Fiona Volpe

Background

Paluzzi had auditioned for Domino but was given Volpe instead. The character is not in Fleming's novel and was written as an Irish woman before being changed to match Paluzzi's Italian ethnicity; volpe is Italian for fox.

In the film she seduces the NATO pilot Major François Derval so that SPECTRE can steal his plane and its two atomic bombs, then kills her fellow operative Count Lippe, who had jeopardized the operation, with a missile fired from her BSA Lightning motorcycle. She meets Bond in the Bahamas, giving him a very fast ride in a Ford Mustang convertible to their hotel; they have sex, after which she takes him captive at gunpoint and insults him. Bond escapes, but she and her men follow him to a nightclub, where, as they dance, one of her men fires at Bond, who spins Volpe into the bullet's path and she is killed instantly.

Laureen Gibson notes that Volpe wears a gown when she threatens Bond, and that the clash between the feminine clothing and the violent action makes her seem especially sinister. Gibson contrasts the clearly synthetic metallic blue fabric of the villain's gown with the white chiffon of Domino's dress. Kirsten Smith reads her as the classic femme fatale whose insult to Bond's masculinity means she must be killed. In 1950s drafts of an aborted Bond film the character was called Fatima Blush, a name revived for Barbara Carrera in Never Say Never Again, and Volpe became the template for Helga Brandt in You Only Live Twice.