery strides back into the shot he is supposed to be naked, he is carrying his suit on a hanger to block his nudity (Powers did use the well placed item to block nudity bit), but as Ms. Case says to him as she looks at his crotch "There's more to you than I expected Mr. Bond!" (I admit I laugh at that every time) you can clearly see Connery is wearing a very tight flesh colored panty...which is an obvious slip up but makes the scene even funnier. Plus we have Connery's full 1970s body hair in play which today's Hollywood actor would have "manscaped" away before stepping in front of a lens.

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Although I haven't seen the BD yet, all of the video iterations of the film I've seen are too light during this scene. The following shot of Case putting her cigarette out in the ashtray on Bond's chest is WAY too light—the original prints are timed so that you don't SEE the ashtray there, so it looks like she's putting it out on his bare chest, hence him picking up the ashtray and revealing the joke.

I saw DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER many times when it was new, several times since then on home video, and I just watched the new, desaturated, over-bright Blu-ray.
My opinion of this film has evolved, and it's severe:
Cheap laughs.
I can't believe how hard the film makers try to be clever and funny, and how hard they fall on their collective face.
It might be an entertaining comedy for some, with beautiful women and some good action set-pieces, but it's utterly worthless as a Bond film.
A James Bond film was supposed to be a straight-forward espionage-drama and action-thriller with a slight tongue-in-cheek humor.
But, with DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER Guy Hamilton and his principle writer Tom Mankiewicz turned the series into self-parody, self-ridicule, slapstick and kitsch. A Bond film was never supposed to be this way, but now a whole generation has grown up thinking it is.
The three Bond films Hamilton and Mankiewicz made together -- DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, LIVE AND LET DIE, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN -- are creatively bankrupt, infantile, lazy, retarded and stupid. Hamilton wielded too much influence over the Brocollis. He was destructive to the franchise.
Sean Connery's presence and John Barry's score save the film from being a complete waste of time. Without them it's nothing.

Originally Posted by Richard--W /t/324222/a-few-words-about-diamonds-are-forever-in-blu-ray#post_3985645
Cheap laughs.

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The biggest thing about DAF that sticks in my mind is the "shocking" line. My sister groaned the first time we watched together...and I laughed at the third grade humor.

Jason_V said:

The biggest thing about DAF that sticks in my mind is the "shocking" line.  My sister groaned the first time we watched together...and I laughed at the third grade humor. 

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"Shocking" comes from Goldfinger.

Retracted. I knew better, too. I guess I need to revisit Diamonds are Forever now, right?

Diamonds are Forever was actually the first movie I visited from the Bond 50 set. I never will forget the first time I saw it uncut on videotape, it was one of my favorites when it aired on ABC, but it had been edited for television. They cut lines like "Welcome to Hell, Blofeld!" and they cut the handholding of the gay henchmen. I was shocked (and amused) when I saw that for the first time on video.

The best bit is "I didn't know there was a pool down there."

John Weller said:

The best bit is "I didn't know there was a pool down there."

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You're not quoting it in phonetically correct gangster-speak. It should be "I didn't know dere was a pool down dere."
And a long the same tract, another of my favorite lines: "I got a bruddah."

Small world!

"My name is Plenty, Plenty O'Toole".
Bond: "Named after your father no doubt "

Perhaps.