Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast: 007 on Screen

INTRODUCTION: BOND ... JAMES BOND

I know all about you, 007—sex for dinner, death for breakfast. — Die Another Day

Like Sherlock Holmes and Superman, James Bond is one of the small handful of fictional characters universally known.

He’s the central character of the longest running film series of all time, a series that has outlasted five leading men and the original supporting cast. When the series was young, Tom Jones and Nancy Sinatra were the hot singers the producers turned to for the opening theme songs. Since then we’ve gone through Paul McCartney and Wings, Carly Simon, Sheena Easton, Duran Duran, Sheryl Crowe, Madonna, Alicia Keyes and Adele. Outside the Bond series, 007 has been parodied and pastiched by Arnold Schwarzenegger (True Lies), Mike Myers (Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery), Peter Sellers, Woody Allen (both in the 1967 Casino Royale), Vin Diesel (XXX), James Coburn (In Like Flint) and Frankie Avalon (Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machines).

Bond is the standard against whom other film spies are measured or contrasted. Michael Caine wrote in his autobiography that his protagonist in The Ipcress File (1965) was written to be as un-Bond as possible. Both Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and Austin Powers (1997) mock the Bond formula even as they imitate it.

Bond’s worldwide success and lasting fame is almost ironic, given that James Bond was the child of a very specific time and place.

When the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, came out in 1953, the Cold War was white-hot. The fight against international communism — for millions of people, all communism, at home and abroad, represented one united global conspiracy — seemed as vital and necessary as the battle against the Axis in WW II. James Bond was in the thick of it, thwarting Soviet plots in stories such as Casino Royale, Goldfinger and From Russia With Love.

In 1953, despite the loss of India, Britain still commanded an empire on which the sun hadn’t quite set. As George MacDonald Fraser says in The Hollywood History of the World, the empire was a fact of life for his generation, unquestionable proof of national greatness. Fleming’s novels took it as a given that Great Britain remained a great power. Bond traveled around the globe defending British interests and showing other nations Britain still had what it takes.

The Pill didn’t exist in 1953. Unmarried people, particularly unmarried women, were supposed to save sex until after marriage. Great Britain was still shaking off the vestiges of WW II rationing. Bond lived a life where nothing was rationed, no expense was too high and pleasure was always available. He drove the best cars, ate the best food — Fleming loved detailing Bond’s meals — traveled the world, gambled for high stakes and had lots of no-strings sex with beautiful women. Bond smoked three to four packs of cigarettes, tailor-made for him. He dressed elegantly.

As I write this, the Cold War and the USSR have been gone for a quarter-century. The British Empire is no more and the United States is, for better or worse, the world’s policeman. Sex without marriage or commitment is unremarkable, in real life and in the movies. Only a minority of people in both the US and the UK smoke, and there’s a long list of places it isn’t even legal to light up.

Despite all the changes, Bond endures and shows no signs of fading. The adventures of a British spy, conceived for a British audience, have become popular all around the world. Dozens of books on the series (including this one) cover everything from Bond’s tech to the Making Of the different films to Bond as a fashion icon. True, 21st century critics complain the series is exhausted, but critics were saying that before Sean Connery left the role.

Precisely because the series has stayed so strong for so long, and in so many different cultures and countries, its success has to be due to multiple factors. For early British fans of Bond, part of the appeal was undoubtedly that the books and movies blithely ignored Britain’s decline. The CIA’s Felix Leiter, for instance, always defers to Bond even when the villains are targeting the United States. Comforting for British audiences, but probably not what draws Americans to 007. Likewise, the audiences who watched Dr. No for its edgy sex and violence and the modern audiences who think of Bond as family fun have very different perspectives.

So what factors have made the film series succeed?

•The films, at least the best of them, are very well made. Dr. No is a much slower film with less elaborate stunts than any of the 21st century Bond movies, but the craftsmanship holds up. I find it much more enjoyable to rewatch than, for example, True Lies (1994), a Bond pastiche which has much more action and far more spectacular stunts. Even the worst of the Connery films is superior to Italian knockoffs such as OK Connery (1967).

•Right from the first, the producers avoided defining Bond purely as a Cold War hero. Instead of Soviet intelligence, his archenemy in the Connery years was the crime cartel SPECTRE. As the series progressed, Bond went up against whatever sinister threat suited current trends: drug dealers, a man plotting to control the solar-power industry, a rogue Russian general, an IT entrepreneur, a media mogul, a banker for terrorists. 

•The early Bond films grabbed viewers by offering sex and violence in glamorous locations. It’s no longer hard to find sex and violence on-screen, but they’re still part of Bond’s appeal. Lots of viewers still like seeing a hero who saves the world while enjoying the embraces of beautiful women. That Bond continues doing it in glamorous locations sets him apart from many American action heroes. They typically operate in a single city; 2015’s Spectre took Bond to Mexico, Italy and Tangier before finishing up in London.

•Bond’s Britishness also helps him stand out among the many American heroes who’ve competed with him at the multiplex. Those heroes are typically blue-collar; Bond is a gentleman, with a family crest and a motto (orbit non sufficit — the world is not enough). Albert Broccoli says in the book Dressed to Kill that Bond epitomizes a certain inimitable British style, knowing what to wear, what to drink, what to say — and when to break the rules. The films have capitalized on Bond’s Britishness in various ways. The Connery films showed Bond as a man of good taste and elegant fashion sense; Moore’s films emphasize 007 is a patriot who only kills in the service of his country.

•That said, Bond’s Britishness is tailored for international appeal. Like many American characters in the action-film genre, Bond is a tough man, fully capable of ungentlemanly behavior when necessary. Bond’s missions aren’t confined to protecting British interests. He saves America in Goldfinger, averts global nuclear holocaust in You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me and stops a Russian invasion of Europe in Octopussy. In the words of the book License to Thrill, Bond is an international hero who just happens to be British.

•While the Bond films boast plenty of bad performances, they’ve also included many talented actors. That includes Bond (Connery, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig), his supporting cast (Desmond Llewelyn’s snarky Q, Judi Dench’s M), the villains (Gert Frobe, Joseph Wiseman, Jonathan Pryce, Sean Bean) and some of the Bond girls (Honor Blackman, Maryam D’Abo, Halle Berry, Michelle Yeoh).

•The films have a flair for presenting absurdity with a straight face. In Dr. No, the eponymous villain’s fortress entertains Bond and Honey Rider as if they were guests at a country estate. In You Only Live Twice, M has a duplicate of his MI6 office set up on board a submarine. Despite the tongue-in-cheek aspect of Bond’s world, neither film lets us forget that Bond’s facing serious danger.

•The Bond films are a name brand. Simply by being Bond films they mark themselves off from other action films or spy thrillers. Anyone going to a Bond film knows James Bond is a womanizing super-spy with a license to kill who saves the world from bad guys. Over the course of the film, the audience can expect to see diabolical plots, death-traps, beautiful women, doomsday weapons and a few memorable quips.

•At the same time, the series has adjusted and tinkered with the formula over the years. The Roger Moore films are heavy with comedy. Timothy Dalton’s style is more a generic action hero. Daniel Craig’s tenure offers an illusion of gritty realism. The films have borrowed elements from blacksploitation movies, martial-arts films and SF spectaculars. 

Fleming on Film

Ian Fleming seems to have hoped for a movie or TV Bond series, or a series for a character like Bond, from the first. Thunderball started as a movie script, then became a book. Casino Royale was optioned for the movies as early as 1955. Fleming conceived Dr. No as the pilot for a TV series to be called Commander Jamaica.

The only time these efforts bore fruit before Dr. No hit the big screen was an adaptation of Casino Royale for American television. However Fleming’s work did spread the film rights beyond Eon Studios, the producers of the main Bond series. That resulted in the 1967 Casino Royale and 1983’s Never Say Never Again. Both those films and the Climax! episode are included in this book alongside the regular Bond films and the 1967 knockoff OK Connery.

Each entry will include a cast list (not complete, only the key characters), the credits, and a brief synopsis. Then I’ll look in more detail at the movie’s strengths, weaknesses, its role as one film in a series and how it reflects the politics, trends and culture of its times. Some films establish parts of the Bond formula, some change them slightly, some break them completely. Calling a Bond-film element formula doesn’t mean it appears in every film, only that it appears fairly regularly. As Jeanine Basinger points out in The World War II Combat Film, very few genre films contain every element of a genre. Bond is no exception.

There are a couple of cases where an actor isn’t credited on screen, and references disagree on who actually played the role. I’ve noted both possibilities in the credits.

The only illustration is the cover photo. All rights to the image of Sean Connery as James Bond reside with the current holder.

As you read, keep in mind that my assessments of the films are skewed by the very fact I’m writing this book. My reactions aren’t those of a viewer who just wants to kick back and enjoy. As I’ve learned from writing my other film books, writing makes me much more aware of problems or flaws in films and less tolerant of clichés. Conversely, watching multiple Bond films in a relatively short period of time makes me more appreciative of details that break the mold, but might not impress anyone else. And, of course, my analysis reflects my personal taste. I know people who love Moonraker and lots of people who hate Die Another Day, but that’s not how I feel.

I know the Bond films are sexist, and sometimes racist or homophobic, but I’ve only focused on those issues when they strike me as particularly egregious. That’s not meant to excuse them or imply that anyone bothered by them has nothing