Summary
We see James Bond, a British spy, emerging from the water in a harbor in a Latin American country with a fake seagull attached to his helmet to obscure his identity. After discarding the helmet and seagull, Bond shoots a rope up to the roof of a nearby building. When a nearby guard approaches, Bond kicks him in the face and knocks him unconscious. He then runs into a power plant of some kind, sneaking through a hatch and into a lab. He spreads some kind of white goo all over several barrels of chemicals and sets a timer on an explosive. He turns off the lights and exits the lab, sneaking out and taking off a black jumpsuit to reveal a white tuxedo.
After pinning a red flower into his jacket, Bond goes to a bar where a woman is dancing to festive music. As he lights a cigarette, he looks down at his watch just as the explosives go off. People run from the bar in fear, and Bond goes to talk to a man who congratulates him, saying, "Mr. Ramirez and his friends will be out of business." Bond responds, "At least he won't be using heroin-flavored bananas to finance revolutions." As Bond watches the dancer from the bar leave, the man talking to him warns him not to go back to his hotel, saying that he's being watched, before advising him that there's a plane leaving for Miami in an hour.
"I'll be on it, but first I have some unfinished business to attend to," Bond says, fingering a key. He goes and visits the dancer in her room while she's taking a bath. As she gets out of the bath, they kiss, when suddenly, the gun he is carrying pokes her. "I have a slight inferiority complex," he says, joking about the gun. As they kiss again, a man emerges from behind the wardrobe and goes to hit Bond over the head, but the spy sees him reflected in the eyes of the woman he is kissing, and pushes her into the assailant's path instead. As she falls to the ground, Bond wrestles the weapon from the man's hands and pushes him into the corner. They struggle, and the man hits Bond in the back with a chair and punches him. Eventually Bond manages to push the man into the nearby filled bathtub. Just as the man grabs Bond's pistol from nearby, Bond throws a lamp into the bath, electrocuting the man and killing him. Bond retrieves his gun and leaves.
The theme song, "Goldfinger," plays, and the opening credits run.
Miami Beach. The camera swoops down on a man diving into a pool. We see a woman swimming past in the pool, which is visible to a man inside a nearby building. He smirks and walks past a roller rink, then up to the pool. There, he finds Bond getting a massage from a woman. "I thought I'd find you in good hands," says the man, whose name is Felix Leiter.
Bond greets Felix warmly and introduces him to the woman, whose name is Dink. Abruptly, Bond dismisses Dink and smacks her on the behind as she goes. "You must be slipping, 007, letting the opposition get that close to you," says Felix, before telling Bond that his vacation is over and he's been commissioned for a new job from London. The case is about someone named "Auric Goldfinger," a British owner of "one of the finest stud farms in the States." When Bond asks where he can find Goldfinger, Felix points to a man in a yellow shirt coming down a nearby staircase at the pool.
Felix points out Goldfinger's "pigeon," Mr. Simmons, sitting nearby. Simmons greets Goldfinger and the men prepare to gamble together; Felix tells Bond that Goldfinger is a "fabulous card player." Felix leaves, telling Bond he'll let "M." know that Bond is on the job. Bond watches as Simmons and Goldfinger play, then goes into the hotel.
Inside, Bond grabs a key from the maid and opens Goldfinger's room. Inside, he hears a woman's voice on the patio, and goes to investigate. He sees a woman looking through binoculars spying on Goldfinger's card game and dictating to Goldfinger through an earpiece what he ought to do based on what she sees of Simmons' hand. Bond goes up behind her and turns off her microphone abruptly, introducing himself as "Bond, James Bond." Goldfinger is puzzled that his earpiece isn't working.
Upstairs in Goldfinger's room, the woman introduces herself as Jill Masterson, as Bond looks through the binoculars at Simmons' hand. Jill tells Bond that Goldfinger likes to win and that he pays her to help him win and to be seen with him. "You're much too nice to be mixed up in anything like this," Bond says to Jill before turning on Goldfinger's headset again. Over the speaker, Bond tells Goldfinger that his "luck has just changed," then threatens to tell the police about Goldfinger's actions, making Goldfinger nod to show he agrees.
After telling Goldfinger to lose and turning off the microphone, Bond turns to Jill and propositions her. "I'm beginning to like you, Mr. Bond," Jill says. The scene shifts and we Bond and Jill in bed with a tableful of room service nearby. As the radio reports the national news, Bond turns it off. Felix calls and Bond makes plans with him for the next day. After hanging up, he gets a bottle of champagne from the fridge, and as he looks for it, we see a man's hand coming towards him threateningly. The man hits Bond and knocks him out, and we see his shadow on the wall nearby.
Later, Bond wakes up and goes back to the bedroom, calling for Jill. He finds her on the bed, but she is dead and her body is covered in gold paint. He calls Felix immediately and tells him to come over to his room.
In a meeting with M. back in London, Bond explains that Jill died of skin suffocation. When Bond tells M. that he knows who did it, M. reminds him that "this isn't a personal vendetta" and threatens to put another agent, 008, on the case. "I'm aware of my shortcomings, but I am willing to continue my assignment in the spirit you suggest, if I knew what it was about," Bond says.
"What do you know about gold?" says M., telling Bond to meet him back in his office at 7 in black tie. Outside, Bond engages M.'s secretary, asking her what she knows about gold. She tells him she only knows about gold wedding rings. Bond flirts with her, and she invites him over to dinner for an angel cake. When the secretary asks Bond who he's meeting that night, M. chimes in over the monitor and tells the secretary to dismiss Bond.
Bond goes to dinner that night with M. and a representative from the British Office of Finance, in charge of the "official depository for gold bullion." He then explains that the bank is concerned that Goldfinger, a jeweler who is legally entitled to trade and refine gold, is smuggling gold illegally to avoid the difference in import rates from country to country. He wants Bond to investigate how Goldfinger does it and prove that he is doing something illegal.
Analysis
What is unique about Goldfinger from the start is the fact that the subject matter and narrative is rather intense and high drama, but the tone remains lighthearted and playful. Indeed, this is a signature quality of the James Bond franchise. In Goldfinger, spy antics are not only suspenseful, but also often a little bit silly as well. For instance, the first we see of Bond is him emerging from the water with a stuffed seagull attached to his head. This is a complicated spy maneuver, but it is also comic. Then, when he removes his jumpsuit to reveal a white tuxedo, he pins a red flower to his jacket and smirks wryly, like a schoolboy who is pleased with himself. The film, despite dealing with serious situations, refuses to take itself seriously.
The film oozes swank and swagger that can only be described as indicative of the 1960s era in which it was released, and Bond represents a masculine ideal. The wry humor, the styles, the relaxed attitude towards sex, the theme song, all orient the viewer in the mid-60s, and Bond is the pinnacle of refined English gentlemen. He lives an action-packed life, and always comes out on top in a fight without so much as a wrinkle in his tux as he does so. He is sexually irresistible, but he knows not to trust any woman in his path. Life for James Bond is a stylish mix of high-intensity espionage and unending leisure.
Bond's smoothness with members of the fairer sex is emblematic of the 1960s not only in its relaxed quality, but also in its inherent sexism. In Goldfinger, women are meant to be enjoyed, but they are not meant to be trusted. This is true from the first scene, in which Bond realizes that the Latin-American woman with whom he is having an affair has betrayed him. He is saved by literally seeing the reflection of his assailant in the woman's eyes, and he pushes her into the assailant's path almost immediately. Then, at the pool, Bond introduces Felix to the woman giving him a massage before promptly and unceremoniously dismissing her with a smack on the bottom. Felix then refers to the woman as "the opposition." Loosening sexual morays in the 1960s might translate into a more relaxed approach to the subject of sexuality, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there is much respect or trust between the sexes.
It is not long until we are thrust into the plot of the film; it is a spy movie after all. Bond's vacation is cut short and he is enlisted to keep an eye on a wealthy man named Goldfinger, whom he quickly discovers uses a beautiful blonde spy to help him win games of cards. Bond wastes no time in breaking into the room and introducing himself to Goldfinger's minion, using his attractive charm every step of the way, but he still struggles to figure out what exactly he is looking out for with Goldfinger, which he only finds out back in London, when meeting with a representative from the British Office of Finance.
Bond is a smooth operator and he uses his smoothness to win favor with the women in the film; in this way, one of his chief skills as a spy is his ability to become a kind of male femme fatale. Bond manages to get answers and move through difficult scenarios with ease is aided by his sex appeal and his power over women. When he breaks into Goldfinger's room, he uses the maid's key. While it's strictly against hotel policy, Bond's charm and good looks ensures her silence, and all he has to do is tell her she's "very sweet" to get her to leave him alone. Then, inside Goldfinger's room, he seems to have an immediate erotic sway over Jill, Goldfinger's assistant. Bond's powers as a spy are not about a masculine stoicism, but about his sensual appeal, his sexiness, and the fact that he knows how to seduce people.
