Monday 11 December 2017

Wow, What A View!

There is an alchemy around Bond titles.  You hear a sequence of words and it sounds... Bond-y.  Ian Fleming managed to come up with a formula for his novels - largely continued by the films - where they sounded simultaneously sexy, violent, mysterious and glamorous. 

It's one thing to put these titles on a book.  For a film, you have to actually have human beings say it onscreen, and that's where it gets difficult.  They often aren't phrases you can casually drop into conversation and, as a result, the films have sometimes struggled to crowbar the title in.  This is a rundown of where the title of a Bond film appears in the film, ranked by how well it's done.  Is it natural?  Is it dramatic?  Is it significant to the plot?  Is it just really annoying?

Note on methodology: I've concentrated on the first time the title is spoken only, otherwise the entries on films named after characters or organisations would get silly.  Likewise, wherever possible I've gone with where the line is actually spoken, rather than an earlier appearance on files or boats or whatever.  The very first shot of Moonraker is a space shuttle with the name of the film written on the side, for example, but I'll disregard that for this list.

24.  Diamonds Are Forever

Somewhat unbelievably, even though Bond lists the features of a diamond ("they cut glass, suggest marriage, I suppose they've replaced a dog as a girl's best friend") he doesn't add "also, I believe Diamonds Are Forever."  It's a shocking oversight in a film where people are talking about diamonds in almost every scene, so this goes at the bottom.

23.  Quantum of Solace

QoS skipping mentioning the name is more forgivable, given that it's a title that takes quite a lot of explaining.  Calling the criminal organisation Quantum gives it a measly half-point.

22.  Tomorrow Never Dies

Similarly, TND features the word Tomorrow an awful lot, but the title never makes it to the screen.  I wonder if there was a Tomorrow Never Lies line that was cut?

21.  Live and Let Die


There's no actual reason for Live and Let Die to be called Live and Let Die.  It doesn't really have anything to do with the plot, and the dialogue from the novel explaining it never made it to the screen.  So we can only assume it's named after that snappy tune performed by BJ Arnau in the Fillet of Soul.

20.  The Spy Who Loved Me


The title is never said on screen, though Stromberg does say "a British agent in love with a Russian agent", which is more or less the same thing in a roundabout way.

19.  On Her Majesty's Secret Service


Another close but no cigar; Draco says that if he did have information on Blofeld "I wouldn't tell Her Majesty's Secret Service."  Four words out of five isn't bad.

18.  A View To A Kill


The original Fleming short story was called From A View To A Kill; without that first word, it doesn't really make sense.  That's no excuse for the absolute nonsense that Grace Jones and Christopher Walken are forced to spout.  "Wow," says May Day, with all the enthusiasm of a woman who's just discovered her birthday treat is a trip to the Mrs Brown's Boys Interactive Tribute Experience.  "What a view."  "To a kill," adds Zorin, in a line of dialogue that makes no sense on any level; not as part of the script, not as a scene within the film, not as something a real human being would ever say.  It is nonsense, but it is, indeed, the title of the film, so it has to rank higher than the ones before. 

17.  From Russia With Love


Another phrase that no person who wasn't in a film would use, this one isn't spoken, but is scrawled over a picture of Tania on the backlot on the Bosphorus ferry.  I'm ranking it higher than A View To A Kill even though it's not dialogue because it doesn't make you cringe, and also Sean Connery's handwriting is very nice.

16.  Casino Royale


The building gets a lot of beautiful shots later, but the first time anyone says Casino Royale is a very casual mention in a bit of dialogue about Le Chiffre.  There's no drama or import given to it; if you're not paying attention you could miss it altogether.

15.  Licence To Kill


"Your licence to kill is revoked" is a bit clunky and, as with Judi above, it's sort of thrown away.  If only there was an M who knew how to bring some gravitas to a film title.

14.  For Your Eyes Only


"For your eyes only, darling," says Melina in her usual fashion of sounding like she'd just been woken from a nap.  She's not a spy, so quite why she's tossing out secret service jargon like this I have no idea.

(It should be noted that there's a bit earlier in the film where a file with For Your Eyes Only on it gets a whacking great close up and a musical sting, which would have been perfectly sufficient before they decided to over-egg the pudding right at the end).


13.  The Living Daylights


"Whoever she was, I must've scared the living daylights out of her."  It's a perfectly adequate shoehorning in of the title, and it gets a nice zoom as it's being said, but it's just a bit dull.  Solid mid-table stuff.

12.  Die Another Day


It should be good.  There's a dramatic reveal of Bond wielding a pistol.  It leads directly into the explanation about Graves' secret identity.  But Brosnan sounds so bored.  It's like they couldn't decide what to call the film, so they made him sit there and recite a load of alternative lines ("I see you're beyond the ice, Colonel Moon").  "So you live to die another day," was at the end of the shoot, when he just wanted his dinner and a cup of tea.

11.  Goldfinger


"Auric Goldfinger.  Sounds like a French nail varnish."  I'm guessing Guy Hamilton was okay with this understated introduction of the film's title and villain, because he knew it would be immediately followed by Gert Frobe making his entrance looking like the most brilliant Bond villain you've ever seen.  The dialogue was incidental.

10.  GoldenEye


"We're going to test the GoldenEye," says Ourumov, in a way that is casual but also hints at its importance.  Whatever a GoldenEye is must be significant because we know that it's the name of the film, but it's said in a nicely underplayed manner.

9.  Moonraker


Bond enters M's office, fresh from showing off to Moneypenny about how great he is, and finds the Minister of Defence and Q in there as well.  From this he intuits that he's about to be sent off to investigate the current national crisis, so he says, "Moonraker, sir?"

8.  The Man With The Golden Gun


The location is the same as Moonraker; its position in the film - immediately after the titles - is also the same.  There are even two extra bodies in the office.  What puts TMWTGG above MR is that Bond isn't being a smug git in this one.  His "Scaramanga?  Ah yes - the man with the golden gun," comes because he's asked a question by M, not because he's the cleverest person in the room and wants to show it off.

7.  Spectre


I'm not going to get into how a woman who is estranged from her father knows more about the organisation he worked for than the world's intelligence agencies; suffice to say, it's nonsense.  I will say that Lea Seydoux says it in a very good way, pronouncing it so well it made it into the trailer.

6.  Skyfall


This one's an oddity, because it's said by someone off camera, and we don't understand what it means for another hour and a half.  But the fact that it causes 007's face to crack and collapse is fantastic, and draws you even further into the film.

5.  The World Is Not Enough


This one suffers because it's a little clunky - Elektra's sudden, dramatic "I could've given you the world!" seems to come out of nowhere - but both Brosnan's reading and its position within the film are excellent.  "The world is not enough," is both a motto and a statement of defiance.  Bonus points for laying the groundwork for this one in a film thirty years before too.

4.  Dr No


"What else do we know about this Chinese gentleman?"
"Nothing much... except his name.  DOCTOR NO."  Honestly, if there had been a sudden cymbal crash and a flash of lightning, it would have seemed entirely in keeping.  Jack Lord manages to say the villain's name with so much drama it could very easily slot into a Hammer Horror.

3.  Octopussy


Weirdly, the first mention of the film's title has nothing to do with the character it's named after.  Instead, it does what everyone had been saying from the moment it had been announced: makes a joke about vaginas.  "That's my little octopussy," says Magda, in a saucy way that could be talking about her tattoo, but also could be talking about her genitalia.  Textbook.

2.  Thunderball


Remember numbers 15 and 16, where Robert Brown and Judi Dench failed to bring any drama to the title?  They should've watched Thunderball to see how it's done by a proper M.  Bernard Lee gruffly announces "Codename: Thunderball" with authority, gravitas and absolute purpose; it works both within the scene, and also as a little reach out to the audience of "this is what that nonsensical word means."  Brilliantly done, and only slightly mangled by the cut to Bond's face.  We need a big close-up of M, dammit!

1.  You Only Live Twice


So.  We're inside a hollowed out volcano turned rocket silo.  James Bond just almost went into space.  A man pokes his head out and announces that he is Ernst. Stavro. Blofeld.  And he's Donald Pleasance.  And he looks like that.  Then, just to heighten it even further, they reference Bond's fake death right at the start, and 007 claims this is his second life. 

Right on cue: "You only live twice, Mister Bond."

Absolutely impeccable.