How Can You Steer a Boat if a Fight is Going On?

 From Thunderball: Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), in black, slugs it out with James Bond (Sean Connery) in orange. 

I saw Thunderball for the first time when it came out in 1965 and watched it several additional times, for as long as the cinema hosted it. The late Sean Connery made quite a career for himself and played many roles after James Bond. None of them moved me like Thunderball. Other actors took up the role of Bond—after Connery moved on to other projects—and continued the success of that franchise; but none of the other actors carried it off like Connery—the commanding voice, the malevolent twinkle in his eye, and exotic facial features.   

In Thunderball, the master-criminal Emilio Largo steals an atom bomb from the British. He loads it on his boat and hightaills it out of Jamaica. James Bond has sneaked on-board and fights to the death with Largo. For the most part, no one can steer the boat. First Bond, then Largo realize the boat will crash onto the reef if they neglect steering it; but no sooner does one of them take the wheel, the other gets him in a choke-hold and pulls him away. There is also a woman on-board, Dominetta Vitali, formerly Largo's travelling-around woman, now Bond's girlfriend. She has to sit, while the boat careens out of control through the coral reefs. 

The scenario may remind my readers of my "Steering the Ship of State" post, and the political cartoon that shows William Pitt at the helm of the CONSTITUTION, accompanied by the Lady Britannia. Imagine that one of Pitt's pursuers climbs aboard and starts a fight with him. With no one at the rudder, the ship will surely crash onto the rocks or disappear down the whirlpool—Largo's boat or the CONSTITUTION. Someone has to keep steering it. 

Both Bond and Largo have an interest in keeping the boat afloat, but they hate each others' guts. The most they can do is steal a moment from the fight, now and again, to take the helm and avoid a wreck. Obviously, they could just as easilly idle the motor until they finish their fight, but real life is not like that. It keeps going full-tilt, even with a fist-fight in progresss. Bond is the good guy, Largo is the bad guy, but since both are passengers, the usual roles of good-guy versus bad-guy do not have as much definition. It is an interesting scene for that reason.

I looked up Thunderball on-line today to see what critics in the 1960s had to say about it when it came out, and also how living critics view the film today. According to the website Rotten Tomatoes, the critics give Thunderball a higher rating than the audiences do. Even as a 13-year-old, I knew it was a keeper. 

The movie received a little criticism for its violence, but everyone kows that if you steal atomic weapons, the penalty can be as deadly as it is if you steal a boat-load of street-drugs. We also know that, if you disappoint a crime-boss, he may decide to throw you to the sharks. If a crime-boss's travelling-around woman disappoints him, he may first burn her with cigarettes, as Largo does to Dominetta, then throw her to the sharks. In that context, the violence of Thunderball defines the stakes of crime and terrorism at that level.

Watching Bond and Largo fight to the death during the scary boat-ride reminds me of the combatants on cable-news, the talking-heads who slug it out on TV, day after day. Sometimes they ask a sympathetic congressman to dish out some payback on a congressional opponent. The passengers on the U.S. CONSTITUTION—our ship-of-state—have to listen to it all. You wish they could concentrate on steering the ship-of-state into safe waters before they go at each other. "Let's take a break and get this fight settled before we go any further." They cannot get their priorities sorted out. A citizen feels like Dominetta or Lady Britannia—having to watch a game of Russian Roulette from the business-end, when they're not even participants!

Can they bother to steer the boat as a continuous application—not simply stealing moments to keep the boat out of serious trouble. Which is more important to the politicians and media combatants—trash the other party or protect the nation's interests? Looking at this scene from Thunderball does not make me optimistic about the future. I say idle the boat and settle the fight then and there; or else throw both Bond and Largo overboard and let the bourgeois citizen Dominetta steer the boat, so someone can safely off-load that atom bomb!