Olympic Fire
When I mentioned to my wife that I was working on a little video essay about Ian Fleming, her immediate response was, “That old misogynist? What for?”
“Have you ever read any of the books?” I asked.
Of course. She had read her father’s set of books when she lived at home, but that was many decades ago. Since then, how many times had she seen the movies made from the books? How many times had I seen them? There was a rumor that ABC ran the movie Thunderball every Sweeps period during the 70’s and 80’s, because it guaranteed them a ratings win for the night.
Frankly, I might have agreed with my wife about Fleming’s misogyny, a label that stuck to the author back in his own day, but I had just read Dr. No with its supernatural jungle-waif who soon makes Bond realize that he’s completely out of his depth. And I was just then making my way through Thunderball, whose most captivating and formidable character is another young woman, an Italian starlet who calls herself Domino Vitali.
Stumped for a good story idea after Goldfinger, Fleming dusted off an abandoned screenplay which he and a few writing partners had tinkered on. Latitude 78 West was soon transformed into Thunderball, a novel named for the nuclear fireball that quickly resolves into a mushroom cloud. The title also fit with the author's plan to add a mythological veneer to the story, sounding more than a bit like “thunderbolt,” the weapon wielded by the king of the gods. This was going to be a tale about unholy technology falling into the hands of the man who would be Jove.
Welles, Mature & Niven - the male cast Fleming may have seen in his mind’s eye
Thunderball introduced the world to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the half-Greek head of SPECTRE, who rules the organization, not as CEO, but as its almighty creator-god, a being completely unmoved by sexual desire and deemed infallible by his subordinates. There are no objections when he metes out 3,000 volts of peremptory justice at a meeting of the high council. Like the mythical council on Olympus, the one Blofeld calls to order appears to have twelve members, or did, earlier in the day.
The number is suddenly and dramatically reduced to eleven because a kidnapped virgin has been violated while in SPECTRE’s care. Since terms of the agreement involved releasing the girl unharmed, a portion of her ransom has been returned, along with a note of apology. Blofeld may be strict, but he’s fair. A deal’s a deal, and No. 12 is toast.
Fleming misses no opportunity to encrust his tale with tokens of Western Civilization’s mythic past. While most stages of the scheme to steal atomic weapons are given Roman letters, key parts, as well as the name of the operation itself, are denoted in Greek. The ransom demanded by Plan Omega is to be dropped at Area Zeta, on the slopes of Mt. Etna, home of the legendary forge of Vulcan. From there it will be be transported by sea aboard the Mercurial, named for the mischievous messenger of the gods.
Blofeld’s heir and second-in-command, Emilio Largo, is no mere athlete, but an Olympic swordsman, expert swimmer and champion water-skier, with wavy, black, oiled hair and a Roman nose. Fleming describes his face as “centurion,” with a profile that seems to belong on an antique Roman coin. Largo is also given thick, down-curled lips, and ears that taper to a point when viewed from the front. He’s an adversary who, Bond fears, could tear him to pieces with his oversized, powerful hands.
If the tableau of Grant and his masseuse in the first chapter of From Russia With Love was inspired by William Blake, then Thunderball’s athletic villain was surely designed by Michelangelo. When describing Largo’s face, Fleming seems to turn to the Renaissance artist’s sketches of a satyr, although the “big-boned frame,” slender waist and oversized, murderous hands, call to mind his best-known marble sculpture, the one of a powerful young shepherd reaching for his sling as he contemplates the Giant of Gath.
The final showdown in Thunderball finds Bond’s team outnumbered in close-quarter combat waged with spears around an undersea transport referred to as “the Chariot.” Bond has assembled a team of twelve for battle, and when he spies the enemy, stops counting at twelve. Outmatched and overpowered, he will escape death only through the intervention of a vengeful Electra.
Although the climactic underwater battle is waged near the end of the book, the dramatic zenith may occur some eighty pages earlier, after Bond has beaten Largo at cards and can enjoy a long, intimate, rather one-sided conversation with Largo’s mistress. It’s really a series of her monologs, provoked by Bond, who gives her the freedom to pour out everything she’s willing to share. The girl is a talker, but we sense that this may be a rare opportunity for her to be listened to.
It is also Fleming’s chance to plunge beyond heroic myth and wade at least into the shallow end of Greek tragedy. Brother-sister relationships form the core of classic dramas from Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides, with their moving scenes of anagnorisis or critical discovery, when long-separated siblings are accidentally brought together and become instinctively aware of their familial bond.
In Thunderball, the moment of dramatic insight is handed off to Bond, when, between puffs from a Player’s cigarette, a wistful reminiscence from Domino stuns him with the realization that "Domino Vitali" is a stage-name. She is actually Dominetta Petacchi, sister of the rogue NATO pilot who has dropped two atom bombs into SPECTRE’s lap. Every long-shot Bond had dared to suspect is verified in a flash.
Bond held his cigarette steady. He took a long draw at it and let the smoke out with a quiet hiss.
Is your family name Petacchi then?
Besides the wrathful daughters of Agamemnon, Fleming may have aimed to suggest the defiant Antigone, by having Domino reveal her own identity as she recounts her brother’s wish to be the richest Petacchi in the local graveyard. We already know that, like Antigone’s brother Polynices, Giuseppe has been denied a proper burial, being preoccupied at that moment with enriching the sea-life south of Bimini.
Fleming has given Miss Petacchi an apt nickname, because a whole line of dominoes are about to topple, triggered by an innocent remark from a girl who desperately wants to believe in a Hero, and will be forced to play the role herself.
When the crisis has passed and survivors are recuperating, Felix Leiter professes, “I’ll never call a girl ‘frail’ again - not an Italian girl anyway.”
OHMSS From Russia With Love Dr. No Goldfinger The Spy Who Loved Me You Only Live Twice
(A Bond Blog)