Fifty years ago today George Lazenby turned up to the premiere of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in an unfortunate beard. It was the first sighting for a Bond film that has been forgotten then rediscovered over the decades.
It's been my favourite Bond film for over 30 years. It was the first I ever owned on VHS; before that I'd only seen them on the telly. I was curious about this 007 movie I'd never seen and only heard about so my mum and dad bought it for me for Christmas 1988. I instantly fell for it. I'd read the book a hundred times by then and this put it on the screen, while at the same time, making it better. It was action and romance and drama all in one amazing package. I loved it.
So here are what was going to be fifty reasons, but turned out to be more, off the top of my head, why On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the greatest Bond film in history.
1. Harry Saltzman & Albert R Broccoli Present. The clock's been reset; we're going back to the start.
2. Incredibly funky fuzzbox guitar in the Bond theme.
3. Dropping to one knee. Take THAT!
4. Radioactive lint. Possibly the stupidest gadget in the entire series. Who says this film isn't funny?
5. Tracy driving like a maniac.
6. Tracy's green frock, later seen on the Morecambe & Wise Show.
7. Seascape With Figures, but on the big screen.
8. The editing; fast, shocking, mad.
9. "This never happened to the other fellow." It's a wink and it's brilliant and if you think it's terrible you're a very boring person indeed.
10. That theme tune. So good they've been trying to do it again ever since.
11. Naked girls with erect nipples in front of the Union Jack forming a royal crest.
12. The dissolve to the CASINO sign in the pool.
13. That purple wallpaper on the stairs.
14. Bond's frilly shirt.
15. The little old lady at the baccarat table.
16. "Teresa was a saint, I'm known as Tracy."
17. Bond slapping Tracy.
18. A midget whistling Goldfinger.
19. Bond chucking a knife into a calendar and getting the wrong date deliberately.
20. Bond telling Draco to shove his million quid up his arse.
21. "Same old James... only more so!"
22. "What would I do without you Moneypenny? Thank you!" Britain's last line of defence indeed.
23. Tracy dressed as a ringmaster.
24. We Have All The Time In The World.
25. Gumbold's safe. (a) it's an incredibly tense sequence (b) the Playboy gag is great (c) that massive photocopier (d) it was cut out of the VHS, for some reason, so I didn't see it for years, and I still get a tiny ripple of excitement every time it shows up.
26. Quarterdeck!
27. M's butterfly collection.
28. A brief appearance of Luton Town on Campbell's newspaper.
29. Irma Bunt, the most glorious dumpy villainess the series has ever seen.
30. Piz Gloria; beautiful, inspiring, lonely on top of the mountain.
31. Every single one of the Angels of Death, but especially Angela Scoular, Catherine Von Schell, Joanna Lumley saying "of course I know what he's allergic to", Helena Ronee's big hair, and the way Sylvia Henriques eats a banana.
32. The room number on the inside thigh.
33. The bit of wood between the broken rubber escape technique.
34. "It's TRUE!"
35. Irma Bunt in Ruby's bed. You would genuinely shit yourself.
36. Blofeld's explanation of his plot; urbane, sophisticated, bonkers.
37. The way Blofeld smokes a fag with the lit end inside his hand.
38. The wrapping paper on the girls' presents.
39. Bond catching his cardigan on that bit of spiky artwork (foreshadowing!).
40. Bond's powder blue ski suit.
41. Opening the door onto the slopes and the music kicks in: bom, bom, bom, bom...
42. Skiing on one ski.
43. The cat's screech.
44. "We'll head him off at the precipice!"
45. Throttling that bloke with a ski.
46. Creepy polar bear man.
47. Tracy skating up to Bond at exactly the point he needs her because she is utterly magnificent.
48. Tracy doing all the driving in the car chase because, as I said, magnificent.
49. "I love you, and I know I'll never meet another girl like you. Will you marry me?"
50. George Lazenby being really fucking good here.
51. "Of Acacia Avenue, Tunbridge Wells."
52. The man falling into the snowplough and "he had lots of guts."
53. Blofeld kidnapping Tracy, which doesn't happen in the book, and means she's even more of a part of the story.
54. Bond seeing Tracy being dragged away in M's window.
55. Tracy's poem.
56. The helicopter attack on Piz Gloria being brutal and violent (people are incinerated!)
57. Bond sliding towards the camera while firing a machine gun as the James Bond theme plays.
58. Tracy fighting Gunther and winning.
59. "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
60. That acid burning a hole in the glass.
61. The way Bond pulls down those two pictures on the left so they slide behind one another.
62. The whole bobsleigh sequence, but especially that noise as Bond's head is dragged along the side of the wall.
63. Tracy's wedding outfit. Trousers!
64. M getting hammered with Marc-Ange.
65. Q being paternal.
66. "This time I've got the gadgets - and I know how to use them."
67. Moneypenny crying and catching Bond's hat. Oh God.
68. "Three girls, three boys."
69. Blofeld in a neck brace so it's Irma having to do the shooting.
70. A single perfect gunshot in Tracy's forehead.
71. "We'll be moving along soon. There's no hurry you see, we have all the time in the world."
72. Bond crying.
73. The tender music going into the loudest, boldest, brassiest version of the Bond theme you've ever heard.
74. Diamonds Are Forever.
75. Peter Hunt, Peter Hunt again, Richard Maibaum, Simon Raven, John Glen, John Barry, Syd Cain, Marjory Cornelius, George Lazenby, especially Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Ilse Steppat, George Baker, Gabrielle Ferzetti, and every single other element of this, the greatest James Bond film ever made.
Wednesday, 18 December 2019
Friday, 15 November 2019
Looking for Doctor Goodhead
The Hollywood Reporter recently printed an interview with new Bond Girls Lashana Lynch and Ana de Armas. As you'd expect when they're plugging a film that is shrouded in secrecy and doesn't come out for another six months, there's not really that much they can say about No Time To Die, or their characters. What we did discover - from the headline down - is that these are "Bond Women" and they're strong and independent and brainy and completely different to the female characters of the past.
But you knew it said that, didn't you? Because the leading lady of every Bond film for forty-odd years has said this in every interview, and yet the message doesn't seem to be getting through. Every actress is forced to justify her appearance in the film, and how it's different to an archetype that was established when Ursula Andress walked out of the sea in 1962. I'd argue that the Bond Girls of the Sixties were strong in their own right - would you argue with Fiona Volpe? - but the producers were aware that they needed to change, which is why they made a deliberate, conspicuous effort to make the female leads independent women with strong motivations from The Spy Who Loved Me onwards. Anya Amasova was conceived as Bond's Russian equivalent, and frequently bests him in the film. And she wasn't a one-off either.
The very next film offered up Dr Holly Goodhead, played by Lois Chiles in Moonraker. In a film that is, by and large, hokey fun, you have a female lead who is a trained astronaut on loan from NASA with a Doctorate in astrophysics. Halfway through the film, it's revealed she's also a CIA agent working undercover. She fights, she spars, she reacts with absolute frostiness when 007 patronises the hell out of her - she's ace. And this was in 1979. Yet here we are, forty years later, asking actresses in a Bond film if they're allowed to have a thought of their own and does the bikini chafe?
I'll be honest: I love Holly. She's my favourite Bond Girl. My preferred type is snarky arse-kicker (see also: Pam Bouvier and Tracy). I love that she's so much smarter than Bond. If you watch the film, he absolutely needs her along - if she hadn't been able to pilot Moonraker 6, he'd have been left on earth and Drax would have succeeded. She's the one who briefs the NASA troops, because she knows Colonel Scott personally. It's also thanks to Holly's piloting that he's able to chase after the globes that are released at the end.
She does all this coolly and elegantly. She's rightly disdainful when Bond is surprised to meet a woman Doctor; she casually mentions that she's addressing a conference and dismisses his facile comment; she uses him for sex and refuses to tell him she's off to Brazil. One of my favourite moments is when 007 sneaks out the bedroom, the cad, leaving her fast asleep - only for her to snap to attention and make plans to leave as well.
Holly also does all this while completely wrapped up. It's sometimes difficult to defend the series when they have a super-capable character but put her in the skimpiest of outfits to make sure you know she's clever and sexy (yes, I'm talking about Dr Christmas Jones' hotpants). And while Holly is beautiful - she is played by Lois Chiles - she's never dressed provocatively or gratuitously nude. She wears five outfits over the course of the film; three long dresses and two pant suits. There's cleavage in the evening gown:
And let's be honest, those stilettos are horribly impractical:
But the film doesn't lech at her. It treats her with dignity and grace. They actually consider what Holly would wear. Let's be honest, she could've spent the climax in a minidress - there were Drax astronauts on board wearing the same thing, so it wouldn't have been too much of a stretch for her to wear it too:
Instead, she's in that baggy, unflattering orange space suit, just like Bond.
Holly could be lifted straight out of Moonraker and put in a 21st century Bond film without modification or rewriting. She is the best, and I'd like every journalist about to interview Lashana and Ana to have a look at what the series was doing with its female characters before they were even born. (Maybe fast forward through the double taking pigeon though).
But you knew it said that, didn't you? Because the leading lady of every Bond film for forty-odd years has said this in every interview, and yet the message doesn't seem to be getting through. Every actress is forced to justify her appearance in the film, and how it's different to an archetype that was established when Ursula Andress walked out of the sea in 1962. I'd argue that the Bond Girls of the Sixties were strong in their own right - would you argue with Fiona Volpe? - but the producers were aware that they needed to change, which is why they made a deliberate, conspicuous effort to make the female leads independent women with strong motivations from The Spy Who Loved Me onwards. Anya Amasova was conceived as Bond's Russian equivalent, and frequently bests him in the film. And she wasn't a one-off either.
The very next film offered up Dr Holly Goodhead, played by Lois Chiles in Moonraker. In a film that is, by and large, hokey fun, you have a female lead who is a trained astronaut on loan from NASA with a Doctorate in astrophysics. Halfway through the film, it's revealed she's also a CIA agent working undercover. She fights, she spars, she reacts with absolute frostiness when 007 patronises the hell out of her - she's ace. And this was in 1979. Yet here we are, forty years later, asking actresses in a Bond film if they're allowed to have a thought of their own and does the bikini chafe?
I'll be honest: I love Holly. She's my favourite Bond Girl. My preferred type is snarky arse-kicker (see also: Pam Bouvier and Tracy). I love that she's so much smarter than Bond. If you watch the film, he absolutely needs her along - if she hadn't been able to pilot Moonraker 6, he'd have been left on earth and Drax would have succeeded. She's the one who briefs the NASA troops, because she knows Colonel Scott personally. It's also thanks to Holly's piloting that he's able to chase after the globes that are released at the end.
She does all this coolly and elegantly. She's rightly disdainful when Bond is surprised to meet a woman Doctor; she casually mentions that she's addressing a conference and dismisses his facile comment; she uses him for sex and refuses to tell him she's off to Brazil. One of my favourite moments is when 007 sneaks out the bedroom, the cad, leaving her fast asleep - only for her to snap to attention and make plans to leave as well.
Holly also does all this while completely wrapped up. It's sometimes difficult to defend the series when they have a super-capable character but put her in the skimpiest of outfits to make sure you know she's clever and sexy (yes, I'm talking about Dr Christmas Jones' hotpants). And while Holly is beautiful - she is played by Lois Chiles - she's never dressed provocatively or gratuitously nude. She wears five outfits over the course of the film; three long dresses and two pant suits. There's cleavage in the evening gown:
And let's be honest, those stilettos are horribly impractical:
But the film doesn't lech at her. It treats her with dignity and grace. They actually consider what Holly would wear. Let's be honest, she could've spent the climax in a minidress - there were Drax astronauts on board wearing the same thing, so it wouldn't have been too much of a stretch for her to wear it too:
Instead, she's in that baggy, unflattering orange space suit, just like Bond.
Holly could be lifted straight out of Moonraker and put in a 21st century Bond film without modification or rewriting. She is the best, and I'd like every journalist about to interview Lashana and Ana to have a look at what the series was doing with its female characters before they were even born. (Maybe fast forward through the double taking pigeon though).
Saturday, 15 June 2019
And You Know I'm Going Straight For Your Heart
Early in 1988, when it was still cold and wet, we had a family outing to Milton Keynes. We didn't often go there, because the shops were expensive and my parents almost inevitably lost the car and we'd end up walking every inch of Midsummer Boulevard, but now and then we went for a look round.
On this occasion we ended up in the market, at one of those book stalls that sell the excess stocks of recent releases. My mum and dad were feeling generous and let me pick a book. And for some reason, a reason I still don't understand, I picked The Official James Bond 007 Movie Poster Book by Sally Hibbin.
My parents were confused. I'd not shown any interest in 007 before; not read any of the books and only watched the films on Bank Holidays. "Are you sure?" they asked. But something about that book appealed to me.
I took it home and it quickly became my obsession. I pored over it. I studied every inch of those gorgeous posters. I read and re-read the plot descriptions. I memorised the cast and crew lists, to the extent that my dad would wheel it out as a party trick for his friends - "Who was the cinematographer on You Only Live Twice?" and eleven year old me would reply "Freddie Young" without looking up. I started reading the books in the library and became even more captivated. That August Bank Holiday weekend, we got our first video recorder, and that Monday, I used our family's one and only video cassette to record Never Say Never Again on ITV. I promptly broke the tabs off. I was now a James Bond fan.
In the background to all this was the knowledge that there was a new Bond film on the way. Fermenting somewhere. In the pre-internet days, I'd pick up dribs and drabs. A behind the scenes bit on Network Seven where they showed the filming of the waterskiing sequence. The odd snippet from Baz Bamigboye's showbiz column in the Mail, which I snipped and put on my wall to yellow and crack.
Then June 1989 came and Licence To Kill was unleashed on the world. I bought another video tape and recorded bits from all over. The Wogan special, with Q and Robert Davi and Cubby Broccoli, where Talisa Soto completely failed to understand why Terry thought the name "Lupe" (which he pronounced "Loopy") was amusing. Shy Timothy Dalton at the end, being very serious and very sincere, because he is the best. There was the review on Film 89. There was the premiere show, presented by Nick Owen in a tuxedo, with long shots of the cast talking to the Royals. That incredible Gladys Knight video, where Danny Kleinman embarrassingly produced a better Bond title sequence for the film than Maurice Binder.
And the clips! The same bits of the film turned up so often that my brother and I would call them the "famous bits". M revoking the licence to kill. Bond snogging Lupe. The underwater fight. Q in the hotel room.
Of course, the fly in this ointment was that I couldn't actually see the film. I was 12, a young looking 12, a very far off puberty, puppy fat faced 12, and there was no way I could pass as 15. It was incredibly frustrating. It came and went to our local cinema and I never got to saw it.
I carried on collecting everything around it of course. My copy of The Making of Licence To Kill became so well used the glue holding the pages in perished and I had to lash it together with treasury tags. My cassette of the soundtrack was played almost constantly, so the track listing is burned in my brain. I had posters on my wall, alongside those from The Official James Bond 007 Movie Poster Book, which I'd chopped up and arranged in strict order. When I got a book token as a prize at school, I spent it on the John Gardner novelisation, which probably wasn't how it was intended to be used.
But I still hadn't seen the film.
By the time I got to see it, on video the weekend it came out - reserved, because there was no way I was missing it - I already knew everything about it. By this point my mum and dad had split up. Looking back I can see how 007 was a way out of dealing with that. I buried myself in the books and the films to get away from the upsets at home. Licence To Kill wasn't just a film; it was a hope. It was almost a talisman. I already knew what people said about it too. That it was too violent. That it wasn't a proper Bond film. That it was too serious.
The first time I watched it, I loved it. About 90%. There were bits of it that didn't feel right - the swearing, which never works, and there was definitely a more serious tone. But I still enjoyed it. It was a new Bond film and I'd finally conquered it. God knows I'd been prepared for it, having read all those pieces about it for two years.
When I finally got it to own on VHS - reversing the sleeve so that it had the blue cover that matched all my other Bond films - I watched it over and over and its differences became less stark. This was definitely a sequel to The Living Daylights. This was definitely still a Bond film.
Over the years it got a bad reputation. The gap between Licence To Kill and GoldenEye made it the film that nearly killed the franchise; similarly, people lazily praised Brosnan by criticising Dalton. Its violence meant it wasn't suitable for mid-afternoon Bank Holidays or, if it was shown, it was hacked to pieces worse than Dario in the cocaine grinder. Fortunately, its reputation has grown. Next to the Craig films it doesn't seem anywhere near as incongruous; in fact, they could do with a bit more laser cameras and barefoot waterskiing. It is extremely well cast, Pam and Sanchez are characters for the ages, and its notoriety as the film that saw Benicio del Toro's potential before anyone else has given it a certain cache. The stunts are big and impressive and explosive - that final tanker blowout is astonishing - and every appearance from Q is a joy.
And even though I didn't see it at the time, this is my Bond film. Licence To Kill was the first time I experienced the thrill and anticipation and butterflies of knowing that somewhere in the world they were making a James Bond film. I still get that thrill now; I check Lashana Lynch's Instagram feed every day and get excited when she's on early morning calls. Licence To Kill is thirty years old, and I'm middle aged now, but it's special. You never forget your first.
On this occasion we ended up in the market, at one of those book stalls that sell the excess stocks of recent releases. My mum and dad were feeling generous and let me pick a book. And for some reason, a reason I still don't understand, I picked The Official James Bond 007 Movie Poster Book by Sally Hibbin.
My parents were confused. I'd not shown any interest in 007 before; not read any of the books and only watched the films on Bank Holidays. "Are you sure?" they asked. But something about that book appealed to me.
I took it home and it quickly became my obsession. I pored over it. I studied every inch of those gorgeous posters. I read and re-read the plot descriptions. I memorised the cast and crew lists, to the extent that my dad would wheel it out as a party trick for his friends - "Who was the cinematographer on You Only Live Twice?" and eleven year old me would reply "Freddie Young" without looking up. I started reading the books in the library and became even more captivated. That August Bank Holiday weekend, we got our first video recorder, and that Monday, I used our family's one and only video cassette to record Never Say Never Again on ITV. I promptly broke the tabs off. I was now a James Bond fan.
In the background to all this was the knowledge that there was a new Bond film on the way. Fermenting somewhere. In the pre-internet days, I'd pick up dribs and drabs. A behind the scenes bit on Network Seven where they showed the filming of the waterskiing sequence. The odd snippet from Baz Bamigboye's showbiz column in the Mail, which I snipped and put on my wall to yellow and crack.
Then June 1989 came and Licence To Kill was unleashed on the world. I bought another video tape and recorded bits from all over. The Wogan special, with Q and Robert Davi and Cubby Broccoli, where Talisa Soto completely failed to understand why Terry thought the name "Lupe" (which he pronounced "Loopy") was amusing. Shy Timothy Dalton at the end, being very serious and very sincere, because he is the best. There was the review on Film 89. There was the premiere show, presented by Nick Owen in a tuxedo, with long shots of the cast talking to the Royals. That incredible Gladys Knight video, where Danny Kleinman embarrassingly produced a better Bond title sequence for the film than Maurice Binder.
And the clips! The same bits of the film turned up so often that my brother and I would call them the "famous bits". M revoking the licence to kill. Bond snogging Lupe. The underwater fight. Q in the hotel room.
Of course, the fly in this ointment was that I couldn't actually see the film. I was 12, a young looking 12, a very far off puberty, puppy fat faced 12, and there was no way I could pass as 15. It was incredibly frustrating. It came and went to our local cinema and I never got to saw it.
I carried on collecting everything around it of course. My copy of The Making of Licence To Kill became so well used the glue holding the pages in perished and I had to lash it together with treasury tags. My cassette of the soundtrack was played almost constantly, so the track listing is burned in my brain. I had posters on my wall, alongside those from The Official James Bond 007 Movie Poster Book, which I'd chopped up and arranged in strict order. When I got a book token as a prize at school, I spent it on the John Gardner novelisation, which probably wasn't how it was intended to be used.
But I still hadn't seen the film.
By the time I got to see it, on video the weekend it came out - reserved, because there was no way I was missing it - I already knew everything about it. By this point my mum and dad had split up. Looking back I can see how 007 was a way out of dealing with that. I buried myself in the books and the films to get away from the upsets at home. Licence To Kill wasn't just a film; it was a hope. It was almost a talisman. I already knew what people said about it too. That it was too violent. That it wasn't a proper Bond film. That it was too serious.
The first time I watched it, I loved it. About 90%. There were bits of it that didn't feel right - the swearing, which never works, and there was definitely a more serious tone. But I still enjoyed it. It was a new Bond film and I'd finally conquered it. God knows I'd been prepared for it, having read all those pieces about it for two years.
When I finally got it to own on VHS - reversing the sleeve so that it had the blue cover that matched all my other Bond films - I watched it over and over and its differences became less stark. This was definitely a sequel to The Living Daylights. This was definitely still a Bond film.
Over the years it got a bad reputation. The gap between Licence To Kill and GoldenEye made it the film that nearly killed the franchise; similarly, people lazily praised Brosnan by criticising Dalton. Its violence meant it wasn't suitable for mid-afternoon Bank Holidays or, if it was shown, it was hacked to pieces worse than Dario in the cocaine grinder. Fortunately, its reputation has grown. Next to the Craig films it doesn't seem anywhere near as incongruous; in fact, they could do with a bit more laser cameras and barefoot waterskiing. It is extremely well cast, Pam and Sanchez are characters for the ages, and its notoriety as the film that saw Benicio del Toro's potential before anyone else has given it a certain cache. The stunts are big and impressive and explosive - that final tanker blowout is astonishing - and every appearance from Q is a joy.
And even though I didn't see it at the time, this is my Bond film. Licence To Kill was the first time I experienced the thrill and anticipation and butterflies of knowing that somewhere in the world they were making a James Bond film. I still get that thrill now; I check Lashana Lynch's Instagram feed every day and get excited when she's on early morning calls. Licence To Kill is thirty years old, and I'm middle aged now, but it's special. You never forget your first.
Monday, 6 May 2019
Where In The World Is 007?
One of the most important facets of the Bond Formula is international glamour. 007 doesn't pootle round boring old England; he doesn't spend the whole film in LA's dull suburbs like every other action film. He jets across the world, skipping from continent to continent, filling his passports with stamps. Bond comes from an era when just using an aeroplane was considered incredibly exciting.
This raises a conundrum for the filmmakers. How do you show that Bond is now in a new country? How do you convey that shift of location to the audience? You could just whack a caption onscreen, but for a long time they tried to be a bit more imaginative.
At first, the filmmakers bought into that Sexy Air Travel mythos and used the airport itself. Both Dr No and From Russia With Love feature air traffic controllers passing on the information that a plane has just landed in "Kingston, Jamaica" or "Istanbul", saving the audience from having to work it out themselves. The filmmakers then have Our Hero stride manfully through the airport because yes, it's just that thrilling.
From Russia With Love introduced a second method for the audience: the really, really famous landmark. In this case, it was St Mark's Square in Venice:
Goldfinger also features the airport method, with a tannoy announcement about the British United Air Ferries flight to Geneva, but it adds in a third informational tool - the really bloody obvious sign.
For a few films, that was enough. Thunderball has a really, really famous landmark:
You Only Live Twice has a bloody obvious sign:
On Her Majesty's Secret Service has a slightly less famous landmark for its scenes in Portugal, with the Ponte 25 de Abril bridge and the statue of Christ:
And in the absence of really famous Swiss landmarks, it just goes to town with everything else Swiss (snow! Skiing! Bobsleigh! Cable cars! Cow bells! Ice rinks! St Bernards!)
The start of Diamonds Are Forever takes the local colour angle for its rapid fire start. We get two locations, very fast, in the first few minutes, and they have to do it fast. So Tokyo is plinky music and a paper screen and a charming floral arrangement:
Couldn't be more Japanese if it tried. And though we get dialogue saying "Cairo!", could it have been more obvious once we saw a large man in a fez in a casino?
They then doubled up on the location cliches, with not only shots of the Amsterdam canals, but also a voiceover explaining you were in Amsterdam and by the way here's a really famous bridge.
Live and Let Die presented a problem. Its pre-title sequence didn't just cut between three different locations, all without the friendly face of Bond to carry us there. It also had to introduce a location that was entirely fictional - Dr Kananga's home of San Monique. Finally, after eleven years, they caved and introduced captions. New York and New Orleans are shown...
...and then we get our fake location, complete with explanatory text.
Having broken their duck with the captions, the filmmakers still resisted making them part and parcel of the Bond experience. In The Man With The Golden Gun, they returned to bloody obvious signage:
...and helpful voiceovers explaining Bond was about to arrive in Hong Kong (by hydrofoil this time, because aeroplanes are no longer exciting). There was a single caption in the follow up film, The Spy Who Loved Me:
A sub-rule was now established: captions were fine, so long as there was nobody familiar around to explain the location. Since 007 hadn't appeared in the film yet, a Moscow caption was perfectly acceptable. (By the way, what a great font that is). When the exact same shot reappeared in For Your Eyes Only, there was no need for the caption, because it was followed by our old friends General Gogol and Rubelvich so we knew we were in Russia.
Moonraker stuck to a combination of famous locations - there's St Mark's Square again:
...and Bond getting off a Concorde in Rio before being driven past every famous sight in the city. For Your Eyes Only largely moved between Greek Islands, so there was a bit of dialogue, but nothing really to catch your eye.
However, anxiety was setting in. Someone had developed a taste for captions. So while Octopussy's first shot after the titles was a close up of the Berlin Wall, they didn't trust the audience completely to join the dots, and a caption was added:
(I'm going to now complain, loudly and vociferously, that the onscreen captions are not always used on the DVDs, and sometimes they simply whack the closed captioning on there instead. It is ugly and unacceptable). Octopussy also laid a caption for the Kremlin Fine Art Repository, even though John Glen had filmed a big close up of the brass plaque. Octopussy features our first piece of on-screen translated text: the legendary "GET OFF MY BED". Fortunately they trusted the audience to work out that a huge shot of the Taj Mahal meant they were in India.
A View To A Kill returned to the well of famous landmarks - the Eiffel Tower for Paris, the Golden Gate Bridge for San Francisco...
...but it was clear this was proving to be far too much effort. The Living Daylights broke out the captions for Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, and Tangier, as well as Rosika Miklos's "What kind of girl do you think I am?"
Licence To Kill opens with Michael G Wilson telling us we're in Florida...
...and then an entirely necessary caption because we were in a fictional country...
...but that was really the last time we'd be trusted in this way. From GoldenEye onwards, captions became commonplace. It's never made clear where Goldfinger's pre-title sequence is set; it could be any one of a dozen Latin American fleapits. It's not important. We get the gist. GoldenEye, on the other hand, tells us there and then where we are:
We then got our first ever time caption, with "NINE YEARS LATER" appearing after the pre-credits. Still, things got even worse come Tomorrow Never Dies:
That's not even a real place. We got follow up captions for a ship:
...and an office building...
...and Wai Lin having a bit of a chat...
...and another ship...
A Bond film was starting to become a reading test. Never mind the visual beauty, look at those captions! The unofficial "only caption when Bond isn't there" rule went out the window too.
It continued with The World Is Not Enough...
and Die Another Day, though that was those ugly closed captions again so I've not done a screencap of those. A new Bond in Casino Royale didn't mean a new style, and they continued with simply whacking a caption on up there to let you know where we were:
...unless it was St Mark's Square, because they probably figured out you'd already seen it enough in Bond movies so you didn't need a caption.
But the Bond people really lost their mind with Quantum of Solace. Every single shift in location got a caption. Every single one. And not just a few words on screen either - MK12 really went to town and designed beautiful, location-appropriate cards for each one, in a different font every time.
They were undoubtedly gorgeous but were they really necessary? We need to know where 007 is, but not that much. Context can tell us things. M and Tanner were in amongst rainy concrete; obviously that's London. There was a speedboat and a castle and a lake - it was beautiful, yes, but was there any need for us to get a caption telling us it was Talamone, Italy more than, say, where Marie was sunning herself in Diamonds are Forever? It's as if the filmmakers now feel the need to spoonfeed us all the info. And it's boring. At least Welcome to Miami Beach trailing from the back of a plane was a bit glamorous.
This fear that we might stop caring if we don't know exactly where things are happening reached its logical conclusion in Spectre.
That's a shot of the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the River Thames, the South Bank... and they still stuck a caption saying London over the top of it. Gee, do you think?
With any luck Bond 25 will be a bit more trusting. Bit of sun and sand? Jamaica. Cheers. Leaving everything else aside, they're going to Italy again. By this point in time we can pretty much work out it's Italy again. It always is.
This raises a conundrum for the filmmakers. How do you show that Bond is now in a new country? How do you convey that shift of location to the audience? You could just whack a caption onscreen, but for a long time they tried to be a bit more imaginative.
At first, the filmmakers bought into that Sexy Air Travel mythos and used the airport itself. Both Dr No and From Russia With Love feature air traffic controllers passing on the information that a plane has just landed in "Kingston, Jamaica" or "Istanbul", saving the audience from having to work it out themselves. The filmmakers then have Our Hero stride manfully through the airport because yes, it's just that thrilling.
From Russia With Love introduced a second method for the audience: the really, really famous landmark. In this case, it was St Mark's Square in Venice:
Goldfinger also features the airport method, with a tannoy announcement about the British United Air Ferries flight to Geneva, but it adds in a third informational tool - the really bloody obvious sign.
For a few films, that was enough. Thunderball has a really, really famous landmark:
You Only Live Twice has a bloody obvious sign:
On Her Majesty's Secret Service has a slightly less famous landmark for its scenes in Portugal, with the Ponte 25 de Abril bridge and the statue of Christ:
And in the absence of really famous Swiss landmarks, it just goes to town with everything else Swiss (snow! Skiing! Bobsleigh! Cable cars! Cow bells! Ice rinks! St Bernards!)
The start of Diamonds Are Forever takes the local colour angle for its rapid fire start. We get two locations, very fast, in the first few minutes, and they have to do it fast. So Tokyo is plinky music and a paper screen and a charming floral arrangement:
Couldn't be more Japanese if it tried. And though we get dialogue saying "Cairo!", could it have been more obvious once we saw a large man in a fez in a casino?
They then doubled up on the location cliches, with not only shots of the Amsterdam canals, but also a voiceover explaining you were in Amsterdam and by the way here's a really famous bridge.
Live and Let Die presented a problem. Its pre-title sequence didn't just cut between three different locations, all without the friendly face of Bond to carry us there. It also had to introduce a location that was entirely fictional - Dr Kananga's home of San Monique. Finally, after eleven years, they caved and introduced captions. New York and New Orleans are shown...
...and then we get our fake location, complete with explanatory text.
Having broken their duck with the captions, the filmmakers still resisted making them part and parcel of the Bond experience. In The Man With The Golden Gun, they returned to bloody obvious signage:
...and helpful voiceovers explaining Bond was about to arrive in Hong Kong (by hydrofoil this time, because aeroplanes are no longer exciting). There was a single caption in the follow up film, The Spy Who Loved Me:
A sub-rule was now established: captions were fine, so long as there was nobody familiar around to explain the location. Since 007 hadn't appeared in the film yet, a Moscow caption was perfectly acceptable. (By the way, what a great font that is). When the exact same shot reappeared in For Your Eyes Only, there was no need for the caption, because it was followed by our old friends General Gogol and Rubelvich so we knew we were in Russia.
Moonraker stuck to a combination of famous locations - there's St Mark's Square again:
...and Bond getting off a Concorde in Rio before being driven past every famous sight in the city. For Your Eyes Only largely moved between Greek Islands, so there was a bit of dialogue, but nothing really to catch your eye.
However, anxiety was setting in. Someone had developed a taste for captions. So while Octopussy's first shot after the titles was a close up of the Berlin Wall, they didn't trust the audience completely to join the dots, and a caption was added:
(I'm going to now complain, loudly and vociferously, that the onscreen captions are not always used on the DVDs, and sometimes they simply whack the closed captioning on there instead. It is ugly and unacceptable). Octopussy also laid a caption for the Kremlin Fine Art Repository, even though John Glen had filmed a big close up of the brass plaque. Octopussy features our first piece of on-screen translated text: the legendary "GET OFF MY BED". Fortunately they trusted the audience to work out that a huge shot of the Taj Mahal meant they were in India.
A View To A Kill returned to the well of famous landmarks - the Eiffel Tower for Paris, the Golden Gate Bridge for San Francisco...
...but it was clear this was proving to be far too much effort. The Living Daylights broke out the captions for Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, and Tangier, as well as Rosika Miklos's "What kind of girl do you think I am?"
Licence To Kill opens with Michael G Wilson telling us we're in Florida...
...and then an entirely necessary caption because we were in a fictional country...
...but that was really the last time we'd be trusted in this way. From GoldenEye onwards, captions became commonplace. It's never made clear where Goldfinger's pre-title sequence is set; it could be any one of a dozen Latin American fleapits. It's not important. We get the gist. GoldenEye, on the other hand, tells us there and then where we are:
We then got our first ever time caption, with "NINE YEARS LATER" appearing after the pre-credits. Still, things got even worse come Tomorrow Never Dies:
That's not even a real place. We got follow up captions for a ship:
...and an office building...
...and Wai Lin having a bit of a chat...
...and another ship...
A Bond film was starting to become a reading test. Never mind the visual beauty, look at those captions! The unofficial "only caption when Bond isn't there" rule went out the window too.
It continued with The World Is Not Enough...
and Die Another Day, though that was those ugly closed captions again so I've not done a screencap of those. A new Bond in Casino Royale didn't mean a new style, and they continued with simply whacking a caption on up there to let you know where we were:
...unless it was St Mark's Square, because they probably figured out you'd already seen it enough in Bond movies so you didn't need a caption.
But the Bond people really lost their mind with Quantum of Solace. Every single shift in location got a caption. Every single one. And not just a few words on screen either - MK12 really went to town and designed beautiful, location-appropriate cards for each one, in a different font every time.
They were undoubtedly gorgeous but were they really necessary? We need to know where 007 is, but not that much. Context can tell us things. M and Tanner were in amongst rainy concrete; obviously that's London. There was a speedboat and a castle and a lake - it was beautiful, yes, but was there any need for us to get a caption telling us it was Talamone, Italy more than, say, where Marie was sunning herself in Diamonds are Forever? It's as if the filmmakers now feel the need to spoonfeed us all the info. And it's boring. At least Welcome to Miami Beach trailing from the back of a plane was a bit glamorous.
This fear that we might stop caring if we don't know exactly where things are happening reached its logical conclusion in Spectre.
That's a shot of the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the River Thames, the South Bank... and they still stuck a caption saying London over the top of it. Gee, do you think?
With any luck Bond 25 will be a bit more trusting. Bit of sun and sand? Jamaica. Cheers. Leaving everything else aside, they're going to Italy again. By this point in time we can pretty much work out it's Italy again. It always is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)