I don’t believe you, Sam Mendes, when you use your silky lawyerly circumlocutions to persuade me that Christophe Waltz is not playing Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre. Waltz himself offers a more thoroughgoing denial – “I guarantee you” – that I don’t believe for a second, either. I saw the trailer. I saw you in that navy-blue Nehru jacket, standing before a line of techies bent over their monitors, in what I can only conjecture is your retro-Blofeldian lair, with a fluffy white Persian cat near at hand, I’ll wager. Don’t lie to me: I know you’re Blofeld!
Why do I know? Well, in 2013 the Bond producers settled that epic, half-century-old, Jarndyce v Jarndyce-style lawsuit with Danjaq Productions over rights to the characters from Thunderball. Among other things, it grants them the right to revive the serial villain who appeared in three Bond novels and five of the Connery adaptations.
Secondly, the Daniel Craig reboot has given 007 himself both a complicated past and a plausible set of emotions, which has always seemed a direct throwback to the only truly emotional moment in the entire pre-Craig Bond canon, the murder of Bond’s wife Tracy (Diana Rigg) on their wedding day in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (my favourite Bond movie).
Leaving aside the complex existential question of whether or not Craig-Bond shares Lazenby-Bond’s emotions, past, memories and ancient hatreds, the return of Blofeld would tie in nicely with this newly introspective Bond, especially since it was Blofeld who murdered Mrs Bond in the first place. It makes that line from the Spectre trailer all the more tantalising: “It was me, James; the author of all your pain.”
A protean Blofeld Redux would be a boon to the next few Bond outings. He appeared in three entirely different guises in You Only Live Twice (Donald Pleasence, dueling scar, cat), OHMSS (Telly Savalas, sexy FM-DJ voice, cat) and Diamonds Are Forever (Charles Grey, Foreign Office mandarin-camp, cat), more if you take into account the Saddam Hussein-like body doubles he has in the Grey incarnation. He’s shed more human skins than Doctor Who; if memory serves, in one of the novels Blofeld not only changed his face and weight, he changed his height.
So there’d be no need for Waltz to reprise Blofeld; if the film-makers got it right they could have great character actors lining up for the role for another decade. Unless Waltz is in fact telling the truth and Blofeld is instead being played by Monica Bellucci, which would be fantastic, especially if Bond wooed her, fell in love with her, even, before the big reveal when she – permit me to dream – pulls her own face off, Live And Let Die-style. “Thy dawn, oh master of the world, thy dawn / For thee the sunlight creeps across the lawn…”
Bring back Blofeld!
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