So hey, Bond 22 aka Quantum of Solace is only like 12 weeks away, assuming it doesn’t get delayed like Harry Potter. (Please God no.) I’ve decided to celebrate/count down by watching every Bond movie I can find and then reviewing it, because that’s what I like to do. If you don’t enjoy it, then the scroll button is right over there, champ. >>>>
My first victim in this series is Dr. No, naturally. It was the first Bond film, and while Goldfinger later defined the genre, Dr. No’s success paved the way.
The film has a fascinating history and a massive legacy, so it’s hard to judge it on its own terms. You almost don’t want to; it doesn’t seem fair to judge it the same way as other movies. And there’s always that nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, it’s not as good as you thought it was.
Dr. No is very much a product of the era from which it came. Movies were different back then. They were written differently, filmed differently, and cut differently. One could say “worse” or “more sloppily,” but you have to remember that they weren’t designed for repeat viewings. The mind could easily gloss over flaws like jarring cuts and bad continuity. In the DVD age, we must remember to be more forgiving.
It’s also difficult for me to watch a Bond movie without comparing it to its source material. Dr. No is not the first James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, but it was considered the most filmable at the time. The story in the film is more or less faithful, with a few additions and subtractions. The character of Honey Ryder is far less developed, since most of her background comes in the form of dialogue that would have dragged in a ’60s action caper. Bond is established: he is smoother, more laconic, and less human than his literary counterpart. The everyman anti-hero has officially become the ubermench.
In Dr. No the novel, Honey Ryder has a broken nose. This is important, and could have been a crucial establishing feature of Bond girls: in Fleming’s writing, they are all deformed. Whether it’s a short leg or a curved spine, they have something that makes them a lame duck and that lights Bond’s fire. But making Ursula Andress less beautiful must have seemed like a crime, so her nose – an important facet of her character, and a byproduct of the brutal rape she only briefly mentions in the film – is gone.
Compare Dr. No to other movies of its time, and it’s not hard to see why it was such a sensation. It’s funny, exciting, and looks fantastic. But it’s also a criminally watered-down version of what it could have been, which makes one wonder if Bond would have been better off getting his first film treatment in the 2000s.
What a different world that would be.
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