NOW… MET THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMAN SPY IN ALL FICTION… JAMES BOND, AGENT 007!
It opens with that famous shot of someone having the world’s most renowned spy in his sights, only to get killed by him in a surprise move. This is the very first James Bond film and that introduction segues into the main title sequence where Monty Norman’s unforgettable music theme, ingeniously arranged by John Barry, is featured – no other tune is able to tell you directly what kind of thrills you’re in for.
Enjoying cigarettes and martinis
Ian Fleming’s novels may have a great following but the occasionally stagnant series of movies surpassed any commercial expectations anyone could have had in the early 1960s. Fleming had some experience from the intelligence community but when he created the character of James Bond, a British Secret Service agent, and the universe he inhabits, he didn’t let reality bother him too much. James enjoyed his cigarettes and martinis (shaken, not stirred) a bit too much and slept with anything in a bra, but still found time and the capacity to save the world from mad supervillains who were itching to start World War III. He was a perfect man, as long as you want your men incapable of commitment and able to kill people in cold blood. Even those of us who love him do recognize a cruel, careless streak in James Bond. Still, as Carly Simon would tell you, nobody does it better…
In this first adventure, agent 007 is shipped off to Jamaica where a colleague of his has been murdered. Maybe he found out a little too much about a mysterious, Chinese scientist called Dr. No who allows no one to come near his home at a small island outside of Jamaica. It turns out that Dr. No is trying to destroy the U.S. space program and that he’s an operative working for S.P.E.C.T.R.E., a terror organization about to make James Bond its prime enemy.
Rough, blue-collar image
All the familiar faces are introduced here – Bond’s long-suffering boss M; Miss Moneypenny, M’s secretary who dreams of an adventure with the wily gentleman spy; Q (who is actually played here by someone other than Desmond Llewelyn, and never referred to as “Q”); and Felix Leiter, the CIA agent who was to be played by many different actors over the years. The choice of Sean Connery as the suave 007 was a rather odd one. Not a very well known actor in those days, he had a somewhat rough, blue-collar image and was not even English but a proud Scot. But a strange thing happened when he donned a tuxedo; his persona gave the character some depth. In Connery’s guise, Bond was an elegant gentleman but with a hint of brutality that was barely noticeable – until you crossed him.
Joseph Wiseman played the villain of this piece, the mad but equally sophisticated and soft-spoken scientist whose hand had been destroyed in an experiment and replaced with a prosthetic one that could smash anything. He’s one of the best Bond baddies ever.
Few Bond girls have made such an impression as Ursula Andress.
Few Bond girls have made such an impression as Ursula Andress. Her first scene is spectacularly memorable, as she rises from the ocean wearing little else but a bikini and a hunting knife, singing “Underneath the Mango Tree”. No wonder Bond joins her in the singing.
A few of the set pieces are quite inventive, especially a sequence where a man who’s visiting Dr. No is shown into a room containing nothing but a chair, a cage with a spider and in the ceiling above the chair a hole covered by iron bars. As rays of sunshine hit the chair and the person sitting in it, the impression is that of a man caught in a spider web. A clever cinematic touch. The series may have been lacking in creativity as it progressed, but Dr. No, the beginning of an era, certainly was not.
Dr. No 1962-U.K.-U.S. 111 min. Color. Produced by Harry Saltzman, Albert R. Broccoli. Directed by Terence Young. Screenplay: Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, Berkely Mather. Novel: Ian Fleming. Music: Monty Norman. Production Design: Ken Adam. Cast: Sean Connery (James Bond), Ursula Andress (Honey Ryder), Joseph Wiseman (Dr. No), Jack Lord, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell.
Trivia: ”Thunderball” was supposed to have been the first novel filmed. Cary Grant and David Niven were briefly considered as 007; Broccoli claimed that Roger Moore was another candidate. When Noël Coward was asked to play Dr. No, he famously replied, ”Dr. No? No! No! No!”; Christopher Lee was also considered for the role, and Julie Christie as Honey Ryder. Followed by 24 sequels, beginning with From Russia With Love (1963) – Bond movie Never Say Never Again is excluded as it was made by other hands.
Last word: “[Connery] didn’t look like James Bond; it was kind of a rough, uncouth character. But there was something about him I was looking for. At that time he was living in a trailer and was quite badly dressed. We made a deal, but United Artists was not in agreement with us. They wanted us to find someone else. But we had looked at a lot of actors, and Sean was the best.” (Broccoli, MI6-HQ.com)
