OUR MAN FLINT
US, 1966, 108 minutes, Colour.
James Coburn, Lee J. Cobb, Gila Golan, Edward Mulhare.
Directed by Daniel Mann.
Our Man Flint came after several of the James Bond films. It is designed as an exaggeration and a spoof and parody of the Bond movies. However, it cheerfully borrows from the Bond movies with the almost superhuman espionage hero as well as the extravagant ladies’ man.
The film shows a world being threatened by an earthquake machine and all the secret agents being murdered. Derek Flint is available – and is ordered to go into action by the US president. There is satire on Bond and the Bond women – although the villain is a very strong-minded woman played by Gila Golan. The film shows its age, the kind of parody that was enjoyed in the 1960s when the James Bond films were fresh. Another example of this kind of film is Rod Taylor in The Liquidator.
James Coburn obviously enjoys himself as Flint. He had appeared in a number of striking films in the early 1960s including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Charade. At this time he made a number of satiric films like Waterhole Number Three and The President’s Analyst. He was to continue in films for several decades, finally winning an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1998 for his serious role in Affliction. The film was so popular that there was a sequel, In Like Flint.
1, How successful was the film as a spy-spoof in terms of interest, humour and excitement?
2. How much was tongue-in-cheek humour?
3. What kind of a hero was Derek Flint? What "modern heroic" qualities did he have? How much of a modern 'anti-hero' was he? How much in common did he have with the James Bond image? The impact of James Coburn's screen personality and style?
4. Although a spoof, how much reality do such films have? What picture of America do such films offer? superpower, super-heroes, computerised thinking, the interventions of the President (so quickly because of bugging)?
5. What picture of megalomaniac ambitions do such films show - the Hitler complex e.g. here the controlling of earth's weather, the controlling of human behaviour by programming people, even in an earthly paradise?
6. The film presupposes in its story as well as in its audience a sense of right and wrong (even when the hero likes to work independently). What is right and what is wrong in the framework of this film? Why? Do the standards of right and wrong have substantial bases?
7. Does this kind of film create too much glamour - super-strength fantasy for its audience? Are these forays into the spectacular imagination healthy?
8. Is it too serious to discuss such films with questions like those offered here?
