Each weekday until November 9, enjoy a post about a standout vocal theme or instrumental piece from the official Bond movies.
"Capsule in Space" introduces the best thing to come out of the mediocre You Only Live Twice other than Mie Hama in a white Ursula Andress-style bikini: "Space March," John Barry's majestic and entrancing motif for the film's spacecraft sequences.
Barry wrote "Capsule in Space" for the pre-title "spacecraft eater" sequence, which Pauline Kael found to be a more effective and intense moment about the dangers of space than any of the astronaut sequences in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that bored Kael. But unlike Douglas Trumbull's terrific effects work in 2001, the effects in that You Only Live Twice space sequence haven't aged well. As the writer of the "My Year of Bonds" recap series said about You Only Live Twice's pre-title space sequence, "the whole sequence looks about as terrible as you might expect. Did it look better at the time? Probably. Do I care? Not really. Oh, and a supposed American says, 'Hello, Hoo-ston?' Come on, guys. Try a little harder."
But Barry's music for the sequence is far from terrible. Nothing says "Hoo-ston, we have a problem" like the brass getting all super-intense at the end of "Capsule in Space."
On Monday: A Bond song written from the point of view of one of Bond's most insidious villains. Which villain? If you guessed chlamydia, close, but no cigar.
"Space March," which perfectly captures both the mystique and danger of space and is introduced in the You Only Live Twice score cue "Capsule in Space," is one of the best themes written by the late John Barry for the 007 films. Too bad "Space March" originated from a 007 installment that's full of nonsensical plot holes and is often as listless as the constantly bored look on the face of Sean Connery as the least convincing white-guy-disguised-as-a-Japanese-guy ever. Connery became increasingly tired of the Bond franchise and the media circus surrounding it, and his misery is evident on his face during You Only Live Twice, which was loosely adapted from Ian Fleming's novel of the same name by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl, but you wouldn't have been able to tell Dahl worked on it because of the formulaic and lazily (re?-)written end result.
Later 007 installments like The Living Daylights and the 2006 Casino Royale make You Only Live Twice look as exciting as a bingo game. These 007 films got less interesting the further they drifted from their spy thriller roots and became more about spectacle (although that volcano lair, invaded by a ninja army in the film's most badass shot, is vintage Bond set design at its most imaginative).
But as usual, Barry's gorgeous score is a saving grace, particularly during "Space March" and the love theme "Mountains and Sunsets" (Barry captured Japanese sounds--or as most white soundtrack album reviewers prefer to say because their descriptions of us Asian people or Asian things are frozen in 1962, "Oriental sounds"--more skillfully than most non-Japanese film and TV composers). The score helps keep You Only Live Twice from dying on-screen.
