James Bond film Goldfinger at 60: we take an Aston Martin to the Swiss filming locations
Goldfinger is the very best Bond film, and there’s no arguing with Adam Bloodworth about it. The lifelong Fleming fan celebrates the film’s 60th by taking an Aston Martin for a spin through Switzerland for Morning Wire The Magazine. Photos by Tobi Stidolph
There’s a secret to cracking the reservedness of the Swiss – take a stroll on their highways. The Furkapass, straddling the cantons of Uri and Valais in the heartcentre of Switzerland, is a gorgeous drive – but you get another perspective entirely on foot. It was a Saturday and the irate owners of vintage Porsches honked in disbelief; the arms of wealthy weekend drivers thrown angrily to the air as we strolled on the tarmac. Pissing off the Europeans: it had been a good start.
We hiked the mountain road that curls like spaghetti falling into the bowl of Andermatt, the mountain village at the base of the valley. On foot, the Furkapass appears to perform an optical illusion, the bends in the road contorting like a dancer’s body. It feels far more remote than it should given we’re a five-minute roar of the Aston from our Alpine guesthouse’s autumnal jamboree of venison loin and pumpkin soup waiting for us upon return (sod skiing, autumn in the Alps is bliss).
Alpine passes – the Swiss term for roads that go up and over the top of the mountaintops – traverse the landscape like strawberry laces dangled over raggedy peaks. Motoring enthusiasts spend a week in Andermatt, where evergreen pine forests are threaded with Evian-fresh waterfalls meandering to open planes where cowbells jangle around the necks of sedate bovines. This is spectacular, picture-postcard Switzerland. Drive to get lost; pull over somewhere so remote that no-one could hear you scream.
It was the area’s otherworldly quality that captured Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s attention for the filming of Goldfinger, the Bond film marking its 60th anniversary this year. A lifetime later it remains the best Bond outing (fight me) and has one of the most iconic car chases. 007 is pursued by the vengeful Tilly Masterson as both trail the titular villain, Auric Goldfinger. The scene was shot at the Furkapass in 1964; Goldfinger in a Rolls-Royce, her in a Mustang, and Sean Connery debuting the DB5, earmarking the beginning of the franchise’s enduring relationship with Aston Martin.
Connery spent four blearly nights in Andermatt. Reports reveal that the Scottish star hit the hay at three in the morning after drunken nights and was up for make-up at seven o’clock, leaving the hotel to arrive on set by 8am. One night he was wheeled around the otherwise sleepy village in a shopping trolley that upturned and fell in a ditch. Long brown hairs entangled in his bed found by cleaning staff at the Hotel Bergidyll appear to confirm reports of his infidelity (Connery was married to the actress Diane Cilento at the time).
Walking could only last so long. A lifelong Bond nerd, I was driving a special edition of the Aston Martin DB12, released in a run of 60 to celebrate the film’s anniversary. Opened in 1866 for horse-drawn postal services, the first motorcar traversed the Furkapass that runs from Hospental to Oberwald in 1921. The round pebbledash bollards featured in Goldfinger remain along the track that’s occasionally still a single-lane despite the spike in traffic, a sign of how little changes around here.
But I’ve brought the DB12 to freshen things up: Connery couldn’t have imagined opening up this four litre V8 twin-turbo engine on these straights. The car’s updated suspension and enhanced stability – aided by the gold side strake in homage to the film – making me the comfiest driver ever to have taken on these formidable bends. And the most smug, too. We go in mist, in rain and, finally in squirnt-inducing sunshine (more on that later), parking on the corner where the car chase was shot to admire the view of mountains and metalwork. There are nerdy add-ons: the same Silver Birch paintwork is here as it was on the DB5, the car from the film, now not road-worthy and yours for just £2.75million (it comes with all the gadgets in the movie, including revolving numberplates). Stepping out to take a picture, then dropping back into the carbon fibre seats to feel the 800Nm of torque is, like Bond himself, the sort of presence that needs to be experienced rather than described.
By 1964, Connery and Bond were in their heyday, riding on the success of low-budget franchise kick-offs Dr. No and From Russia With Love. For Goldfinger, it was the right place, right time: MGM bosses were convinced of 007’s appeal, and splashed out. It is, in every way, the best Bond outing. Its narrative arc offers the most blissful ride (I could put a car pun in here but Bond would be ashamed), the best villain, the most memorable girls, the prettiest views, a snappy runtime so you aren’t shifting in your seat. Shirley Bassey! Death by gold paint! Miami! Preceeding the baggier Thunderball, the pre-cursor to the end of the Connery era (by the time he got to You Only Live Twice the Scot had mentally checked out) Goldfinger established 007 as the man we know today. It’s impossible for millennials like me to imagine the mood in the room when the picture was released, but watching Goldfinger as a lifelong obsessive is like rewatching your parents’ wedding video; it is the best you can do to inhabit a formative era that must have been so much fun.
The Pinte Pub&Club in Andermatt closes at 1am, so we had an earlier night than Connery, but I consoled myself by falling into the very same bedroom at the Hotel Bergidyll. Room 20 was where Connery got his four hours’ kip a night. The teal-tiled bathroom remains the same as does the wooden slatting on the walls. Owners recently performed a light renovation on the building, and the room now features photos of the Scot posing on the Furkapass, perhaps the most famous images from his 007 era. It’s for the fans but not in an overbearing way. Tania Mallet who played Tilly was next door in the smaller room 21 and the duo shared a balcony. Sitting out there over a nightcap, you wonder whether Mallet emigrated for more space (though her locks were blonde, not brown).
Downstairs some rather odd artwork of Connery and Mallet hangs on the walls of the lobby, which retains the same brick-built chimney that was there in the Goldfinger era. Back then this public space was used for the production crew and Connery was known to stand here to make long calls back home. Next door in the restaurant, one booth where Connery is pictured raising a glass with wild wine eyes still remains, though the Bergidyll’s days as a live music and nightlife hotspot are long gone; today the restaurant is a more subdued affair where, on a mission to exclusively eat local and seasonal food, I dined on more excellent venison and pumpkin soup. One octogenarian lady whose parents ran the Hotel Belvédère on the Furkapass keeps the Goldfinger era alive by coming in almost daily for her evening meal.
I had dressed in my Fedro Gaudenzi suit to take photos on the Furkapass. Back in the room, it was hung in the very same wardrobe where Connery must have put his. But my trip was starting to feel like pastiche, and Bond would have hated that, so I left the Bergidyl for the hulking new Chedi Andermatt across the road, a glistening sign of Andermatt’s contemporaneity.
At an elevation of 1,437 meters above sea level, the ski village is a crossroads at the heart of Switzerland. Once sidelined by bougier St Moritz and Gstaad, the destination is undergoing an explosive redevelopment after a 55 per cent stake in the slopes were acquired by US mountain resort company Vail Resorts.
The tourist board is promoting one cohesive Andermatt, but really the town is warping into two halves: the historic centre’s traditional Alpine style architecture, and the new high-rises a short walk away. The Radisson Blu hotel and private apartment complexes soar up as any London newbuild would. Their sale to international buyers who pop in once or twice a year has irked locals, many of whom, like the lady who dines at the Bergidyl, have been in Andermatt for the best part of a century. She’s not unusual: Andermatt is the sort of place people are born in, leave for a bit, then return to to see out their final years. Touchingly, the three children who sell Goldfinger Alpine roses in the Furkapass scene still live in the village; my tour guide is good friends with one of them. Now in his seventies, he remembers the filming well.
At the Chedi, a spectacular resort hotel that feels slightly out of place in the village, there was more venison and pumpkin soup. On a Sunday night the restaurant must have had over a hundred covers, many of them business tables, as the independent restaurants in town fell silent.
On our final morning, we swam in the heated outdoor pool where we stared up at the mountain peaks and all their unforgiving angularity. We had planned to spend our last hours in Andermatt in this style, doing literally nothing other than flailing around with expensive bubbles – both pool and stomach-bound. But then the sun came out – finally – and we had to visit the Furkapass one final time, a ten minute drive away, to bid Uf Widerluege. The craggy heathland by the roadside gleamed in bleached yellowy-green and the rock shone in tens of different shades of fantastic graphite. All of a sudden, for one final time, we felt blissfully lost.
The Goldfinger DB12 is available bespoke at Aston Martin; plan to visit Andermatt through myswitzerland.com