Goldfinger
60th Anniversary
1964–2024

Goldfinger was recognised at the 37th Academy Awards held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Monday April 5, 1965, when Sound Editor Norman Wanstall won the Oscar for Best Sound Effects. Goldfinger Special Effects designer John Stears would win the Oscar the following year for Thunderball, but it would be another 46 years until the James Bond series was similarly honoured. In 1965 Robert Brownjohn would win the D&AD Gold Award for his main titles for Goldfinger (1964). Design and Art Direction (D&AD), formerly known as British Design and Art Direction, is a British educational organisation, founded in 1962 by a group of London-based designers and art directors including David Bailey, Terence Donovan, Alan Fletcher, and Colin Forbes, to promote excellence in design and advertising. Designed at a cost of £5,000 Robert Brownjohn and his team of Dart Films collaborators – assistant Trevor Bond and lighting cameraman David Watkin – appropriately won the Gold Award (Black Pencil) for the Goldfinger titles. The coveted D&AD Black Pencil is the ultimate creative accolade, reserved for ground-breaking work, with only a handful awarded each year, if any.

In order to capitalise on the success of Thunderball on its release across the UK in January 1966, Goldfinger was successfully revived in London for an exclusive engagement at the 600-seat ODEON Haymarket on Thursday February 3, 1966, where it played for six weeks. Both films were then re-issued on a double-bill in July 1968 as part of a ‘new idea in entertainment’ initiated by United Artists to take advantage of the summer school holidays in the UK. Participating cinemas screened the children's film Thunderbird 6 in afternoon matinee performances, and then played the James Bond double-bill for adults in the evening. The combination of screenings of Thunderbird 6 and Goldfinger/Thunderball on the same day was a very short-lived experiment, lasting only six weeks during the summer of 1968, but the standalone Bond double-bill was revived again later in the year and proved equally popular with audiences. United Artists then chose Goldfinger as one of the three Bond films re-released with Clint Eastwood Westerns (in this instance with For A Few Dollars More) in the UK in 1971 once Sean Connery had agreed to return to the role he made so famous. Goldfinger was the first James Bond film to be shown on US television in September 1972 (although heavily edited by ABC); and its 1976 UK premiere on the ITV network on November 3, 1976 topped that week’s ratings. Goldfinger was then selected as the first James Bond film to be made available to rent on videotape (alongside From Russia With Love) in the UK in June 1982. American viewers were treated to laserdisc editions; the first three James Bond films from Criterion/Voyager in 1991, but these were subsequently withdrawn after EON Productions and MGM took exception to some of the comments made on the separate commentary track by several of the filmmakers (including director Terence Young and editor Peter Hunt), and threatened legal action unless the audio track was edited. MGM later issued the series on laserdisc in the USA a year later without any additional features apart from a trailer, but then gave Goldfinger (and Thunderball) the Deluxe Collector's Edition treatment in 1995 – offering a high quality transfer of the film and packed with additional features and new commentaries. The MGM disc also contained two new ground-breaking documentaries directed by John Cork, containing background into the making of Goldfinger and interviews with the cast and crew.

Interviewed for ‘The Goldfinger Phenomenon’ and also included on the disc (and subsequently on DVD and Blu-ray editions of Goldfinger), 007 MAGAZINE Editor & Publisher Graham Rye concludes the feature by saying: “Around about the time ‘Goldfinger’ was released in 1964, we suddenly started to see a lot of spoofs and parodies of Bond and spies and stuff hit the screen. So Bond was responsible for starting off everybody else jumping on the ‘Bondwagon’. Whilst all these other films are entertaining in their way, none of them match the class, style and sophistication of a Bond film... Everybody tried to copy it – nobody's equalled it. Not then. Not now.” 30 years later, Graham Rye's comments still hold true. Goldfinger was later shown at 136 cinemas across the UK on Tuesday July 31, 2007 as part of a season of films celebrating ‘The Summer of British Film’. The special one-night only screening was extremely popular and grossed £42,000, which ranked Goldfinger as the 12th most successful film at the UK box office that week, a remarkable feat given that Tuesday is usually the day when cinemas relied on reduced price tickets. A year later Goldfinger was also shown as part of a series of outdoor screenings at London's ‘Somerset House Summer Screen event’ in association with Film4, and director Guy Hamilton and golden girl Shirley Eaton were on hand for a question and answer session on stage after the screening. A rare 1964 celluloid release print shown was shown at the sell-out event and still had the original last few frames proclaiming, “James Bond Will Return in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’.” One can only wonder what kind of film OHMSS would have been if made directly after Goldfinger, and starring Sean Connery in the role that at the time fit him like a glove. In the eyes of the world in 1964 Sean Connery was James Bond, and if one film can be singled out as being representative of the whole series it is Goldfinger – so different from its Cold War predecessor, but still distilling the essence of Ian Fleming's original conception and going on to improve on the novel in terms of structure and style. The screenwriters took one of Ian Fleming’s most popular novels and enhanced it, with the filmmakers introducing the gadgetry and gimmicks for which the franchise is now most famous. Sean Connery's almost playful portrayal of James Bond is supported by a witty script, clever action sequences, shimmering cinematography, and an iconic score from John Barry. With a seasoned crew working at the top of their game – everything eventually fell into place for the third 007 adventure, which remains one of those rare films that still holds it charm after all this time. From the moment James Bond removes his wetsuit to reveal a perfectly pressed white tuxedo and inserts a red carnation into the lapel, we know we are in for tongue-in-cheek adventure, and a story which, to paraphrase Ian Fleming, “Goes wildly beyond the probable, but not the possible”. Goldfinger proved that the Bond filmmakers had the Midas touch and remains 24-carat entertainment – capturing the imagination of filmgoers and fans with each new generation.

60 years on Goldfinger is still regarded as a high point in the series, and the film by which all others are usually judged by the media, frequently topping polls as the best of the franchise as the definitive James Bond film.

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