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Sarah Sherman: Still a Spoonful of Sugar?

Sarah Sherman, played by the then very popular Julie Andrews, seems a direct contrast to Tatiana and Bond Girls in general. Even though she and Michael go on their "honeymoon cruise" before the wedding, she desires nothing more than to be married to Michael and help him, to assist him. When he tells her that he must go to Stockholm she wants to go with him, suggesting that they could get an apartment and insisting, "I could look after you, shop, cook." Even though her nametag reads Dr. Sarah Sherman she is never called anything but Professor Armstrong's assistant and any research of her own that she might have is overshadowed by Michael's Gamma Five project. Throughout most of the film she is a perfect, submissive woman, rarely sexualize and never exoticized, and a great deal of this derives from Julie Andrew's previously established Mary Poppins-innocence 32. She is modest and conservative and as such quite opposite from Tatiana who is content to run around naked or nearly so.

One small love bite but otherwise demure and modest

However, there is one moment where Sarah takes control and stands up for herself. Robin Wood calls this the film's single "morally pure gesture": Sarah decides not to talk to the East Germans about Gamma Five. Though she has agreed to defect in order to be with Michael and though she constantly refers to him about whether she should stay, only wanting to be with him if he wants her with him, at this point in the film she finally asserts what she wants. She refuses to compromise her own integrity and patriotism and reveals the disgust she feels at Michael for defecting by shouting at him "You tell them! You tell them! You joined them, you're the one who sold out!" There follows the scene on the hill where Michael convinces Sarah to help him by telling her the truth. From this point on, Sarah becomes just as morally culpable as Michael, joining him in his lying, stealing, and endangering of innocents 33. Thus Sarah is almost an exact inverse of Tatiana; the former begins as innocent and becomes corrupt through her involvement while the latter begins as corrupt and by getting involved with the hero becomes redeemed.

Sarah's Moral Purity followed by her Moral Corruption

At the end of the film it seems that the relationship problems between Michael and Sarah have been solved as they hide under a blanket, avoiding reporters, and Sarah giggles Michael's name. Supposedly they will return to America, get married and live happily ever after. However, Hitchcock films rarely allow couples such undisputed closure. What kind of a husband will Michael be? He has lied and kept very large secrets from his fiance, putting his needs above her own. Perhaps, like Bond, sexual attractiveness is all he has going for him as a man.

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