The Likes of James Bond: “For Your Eyes Only”

“For Your Eyes Only” was a short story by Ian Fleming, one of five in a collection titled From a sight to a murder (1960), which was also the name of one of the stories, along with “Quantum of Silence”, “Risico”, and “The Hildebrand Rarity”. Except for the last, the stories were intended for a never-made television series, but film producer Cubby Broccoli had bought the rights to most of Fleming’s Bond work and turned both “For Your Eyes Only” and “From a View to a Kill” in feature films.

The story begins in Jamaica and involves the murder of a British couple named the Havelocks for their refusal to sell their estate to a former Gestapo officer named von Hammerstein, now head of counterintelligence for Cuba’s secret service. The murders are committed by Cuban hitmen on the orders of Major Gonzales, working for von Hammerstein. The murder of the Havelocks, who were good friends with Bond’s superior M, led him to ask 007 to act independently of MI6 to track down the killers.

Bond travels to Canada and Vermont to find von Hammerstein at his estate on Echo Lake. Also in the area is Havelock’s daughter, an expert with a bow and arrow, out to avenge her parents’ murder. She succeeds in killing von Hammerstein, followed by a shootout between Bond and Gonzales and the two Cuban henchmen, whom Bond kills. He returns with the girl to Canada.

Since no movie was made based on “Risico” or “The Hildebrand Rarity”, I obviously won’t be making my usual comparisons between them and non-existent movies. I’ll mention in passing that in “Risico” Bond is in Rome, meets his contact at the Hotel Excelsior and dines at a restaurant called Columba (fictional) on melon and prosciutto and verdi tagliatelle with Genoese sauce. Bond also travels to Venice, where he drinks at Harry’s Bar and Caffé Florian in Piazza San Marco. In “The Hildebrand Rarity”, the title of which refers to a very rare fish caught off the coast of the Seychelles, he feasts on caviar, rosé champagne and fish.

There is no gluttony in the story “For Your Eyes Only”, although Bond remarks at one point, “The best things in America are chipmunks and oyster stew.”

The film Just for your eyes (1981), starring Roger Moore, bears little resemblance to the short story and none to its locations. Only the fact that the heroine, the daughter of the Havelocks, Melina (played by French actress Carole Bouquet), is good at archery is retained. It was the twelfth Bond film in the series, filmed in Greece, Italy and the Bahamas.

A British spy ship, the Saint Georges, sinks in the Ionian Sea, and a marine archaeologist, Sir Timothy Havelock, is asked by MI6 to find it underwater, but he and his wife are murdered by a Cuban hitman named Hector Gonzales. Havelock’s daughter witnesses the murder and swears revenge.

Bond is sent to retrieve a transmitter for underwater ballistic missile launches and to find out who hired Gonzales, whom Melina kills with her bow and arrow. Bond discovers that Gonzales’ enabler is a billionaire named Emile Leopold Locque in the Italian ski resort of Cortina, where 007 meets wealthy Greek businessman and intelligence informant Aris Kristatos, who informs Bond that Locque is employed by the mobster Greek Milos Columbo, known as “the dove”. .” After skiing down a mountain with a team of hitmen, Bond flies to Corfu after Columbo.

He meets Kristatos for dinner at the casino as well as Columbo’s mistress, Countess Lisl von Schlaf, whom Bond seduces. The next day they are ambushed, Lisl is killed and Bond captured by Columbo, who informs him that Locque has in fact been hired by Kristatos, working for the KGB, to recover the transmitter. Bond and Columbo raid the Albanian opium-processing warehouses of Kristatos, where Bond finds naval mines like the one that sank the Saint Georgesthen destroys the base and goes after Locque and kills him.

Bond encounters Melina, and they retrieve the transmitter from the sunken ship, but Kristatos captures them and takes the device. Bond and Melina escape, and with Columbo’s men he raids a mountain monastery, St. Cyril’s, and recovers the transmitter; Columbo kills Kristatos with a knife. Bond and Melina later spend the night aboard her father’s yacht.

In Cortina d’Ampezzo Bond is staying at Miramonti Majestic Grand Hotel (Suite 108), while Melina is in the Cristallo. Bond and Kristatos dine at Achillon Palace Casino, built in the 19th century, where he orders “Gambas Preveza, Savara salad and Bourdetto”. Preveza is a city in northwestern Greece; I couldn’t find anything called “Savara“, but it may be Bond’s mistake in thinking Savara means salad; Bourdetto is a seafood stew from Corfu made with scorpion fish cooked with onions and red pepper. Kristatos says, “Oh, great choice, I’ll have the same. May I suggest a Robola white wine from Caponia, my home town? Bond replies (supposedly a line added by Roger Moore), “Well, if you’ll forgive me, I find that a bit too fragrant for my palate. I prefer the Theotaki Aspero.”

Robola (in Italian Ribolla Giala) is a wine from Kefalonia that is deliberately left to oxidize, which 007 means by “fragrant”. His preference is for a white wine from the Teotoky vineyard, also in Corfu.

The only other food references in the film are to characters eating pistachios.