Pretend, if you unfortunately decide to watch On Her Majesty’s Service (1969), that the events take place in it occur in an alternate James Bond dimension.  In this post-Avengers: Endgame (2019) world in which we live, I feel this scenario makes sense.  I do not know how else to explain what goes on in On Her Majesty’s Service.  It is not just the odd choices made during filming.  The actor that put James Bond on the cinematic map was Sean Connery, but he quit after You Only Live Twice (1967), despite the end credits stating he would return in On Her Majesty’s Service.  Thus, we get George Lazenby as the famous military intelligence, section six (MI6) agent.  After this one, it is evident that audiences initially saw it because of the brand name, but the confusion over the person filling the role meant it did not produce box office returns like its predecessors.  There were other changes, all of it leading to a mess of a film that had me looking on incredulously for most of its runtime.

If you skipped my introduction to this review of On Her Majesty’s Service and decided to watch the movie, for some reason, you might be asking yourself, “Where is James Bond?”  That is what the head of MI6, James’ boss, M (Bernard Lee), is wondering, along with Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), M’s secretary, and the gadget wiz Q (Desmond Llewelyn), at the outset.  James is somewhere in Italy, I guess, though it could be Corsica.  It is never said definitively, and he is chasing a woman.  This is Countess Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), but why the pursuit happening is not explained.  He ends up fighting off a number of thugs while she makes her getaway, but eventually catches up with her at a casino.  He covers her gambling debts and she thanks him by sleeping with him, though there are a few other tussles before this takes place.  It turns out that the muscle with which James is contending works for Marc-Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), and they are meant to bring James in for a meeting with the rich Italian businessman.  Marc-Ange also has connections to the criminal underworld, and finally we get a hint of a purpose for what you are seeing as James immediately pressures the criminal to give him information on Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), the person who leads the organization known as the Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion (SPECTRE).  This is a group that James has been hunting for many years, but I guess we are just supposed to remember all this instead of providing any clues or reminders.  In exchange for information as to Ernst’s whereabouts, Marc-Ange offers James £1 million to marry his daughter, the same Tracy with which James had recently slept.  By the way, dad claims to know about this dalliance. . . .  James initially says no, claiming the need to remain free of such commitments owing to his job as a spy.  Yet, when he returns to London and meets with M, the MI6 chief announces that James is to be taken off the mission.  The agent’s first reaction is to resign his post, which pressures M into giving James a two week leave of absence, during which he begins a relationship with Tracy.  Naturally, James uses this opportunity to do some more digging.  The information he had been provided leads him to Sir Hilary Bray (George Baker), who is looking into the case for Enrst to claim the title of Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp.  This gives James the opportunity to impersonate Sir Hilary and infiltrate Ernst new base of operations atop a peek in the Swiss Alps.  The cover for this facility is that it is laboratory dedicated to researching cures for allergies, which . . . huh?  Furthermore, the only people there receiving treatment are beautiful women.  As James learns, the method for getting rid of these physiological aversions is a form of hypnosis.  Also, while he continues the charade of being Sir Hilary for some time, Ernst clearly knows that the impostor is actually James Bond.  I mean, they had met in the previous film, but I digress.  Of course, instead of killing James, Ernst gives away his entire master plan before locking way the MI6 operative.  The plot, by the way, has something to do with using biological agents to kill off certain species of living things on which humans rely to survive unless the governments of the world recognize his desire to become a legitimate member of the aristocracy, apparently.  I was too flabbergasted to pay complete attention.  Inevitably, James escapes, and while on the run randomly encounters Tracy.  This is a literal description of what happens.  She helps him to further his get away, but eventually Ernst and his men catch up with the two of them.  To stop their escape, Ernst triggers an avalanche.  James is presumed dead, but Tracy is found alive and brought back to Ernst’s modern chalet.  Once more, James goes back to England, but is told that the government intends to give Ernst what he wants.  This is supposed to neutralize the gaggle of actress-looking women who are supposed to spread Ernst’s biological agents around the world.  Instead, James enlists the help of his would-be father-in-law to round up a cadre of armed men and assault Ernst’s hill top fortress.  After some exploding and shooting, James chases Ernst down the mountain in bobsleds, which ends with Ernst being caught in a tree.  This paves the way for James to marry Tracy, and apparently leave the eponymous position.  Yet, we end with Ernst finding the newlyweds on the side of the road and opening fire on them.  The final shot is of James holding a dead Tracy in his arms.

I suppose On Her Majesty’s Service deserves credit from a Catholic perspective for not making James into as much of a womanizer as we have previously seen.  Then again, there is the sequence with all the females when he first arrives in the Ernst lair.  This also takes place after he has begun a serious relationship with Tracy.  I am reminded once more of something I have discussed before about these movies, which others remind me of when I mention my feelings on the matter.  I am told that this is just how women were treated in the 1960s.  American cultural history is something I studied extensively for my Ph.D., so people are not telling me anything new.  I also recoil at such statements because they smack of generalization, and this is something I am trained to avoid when talking about the past.  Such sweeping statements are essentially stereotypes, that may (or often not) have some kernel of truth to them, but do little to help one truly understand the past, which is the proper job of a historian.  Furthermore, some of the language used in the film has a basis in the Bible.  Marc-Ange gives the advice to Tracy upon her marriage to James that she should obey her husbands in all things.  This is an adaptation of Ephesians 5:22, which says “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.”  Like believing that all men treated women like James in the 1960s, broader American culture takes snippets of Scripture like this to say that Christianity is degrading to the fairer sex.  It is not true, of course, and films like this one do not help with false narratives like these, only perpetuating them.  In other words, saying that women are subordinate to men based on this Scripture is not a full understanding of what is intended.

I could not believe much of what I saw in On Her Majesty’s Service, stereotypes aside.  The idea with a title like this one is to show that people like James are performing selfless acts.  I do not feel this is the case, though this is probably due to my Christian ideology.  I am beginning to wonder why these films were ever popular, especially in light of this one.