The cinematic life of one of the most iconic, if not the most iconic, film characters ever celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It’s done so in about the best fashion imaginable with Skyfall, the 23rd official 007 adventure. Skyfall is already considered one of the finest of the series and is already the highest grossing worldwide and domestically with a take inching towards $1 billion dollars.
Added to that, we now have perhaps the best film box collection ever released – “Bond 50”, which I received for Christmas this year. It contains all 22 earlier Bond films, with an amazing 120 hours of extra features — that’s five days worth, folks. The box set even includes a space for Skyfall when it’s released next year.
I knew that when I got the box set, I wanted to do something I’ve never done before: Watch the James Bond adventures in order of release. Of course, I’ve seen them all. Some only once. Some several times. And now that I’ve got this here handy blog, I’m choosing to start a new category – “The 007 Files” – where each blog post will concentrate on each movie. And I do mean the movies – it is certainly necessary to mention that there would be no 007 without author Ian Fleming, who created him. I’ll say now I’ve never read the books and this is a movie blog, not a book blog, damn it!
We start with the first – 1962’s Dr. No.
As a Bond fan, you can’t help but be struck by some of the things not in Dr. No – no pre-title credits sequence. No Q character. No hopping around the globe – in fact, other than a few moments in London, the entire film takes place in Jamaica. Not a lot of wisecracks.
And you can’t help but marvel that none of that really matters. Dr. No is a rock solid film and a wonderful introduction to the character and the Bond universe. The plot is probably one of the most straightforward of any of the 007 films: a British intelligence officer in Jamaica is killed and Bond is sent to investigate. The slain officer was investigating recent mysterious incidences of rocket launches being disrupted in the United States. This introduces Bond to his CIA counterpart, Felix Leiter, a recurring character in 007 world. Bond’s investigating leads him to the villainous Dr. No, who reveals his sinister intentions in true Bond fashion (while dining with 007 and talking about it). He figures – why not? He’s going to kill him anyway.
Speaking of true Bond fashion, while I mentioned several things not in the first movie, a lot of other iconic items we associate with the franchise are: his flirtation with M’s secretary, Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell). His womanizing – he beds a total of three women in the inaugural film. His impeccable sense of fashion (the extras on the Blu Ray reveal that director Terence Young was very instrumental in developing Bond’s “only the best” style fashion). And, of course, his way of often introducing himself. That is how we meet James Bond in Dr. No … eight minutes into the picture in what is surely the most well-known and greatest film introduction in the medium’s history:
Coolest. Intro. Ever. The second coolest in Bond franchise history? Well, that also belongs to this film. When the main Bond girl, Honey Rider, is introduced coming out of the water, it represents what is also one of the most famous film scenes in history. That’s another amazing thing in Dr. No – it probably has the Best bond girl of all time. Simply put, Ursula Andress circa 1962 is just unbelievably stunning and her chemistry with Connery is fantastic.
Gotta love that classic Connery quip: “No. I’m just looking.”
Besides having probably the best Bond girl, we also have, well, the best Bond. Sean Connery. What can you say? It was a stroke of genius casting him. With further blog posts, we’ll delve into Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig. And as great as some of them were and are, when someone says James Bond – I picture Connery. We see him master the role from the get-go in this movie.
The structure of Dr. No is different in the sense that we don’t even meet Dr. No until about an hour and twenty minutes in (the movie’s runs just an hour and fifty). Even Andress doesn’t show up until over halfway through. It kind of reminded me of Javier Bardem’s late entry into Skyfall. Joseph Wiseman, as the film’s title character, does an effective job… even if he has a lot less to do than later 007 baddies. He reveals in that key dinner scene that he’s a member of SPECTRE, which all Bond fans know is a running theme we’ll see time and again.
Watching Dr. No, we must remember that the makers couldn’t have known just how successful the franchise would turn out. It’s the first movie and the budget is relatively low. It doesn’t have the number of action set pieces that we’ve become accustomed to.
What it does have is the best Bond being introduced as Bond. This is the movie that got film audiences to fall in love with the coolest spy on the face of the earth. His character is defined so well in the introductory movie. There is one scene in which he uses that “licence to kill” when he shoots an unarmed villain in cold blood. After all, what’s the use of having a licence to kill if you can’t use it?
It’s got the Bond girl that every Bond girl since has been trying to measure up to… and probably never will.
And, of course, I have to mention John Barry’s unforgettable “James Bond Theme”. What a composition. So much so that we expect to hear it with each new Bond entry. If we didn’t, we’d be disappointed. That includes the shot of Bond walking with the gun barrel bearing down on him that has become iconic and used ever since.
Dr. No would earn $8.1 million dollars in the United States, ranking at the 6th highest grosser that year, with nearly $60 million worldwide.
As the franchise would move forward, the 007 adventures would add some of the previously mentioned hallmarks we’ve come to anticipate and expect. We’ll discuss those with each upcoming entry in this blog series. But what might be the most beloved films series of all time doesn’t become that without a memorable start. And Dr. No provides quite a memorable start.
Here are the facts:
Film: Dr. No
US Release: May 8, 1963 (October 1962 in the UK)
Director: Terence Young
Screenplay: Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather
Bond: Sean Connery
Main Villain: Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman)
Main Bond Girl: Honey Rider (Ursula Andress)
Theme Song: “James Bond Theme” – composer: John Barry
Budget: $1 million
Worldwide Box Office: $59.6 million
My James Bond blog series will return in “The 007 Files: From Russia With Love”
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