James Bond in film of the funding for the Bond films, fell into financial difficulties following the box office failure of "Heaven's Gate" (1980), bringing uncertainty to the future of the funding. The situation was resolved in May 1981, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired United Artists. Following "For Your Eyes Only", Roger Moore had expressed a desire to stop playing James Bond. His original contract had been for three films, a requirement fulfilled with "The Spy Who Loved Me". Subsequent films had been negotiated on a film-by-film basis. The producers engaged in a semi-public quest for the next actor to play Bond, which would be for
The Man Who Loved Women (1977 film) more than I've ever seen before in "The Man Who Loved Women."" Canby said "Denner is very, very funny as Bertrand, a fellow who has the same single-minded purpose as the rat exterminator he played in "Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me", as well as the delicacy of touch of Antoine Doinel on his best behavior" and called the sequence featuring Leslie Caron the film's "most marvelous, most surprising"; her scene of four or five minutes is "so remarkably well played and written that an entire love affair, from the beginning to the middle and the end, is movingly evoked