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On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

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Commentaries on this disc:

Commentary 1: Director Peter Hunt, and members of the cast and crew Rating:7.0/10 (3 votes) [graph]Login to vote or review
Reviewed by Tonester on April 16th, 2006:Find all reviews by Tonester
Director Peter Hunt does a marvellous job on this, the most underrated of all Bond flicks. And yes, "marvellous" is a word he'd use without compunction, being an English director of a certain era!

Recorded for the DVD release only a couple of years before his untimely death, it's an affectionate reminiscence that steers clear of luvviness to concentrate on the technicalities. And for a film made in 1969, OHMSS is still a formidable technical achievement, notably for Willy Bogner's fantastic ski sequence photography and stuntwork and Johnny Jordan's astonishing aerials.

The only problem, shared with many "classic" era Bonds is the inclusion of interjections from the dull as dishwater chap from the self-styled "Ian Fleming Foundation". These scripted factoids are totally out of keeping with the informal nature of Hunt's commentary.

Highly recommended!
Reviewed by Uniblab on October 14th, 2014:Find all reviews by Uniblab
The introductory disclaimer from the Ian Fleming Foundation's chap that the commentary "...isn't meant to provide a definitive history of the film" or something of the sort sums up why I don't like these heavily edited types of track. Most of them ends up being scene-specific trivia or digressions. For the record, on this one the editing manages to keep some sort of coherent narrative flow, but as usual I was left wondering what one or two separate tracks with director Hunt or composer John Barry could have been.