15 replies to this topic

[WC]

Sometimes the comment is made that the fight scenes in OHMMS are very realistic. However, whenever i've watched it, they always look speeded up and don't seem to have the brutality of the fight scenes involving Sean Connery (with Robert Shaw for example).

I'm wondering what's the big deal with OHMSS's fighting. It almost looks speeded up to compensate for the fact that it might not look that interesting at normal speed, or that perhaps George Lazenby might not perform the scenes very well, so that all you can see is a fist here and a head there, but nothing very clearly.

[Tanger]

That seemed to be the style back in the 60s. Fights would be sped up, made up of shots from different angles and even had small snippets removed (see TB pre-title) to make them appear faster and more dramatic.

I don't think it works as well in OHMSS as it seems 'too' fast and from too many different angles that it almost gives you a headahce trying to focus on it.

[TGO]

Originally posted by Welshcat
Sometimes the comment is made that the fight scenes in OHMMS are very realistic. However, whenever i've watched it, they always look speeded up and don't seem to have the brutality of the fight scenes involving Sean Connery (with Robert Shaw for example).  

I'm wondering what's the big deal with OHMSS's fighting. It almost looks speeded up to compensate for the fact that it might not look that interesting at normal speed, or that perhaps George Lazenby might not perform the scenes very well, so that all you can see is a fist here and a head there, but nothing very clearly.

I saw OHMSS last night, so I believe I can tell you. The editor, John Glen, wanted the action to be very fast, and plus the fact that almost every Bond before then was speeded up for effect. For instance, when Grant strangles "Bond" with his watch in From Russia With Love. Personally, some of those fights were brutal...like in the pre-titles sequence and the hotel room.

[Hardyboy]

I think the fights in OHMSS are well-choreographed and superbly edited. They hit you (so to speak) with a real jolt, and in that way they seem very realistic.

[Turn]

The fights in OHMSS are different than most of the others in the series. I don't think this is a bad thing, just different, edited in a weird way. Lazenby seems to be the most physical Bond actor, which many accounts say won him the role in the first place. Compare these fights to almost any other fight scene that followed and, with the possible exception of the fight with Trevelyan at the end of GoldenEye, none has really compared in terms of brutality, physicality and speed. It's yet another thing to think about when thinking about what Lazenby could have done had he continued as Bond.

[Mourning Becomes Electra]

I'll chime in with a nay on the overly sped up action scenes. It doesn't make them seem more brutal, or edgier, more tense or even more physical, it makes them look hokey and cartoonish as if nothing is truly at stake. I expect to see Batman like captions hovering over the action. *WHAM* *SOCK* *OUCH*. I know it was done earlier, slightly in the FRWL scene and the TB "widow" fight but while it worked in the former it didn't in the later b/c in TB it seemed slightly too sped up. It drains the scene of excitement for me, and the OHMSS scenes take it even farther and I just don't care for it.

As for George being more physical, I think it's obvious they put an emphasis on the physical for him b/c he was so lacking and green as an actor. That's also shown in how little dialogue he has compared to other characters in the film (or other Bonds in the series). Interestingly for all the emphasis on the physical, while he could throw a punch well overall he's not as physically interesting or compelling a Bond as Connery or Brosnan to me, or even Dalton. He doesn't have the same aura of sleek coiled strength, he seems to gullump more like a friendly shaggy dog than move like a panther or a wolf or to be more general a predator.

Anyway give me Grant/Bond or Trevelyn/Bond any day of the week, or even Bond/Franks, Bond/Music Room Goons, Bond/Necros.

[General Koskov]

I thought the Bond vs Bouvoir fight was a little bit too speedy, but it was good enough to compensate. The fight in Draco's anteroom was strange to me, and some shots of the beach fight looked wrong, but the speeding up helped. If I'm not mistaken, it's still used--or at least the lightning fast cuts are used--today.

[Simon]

I thought the fight scenes were very exciting, if not a little "stylish" in the editing department. Were they in fact speeded up or just edited to within an inch of its life?

Certainly for me, OHMSS and Tb were the bench marks for 60s fight scenes - and I agree with Turn when he says they are just different and not necessarily a bad thing.

The only Moore fight that looked urgent, but obviously filmed differently was the Octopussy fight in the bedroom.

But GE's fight in the dish room (the satellite as opposed to the White House china room) was very well executed. Utterly brutal and very exciting.

As far as What if's, I would have loved to have seen Peter Hunt and Lazenby work another couple of times. I think the potential was better and earlier realised than the run up to perfection we are being promised with DAD.

[WC]

I agree with MBE that the fight scenes in OHMSS look cartoonish. I didn't feel that in FRWL the speed was overly noticeable - you could still see them wrestling with each other. In OHMSS you just saw a hand and then a fist and then a face etc, with not enough to give it a proper context. The fight in Goldeneye was fast paced, even though it wasn't speeded up, yet it managed to show the actors in their entirety without this almost MTV style editing. The fact that Lazenby suddenly came on board at the same time when they decided to try this experiment, whether or not it was coincidence or a conscious decision, gave the impression that this style was attempting to compensate for him and his possible inability to make the scenes look dramatic enough.

[Turn]

I just decided to look at the OHMSS fight scenes again on DVD and found all of them to be some of the best choreographed and realistic in the series. There were maybe a few times things were speeded up a bit, but not the majority.

I think watching these letterboxed made a difference as the full-frame version distorts the action and makes it even more frantic looking. I saw everything pretty clearly. The thing I found most distracting was, as someone mentioned above, the fight in the hallway of Draco's office. If anything, the weird sound effects were the most distracting.

I read somewhere that one person considered the bellroom fight after Bond escapes Piz Gloria to be one of the best and most dramatic. I'm pretty sure one of the guys Bond beats up is the guy who gets his hand caught in the bear trap thing at the beginning of DAF. Compared to the lack of Bond fisticuff action that followed in the wake of OHMSS, I think it really laid them on thick and I would like to see Bond be this physical again.

[Jim]

I thought the idea was that the fights were cut that way to give some notion of what it's like to be in a fight; fists going everywhere, no-one's quite sure what's up etc.

That's the way it strikes me.

Ho bloody ho.

[marktmurphy]

The most realistic fight I've seen was in Bridget Jones when Hugh Grant and Colin Firth get down to it. They're both rubbish as most people would be.

[Robinson]

Nah, the fight scenes are great, it's just that all the participants are swinging for the seats(baseball analogy). Someone was dead on, saying the some of the action was borderline Adam West's "Batman" or Shatner's Classic Star Trek!

That being said, Peter Hunt did the deed with all the fisticuffs in OHMSS. You also need to see a killer fight scene he directed with Roger Moore in "Gold.

Why Hunt didn't do another Bond is beyond me.

BTW, they need to bring back the "head butt" in Bond films. I don't think we've seen a good one since GE and a great one since Dalton got one on Oscar winner Benicio del Toro in LTK.

[White Persian]

Any director/editor who can make Roger Moore look good in a fight scene is the goods as far as I'm concerned.
Whether or not Lazenby had returned as Bond, I'd love to have seen Peter Hunt continue in the series, particularly in the Moore era.

[Bryce (003)]

Working as an editor and having been involved with film making, I can tell you, just getting one shot of two people throwing punches (and seemingly connecting) is tough. I like the scenes in OHMSS, although - re: fight in Tracy's room - c'mon 007, five hits and the guy doesn't go down? That never happened to the other fella either.

[Bryce (003)]

Something else has occured to me with this. The Director tells/shows the actors what to do, but ultimately, the Dir. of Photography sets up the shots and instructs the camera operator. Once you're in "post" you've got to work with what you have. There were rarely re-shoots back then.