If there is another thread on this, please bump it. I went through 8 pages and didn't see any.
So, what was on that film that would be so scandalous that it could be used as blackmail? (that was what I understood the threat to be - "we're going to show this to M or someone higher up and you're going to be finished.")
It was film of Bond and Tatiana having sex in the hotel room. It wasn't that the film would be a scandal alone, but that it was connected with the letter Grant was going to plant on Bond. He was going to make it look like Tatiana was blackmailing Bond so Bond killed her. This would be post-mortem embarrassing to Bond, and likely would splash back onto MI6. It wasn't to smash Bond while he was alive, but rather to keep smashing him while he was dead.
As to what was scandalous, well, a sex tape in 1963 would have been scandalous at all, but depending on how you take Bond's comments about Tatiana's mouth, well...could've been quite shocking, indeed, for a '60s world.
Thank you, Ace. I just saw this and was about to reply, but you covered it perfectly. My only question is to the OP: how could you NOT know this? We had a very clear scene of Elsa Klebb supervising the filming of Bond’s tryst through a one-way mirror. Maybe you’re too young to know: people in the early 60s had actual standards and class. That’s why the Secret Service ran around sweeping JFK’s fuckfests under the carpet. Monica Lewinski would NOT have been a celeb in that era. She’d be a slut.
shareWhen Bond and Tania have sex, Grant and Klebb are recording them do it through the mirror.
It wouldn't be scandalous at all except for the letter that Tania was going have on her dead corpse. It was going to seem like she recorded them doing it to blackmail him into marrying her after they stole the lector. (which would have given Bond a motive to kill her before offing himself).