Nobody Did it Bet­ter: Remem­ber­ing Roger Moore

“Tell him to pull out imme­di­ate­ly,” M orders across the wire, an instruc­tion meant for Britain’s top secret ser­vice agent. Cut to James Bond (Roger Moore), lying on a fur rug in front of a roar­ing fire, mak­ing love to a beau­ti­ful woman (Sue Van­ner). His wrist­watch begins print­ing M’s orders, just one of the absurd gad­gets in his reper­toire. Throw­ing aside the blan­ket, Bond swift­ly dress­es in a shock-yel­low ski suit with a red bob­ble hat and makes for the door. ​“But James, I need you,” the still-naked woman pleads from the rug. ​“So does Eng­land,” Bond replies.

In a mere five-minute sequence, every­thing that came to define Roger Moore’s tenure as the world’s dead­liest and most debonair super spy is on full-frontal dis­play. The charis­mat­ic arch­ing of the eye­brow; the cease­less innu­en­do; the gar­ish cloth­ing. In 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, Moore cement­ed his rep­u­ta­tion as the most charm­ing and excit­ing Bond. Quite sim­ply, inter­na­tion­al espi­onage had nev­er looked so much fun.

With his low vocal grav­i­tas and old-school swag­ger, Moore mar­ried upper-class ele­gance and brawny machis­mo with­out fir­ing a shot. Sean Con­nery may have estab­lished James Bond as a smooth-oper­at­ing wom­an­is­er, but under him the film series always lacked a cer­tain lev­i­ty. The Spy Who Loved Me, Moore’s third out­ing as 007, saw him turn Ian Fleming’s icon­ic char­ac­ter into a fig­ure we could laugh at, as well as envi­ous­ly admire.

Moore is armed through­out the film with wry dou­ble enten­dres, always accom­pa­nied with a know­ing glance over his shoul­der. His ver­bal spar­ring with series vet­er­an Q (Desmond Llewellyn) exem­pli­fies Moore’s allur­ing screen-pres­ence, and their pair­ing may well be the most enjoy­able of the entire fran­chise to date. There is some­thing close to father-son affec­tion in the var­i­ous jousts and jabs which they exchange.

Sar­to­ri­al­ly speak­ing, no Bond actor before or since Moore has enjoyed such strik­ing cos­tume ven­tures. In The Spy Who Loved Me he dons the afore­men­tioned ski suit, Bond’s time­less Naval uni­form, and even an Ara­bi­an thawb; ​“When in Egypt, one should explore its deep­est trea­sures,” he quips while eye­ing up a Sheikh’s harem. It’s out­ra­geous and unavoid­ably sex­ist, yet Moore deliv­ers this line in a way few oth­er actors could have pulled off. Moore’s famous­ly self-aware per­for­mance always kept him from seem­ing ridicu­lous, and his charis­mat­ic edge is nev­er blunt­ed by gaudy attire. For once, Bond actu­al­ly looked com­fort­able out­side of a din­ner jacket.

Yet it’s Bar­bara Bach as the cun­ning Anya Amaso­va who arguably brings the best out of Moore here. At first, her inten­tions with Bond are less than amorous; vengeance is on her mind with Bond hav­ing killed her lover, Sergei Barsov. How­ev­er, by the film’s ​‘cli­mac­tic’ final scene, she has com­plete­ly fall­en for Bond, much like fans did for Moore himself.

In one exchange between them at a cock­tail bar, Anya bids James good­bye as he pre­pares to leave. He turns to her, a mis­chie­vous grin on his face, and replies: ​“Let’s call it au revoir. I have the odd­est feel­ing we’ll be see­ing each oth­er again some day.” Despite his pass­ing, Roger Moore will for­ev­er be remem­bered for his sev­en-film stint as Bond. It’s not good­bye, then, but au revoir.