After the disappointment that was George Lazenby, the powers that be decided they had to have Sean Connery back, so the former 007 actor was made an offer, that he could not pass up. Connery agreed to come back for one film only, got a nice amount of money out of it and a good deal for three films of his own choosing at United Artists.
With Connery back as Bond, the attention of screenwriter Richard Maibaum now went into fashioning a filmable story out of a Fleming novel that was hopelessly dated and unusable. Where Ian Fleming now put his villains up as mobsters, Maibaum adapted this to be a scheme of Blofeld's and Spectres. After a number of screenplay polishes by Tom Mankiewicz, the film turned out to be all right but upon the completion of filming, it was clear that this was not one of the greatest Bond films of all.
Nevertheless Diamonds Are Forever has several very interesting scenes. One is actually shot in Amsterdam, the only time that Bond has been in the Netherlands so far. An exciting car chase in Las Vegas did cause some problems for shooting as there were many onlookers when the stunts were shot.
Whether it was intentional that Blofeld was again played by another actor, who is to say, but Charles Gray does not really succeed in making Blofeld a diabolical fiend. And the assassins that Bond has to deal with, Wint and Kidd, seem an odd couple as an adversary for Bond as their mannerisms would almost certainly indicate that they might very well be the very first gay hitmen in film history.
Nevertheless, a fantastic John Barry score adorns the film, supporting a splendid Sean Connery doing his thing admirably, with an old pro's grace, as it was said in a review. Shirley Bassey adds a wonderful flavour for the title song and Guy Hamilton, who earlier directed GOLDFINGER, delivers an entertaining film, that seems to be in line with the more humorous tone the films were to engage in with the coming of the next Bond actor, Roger Moore.
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