Could you hack the James Bond challenge? -- The Times
Catherine Nixey settles down to the six ages of Bond
Times photographer, Jon Enoch
Daniel Craig as James Bond in Skyfall
Francois Duhamel/Sony Pictures/AP
Sean Connery in From Russia with Love
Danjaq/Eon/UA / The Kobal Collection
George Lazenby, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Danjaq/Eon/UA / The Kobal Collection
It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it: how I watched all 22 past James Bond movies, fortified only by martinis
Martinis will almost certainly be drunk, as they have been drunk around 17
times before. And when the new Bond opens today it goes without saying that
ladies will be kissed, as 61 or so have been kissed so far. And, without
having seen a second of the film, you know that a good many baddies will be
smote, as 220 odd have been smote already.
But as Skyfall opens the excitement around it is caused by much more
than its impressive vital statistics - or, to use a Roger Moore-ish pun, the
vital statistics of its sumptuous heroines. Because Bond is far more to this
country than a series of chase scenes or a multibillion-dollar franchise. It
is also, after the passage of 50 years, 23 films - plus the two “unofficial”
ones - six Bonds and TV repeats beyond number, much more than simply a film.
Bond is part of what it means to be British.
So if Bond is what it means to be British, then what precisely does it mean to
be Bond? To find out I have come to a hotel room in Central London to watch
every Bond except Skyfall in an end-to-end “Bond Marathon” that will
last 45 hours and 53 minutes. Much like Bond when he is trapped in Dr No’s
lair, I have every luxury - fluffy towels, martinis, nuts in jars - but
cannot leave.
It is, I must say, slightly daunting territory. Over the years Bond has
attracted some considerable study. Minds as great as Umberto Eco’s have
written treatises on Bond that include phrases such as: “We shall try,
therefore, to distinguish such a narrative structure at five levels . . .”
So although I am not a Bond novice - no one who grew up in the Eighties with
an older brother could be - I am certainly no aficionado.
There is, I should also add, no particular intellectual reason to watch them
back to back - apart from the Mallory-ish reason that, since Sky launched a
channel purely devoted to them, they are there and you can. I am here for
the more pressing reason that my editor seemed unlikely to let me have five
days off to watch telly.
So one Friday evening I sit, martini No 1 in hand, ready to watch Bond No 1
appear. Appositely, the hotel I am in was once used by the Ministry of
Defence. Even more appositely, it is deep in the grey Whitehall heartland
where Ian Fleming worked during the war and where much of the action of Skyfall
takes place. I sit back, take a sip and begin.
And the first thing I discover is that Bond is, in his first film Dr
No, not very Bond-like at all. The car chase is hopelessly slow and
perfectly plausible; Sean Connery’s favourite “gadget” is a Beretta pistol
and barely anybody in a boiler suit dies. My doubts, though, are as nothing
compared to the film’s first critics, one of whom described Connery’s Bond
as a “great big hairy marshmallow” and a “blithering bounder”. Even Fleming,
the creator of Bond, is said to have described the film as “Dreadful. Simply
dreadful”.
But Bond the franchise proved even more adept at survival than Bond the spy.
Through a mixture of car chases and charm, shaken with excellent ticket
sales and stirred with a dash of presidential approval (JFK was reputedly a
fan), Dr No escaped its critical nemeses and survived to live not
only another day but, 40 years later, to die one. And, in the intervening
years, to become much more Bondlike.
By the time You Only Live Twice appears so have some of the more
Bond-like traits started to emerge; the gadgets are better, more things go
boom and there is a positive glut of people in boiler suits to be killed.
Bond himself has evolved, too. There is considerably less blithering, for
one, and even if he is still, aesthetically speaking, a hairy marshmallow he
is now a very confident, charismatic hairy marshmallow. Which makes all the
difference.
And while I wouldn’t say he was the best Bond, he certainly had the best car:
the Aston Martin DB5.
But as the Connery era passes into the Roger Moore era (with a mercifully
brief blip for the George Lazenby one) I realise that the evolution of Bond
is the least of what these films show. Watch every Bond in sequence and you
can track the social progress of the century through a single character. Not
to mention through his women.
Actually, you could track the social progress of the century through their
underwear alone. Were I of a mathematical bent I suspect I could invent some
algorithm involving the pointiness of bras divided by average acreage of
pants, all multiplied by the (astonishingly high) number of times a woman
appears in nothing but heels and a bikini.
But at this point my judgment becomes less clear. During that period in which
the Bond franchise jumped the shark and Jaws devoured it with his bionic
teeth, I fell asleep. Or possibly passed out from boredom. Because while I
wouldn’t agree with the consensus that Connery is the best Bond, I fear that
Moore is the worst.
I wake to discover myself in the Timothy Dalton era and learn that poor Dalton
is a very unfairly maligned Bond; edgy, more realistic and a little
inscrutable. Then, just two films later, we are into the reign of Pierce
Brosnan and, better still, of Judi Dench as M.
Forty or so hours after I began, the magnificent modern-era Daniel Craig Bonds
begin. And we come to a Bond who is, without doubt, the best, a Bond whose
violence actually looks violent. A Bond who couldn’t give a damn about
whether his martini is shaken or stirred. And, best of all, a Bond whose
women never wear bikinis with heels.
Almost two days after I began I leave the hotel. I walk through Whitehall; a
Whitehall where in Fleming’s day women were secretaries and where now they
work as the equal of men. A Whitehall where it is no longer acceptable, as
it was in Fleming’s day, to be racist, or sexist, or jingoistic - at least
in theory.
And I realise that if Bond was sexist and misogynistic and reflexively
jingoistic that’s only because we were too. They say you get the leaders you
deserve. In Britain, we get the Bond we deserve, too.
Oh, James, what a big CV you have
Dr No, 1962
The first Bond, James Bond. The first martini. The first introduction
of Ursula Andress to an international market. The first time that nuclear
radiation has been washed off with a quick shower.
From Russia with Love, 1963
Has everything one could want in a Bond: Russian ladies with fat
calves; sultry heroines with thin calves; and, um, belly-dancing gypsies.
Goldfinger, 1964
Remembered by men as the one in which the gadgets really start to appear.
Remembered by feminists for Bond’s forced “seduction” of Pussy Galore.
Thunderball, 1965
The hairy marshmallow gets a jet pack. Not his finest hour.
You Only Live Twice, 1967
Those who live in paper houses probably shouldn’t become spies: Bond learns
the perils of walls that you can stab through.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969
Bond girl Diana Rigg gets rather a hard time of it: having been knocked
unconscious by her father for disobedience, she then marries Bond, only to
get shot shortly afterwards.
Diamonds Are Forever, 1971
Baddies try to defeat Bond in his hotel with an exploding pudding (“bombe
surprise”, anyone?), having staged a diversion with some truly
alarming-looking hairstyles.
Live and Let Die, 1973
The first Moore film. Also the first - but alas not the last - time that a
multi-tiered wedding cake will be destroyed during a high-speed car chase.
The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974
More flouting of safety regulations as Britt Ekland spends a lot of time
walking around a power station in a bikini.
The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977
The spy who also, by this point, loved gadgets. Notable ones in this film are
a ski pole that fires bullets, and a car that turns into a submarine.
Moonraker, 1979
Moore wrestles an anaconda. Boiler suits come into their own. Jaws gets a
girlfriend. Let’s move on.
For Your Eyes Only, 1981
Features several extremely flabby chase scenes that are all redeemed by one
truly clammy-palmed chase scene in which Bond climbs up to St Cyril’s
mountaintop monastery.
Octopussy, 1983
Showcases a fight on a moving train. But rather more memorable for the leather
waistcoat worn by Moore.
A View to a Kill, 1985
The second time that a tiered wedding cake gets it in a high-speed chase. Oh,
how we roared.
The Living Daylights, 1987
The first Dalton film, in which the splendid but much maligned Bond struggles
with nasty Russians and an exploding shed.
Licence to Kill, 1989
Bond learns, once again, why giant shredders are not to be messed with.
Goldeneye, 1995
Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond. And, more to the point, Judi Dench’s. Feminism
starts to make its mark.
Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997
In an odd moment of acting Venn - Judi Dench is joined on set by her As
Time Goes By co-star Geoffrey Palmer.
The World is Not Enough, 1999
Feminism marches on: in this Bond we have a female nuclear physicist.
Albeit one in hotpants.
Die Another Day, 2002
Halle Berry demos the practical, all-weather benefits of leather catsuits.
Casino Royale, 2006
The start of the Craig era ushers in fights that actually look painful; Bond
girls in bikinis only near water, and the revelation that a chair and
a knotted rope provide quite enough jeopardy for any man.
Quantum of Solace, 2008
Bond struggles with a double agent. And with a hotel that appears, for reasons
never fully explained, to have been plumbed with hydrogen.