Why James Bond is Eternal

The Man With The Golden Touch: How The Bond Films Conquered The World by Sinclair McKay was published by Aurum. Just one more writer jumping on the marketing train of Quantum of Solace? Not quite.

Sean Connery

Every other year or so, a James Bond movie comes to the cinemas around the world. We are all used to it and either adore it or ignore it. Like a meteorite, these movies are tailed by a trail of book publications, most of which are not worth the paper they are printed on. But they ride like passengers on the fame of the movies.

In his book, McKay tells the story behind the Bond movies. It is not a new story, others have done it before. It tells the story of the producers, Broccoli and Saltzmann, two creative genies with the talent to find the right people for the job. Out of it, he makes a good case for the claim that without the movies Ian Fleming would be forgotten and his books out of print. Due to the movies, his books are still found in book shops everywhere.

McKay gives us the full treat, taking us through every movie produced up to the present. It is obvious that he knows them well, and the facts are well researched. Having said this, I have to admit that I tend to disagree with him on most statements all the same. But that is a matter of opinion, not science. He is right, though, to attribute the timelessness of the movies to two sound producers. Broccoli and Saltzmann had the knack of concentrating on what mattered while ignoring the fads of time. Where most movies become hopelessly outdated after a few years, Bond movies just have aged respectfully.

I also agree with him that Thunderball was the most boring Bond movie ever. But how he could be kind to ‘poor’ Lazenby beats me. Despite being nice, McKay alleges Lazenby with selling minty chocolates before becoming an actor. And I for one violently disapproved of Roger Moore who should have played light comedy instead. McKay on the other hand is highly appreciative of Moore, though he sees that the errors in taste in these movies were many. His list of atrocities committed is quite impressive, actually.

Besides the producers and the actors, he pays tribute to the three men who set the style for Bond movies to this day, Adam, Barry, and Binder. I tend to think that the mixture of all these talents including Connery made the first movies so highly memorable. In a way, Quantum of Solace is still carried by these movies despite the many years that have gone by.

The book makes a good read, maybe because there is nothing really new in it. McKay has done his homework on details, obviously, and writes a droll style. It’s well worth a rainy afternoon. If it’s worth its selling price of £18.99 I must leave up to you. I would rather wait for it in the library on a day I have nothing better to do.

Further reading
Quantum of Solace: The Source
Roger Moore Biography
Turkey Apprehends Israeli Spy

James Bond 007 Quantum of Solace

James Bond is back. I mean the real James Bond 007, not some washed up replica from the eighties trundling around with his gadgets. I got news to share on the film to come: Quantum of Solace.

Daniel Craig as James Bond 007

Casino Royale took us back successfully to a darker and grittier Bond, nearer to Ian Fleming’s original vision, as I believe. Quantum of Solace goes even further back, so far as to take up citations from other Bond films in its story and its pictures. The death of one of the major characters is a direct quote to Goldfinger’s most iconic shot, where Jill Masterson was left dead covered in gold paint. Here, Agent Fields is covered in oil. Gemma Arterton said, she couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe or hear because the oil went into her ears. Leaves us to the question which drama school taught her to breathe through her ears?

Oscar winning director Marc Foster has tried and managed to do a movie much simpler and therefore more real than his high tech predecessors. By using green screen only where really necessary he created reality instead of humbug gadgetry. With full support from producer Barbara Broccoli he went back to the sixties’ Bond to find the imagery for the story.

At the end of Casino Royale, Bond’s lover Vesper Lynd gave her multimillion pound poker winnings to the shadowy villain Mr White, conveniently dying before explaining why. Bond tracked White to a lakeside villa in Italy and shot him in the leg, setting up the cliff-hanger for the sequel.

As Quantum of Solace opens, Bond and M are interrogating White to find that the organisation that turned Vesper is called Quantum with agents infiltrating the CIA and the British government. In Siena, Bond chases and corners one of these rogues linked to a bank in Haiti. This chase starting in the bowels of the city, crossing the Palio (an ancient horse race dating back to the 14^thcentury and carried out without saddles) goes on across the rooftops of Siena ending on top of a bus. It shows all Daniel Craig’s own stunts, so it is well worth watching. Even though Marc Foster admits that the bit with the bus was just put in because nobody could figure out any other way to get Bond to Mitchell, the agent he was chasing.

The action moves to South America where Bond meets (and sleeps with) Agent Fields. He gives her, a novice agent, a brush over as well, buying her a Prada dress. The pictures remind one very much of Breakfast at Tiffany’s one more shot quotation by Foster.

Together, Bond and Fields attend a fundraiser for Greene Planet, a supposedly eco-friendly organisation headed by the charming Dominic Greene. The scene was shot in the Old Union Club in Panama City bombed out by the Americans under one pretext or another. There, Bond also encounters Camille who conducts her own personal vendetta against Greene. Camille is played by Olga Kurylenko who does most of her own stunts, too. During filming, she learned how to strip a pistol in 8 seconds, and to put it back together again in 11.

Bond later rescues Camille from a kidnapping, widely overstepping his mission parameters and angering the Foreign Office to the extent of being put on the capture or kill list of M. This leads to a wild ride on motorcycles and a spectacular boat race, all supposedly set in Haiti but filmed in Panama.

Illicitly following Greene to Austria, Bond learns more of his plans – Greene will finance a bloody coup by an exiled Bolivian General in exchange for a seemingly worthless plot of land in the desert. The final shot is then done in Chile’s Atacama Desert where Bond and Camille land still in Opera clothes. The final scene is a major explosion in a desert hotel, but is filmed actually at the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile.

For Swiss director Marc Foster this film was an adventure. Coming from high art low budget films, the change into low art high budget venture must have been stunning. But he manages well to bring art into this purely commercial movie. I am sure he will not regret to have followed Orson Welles’ advice that he regretted most in his live never to have made a commercial movie.

Further reading

Quantum of Solace: The Source

James Bond: Behind the Movies

Roger Moore Biography