Film Biography
In the film, Goldfinger is a successful businessman, owning many properties throughout the world including "Auric Enterprises, AG" in Switzerland, and a stud-farm in Kentucky called "Auric Stud". However, Goldfinger's real business is that of internationally smuggling gold, using the method of having a car built with gold body castings and transporting it via airplane before having the body-work re-smelted once it arrives at its destination. After Goldfinger's business affairs come under suspicion from the Bank of England, Bond is sent to investigate.
In the film, Felix Leiter says that Goldfinger is British; however, this may simply mean he possesses British citizenship, as by his accent and red-blond hair he is probably German by birth. Fröbe was chosen to play the villain because producers Saltzman and Broccoli had seen his performance in a German thriller titled Es geschah am hellichten Tag (It happened in broad daylight, 1958), based on the story Das Versprechen (The Pledge) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. In that film, Fröbe played a serial killer named Schrott, who kills children to vent his frustrations with his domineering wife. Broccoli and Saltzman had seen the movie and decided upon the "big bad German" for the role.
In the film, Goldfinger, an avid golfer, reveals a fascination with Nazi gold when Bond tempts him to betting high stakes against a lost, historical Nazi gold bar, an incident not in the novel (the golf game is merely for a large amount of cash). He is defeated, however, when he is tricked by Bond after attempting to cheat.
Goldfinger is later revealed to be planning to place an atomic device containing cobalt and iodine into Fort Knox, rendering the gold radioactive and useless for 58 years, increasing the value of his own gold and giving the Chinese an advantage resulting from the ensuing economic chaos. Bond, at this point held captive by Goldfinger, is able to smuggle the details of the operation out to his CIA associate Felix Leiter, and, taken along on the operation by Goldfinger, ultimately thwarts the operation by defusing the atomic device.
With Fort Knox safe, Bond is invited to the White House for a meeting with the President. However, with his pilot Pussy Galore, Goldfinger hijacks the plane carrying Bond. In a struggle for Goldfinger's revolver, Bond shoots out a window, creating an explosive decompression. Goldfinger is sucked out of the cabin through the window. With the plane out of control Bond rescues Galore and they parachute safely from the aircraft.
Read more about this topic: Auric Goldfinger
Famous quotes containing the words film and/or biography:
“The woman’s world ... is shown as a series of limited spaces, with the woman struggling to get free of them. The struggle is what the film is about; what is struggled against is the limited space itself. Consequently, to make its point, the film has to deny itself and suggest it was the struggle that was wrong, not the space.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)