Wednesday 13 June 2018

Favourite Action Scenes #3: The Ski Chase (The Spy Who Loved Me)

The hardest part of this countdown was determining which action scene from James Bond I wanted to talk about. But when I'm asked, the first scene which comes into my head is the prologue from The Spy Who Loved Me.

Bond is having an intimate moment in a log cabin in the Austrian Alps when he is called in for another mission. However, the woman he was with is secretly in league with a group of KGB agents led by Sergei Barzov planning to lay a trap for him. As Bond skis down the hill, they give chase. Bond tries to elude them by taking a narrower route where only Sergei follows him. After the route straightens out, Bond turns around and shoots his pursuer with a gun concealed in one of his ski poles. When Sergei's team head him off, he finally escapes by parachuting off a cliff - as his leitmotif triumphantly blares. I've heard that BASE jumping was a relatively new thing in 1977, so that moment had a much stronger impact in the cinema.

While there isn't an immediate aftermath to the scene, it does add to the story as news of Sergei's death reaches his lover, fellow KGB agent Anya Amasova, who serves first as Bond's rival then as a partner when they are on the same mission. Even as they work together, there is an outlying source of tension as Anya is unaware that Bond is Sergei's killer, and she later promises to kill him when she discovers the truth.

And if you think there are certain...analogies...to this scene, why not keep them to yourself?

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