Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The Man with the Golden Touch: How the Bond Films Conquered the World
by Sinclair McKay
New York, NY: Overlook, 2011
400 pp., $33

For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond
by Ben MacIntyre
London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2008
224 pp., 20£

The fictitious super spy James Bond escapes all, but we cannot escape him. Blame that fact on his creator, Ian Fleming, who, if he had not died in 1962, would now be 103. Two recent books pay homage to Fleming; or, rather, one celebrates the author, and the other analyzes the success of the EON Productions films, which are, for the most part, merely ‘based on’ Fleming’s prose and plots.
In The Man with the Golden Touch: How the Bond Films Conquered the World, British writer Sinclair McKay considers each of the 22 films that he terms the “James Bond epic,” from Dr. No (1962) to Quantum of Solace (2008), to decide how well each flick succeeds as entertainment (or art), and also explain why the series has lasted nigh 50 years. McKay is a fan. Yes, some Bond films and actors are better than others, but he finds something positive about each one, and he defends each Bond actor for his strengths.
But he also scorns bad acting, fake action scenes, silly seductions, and opaque plots. Too, some of the flicks can be accused of racism, and all are guilty of sexism. What makes this collection of, really, extended and recherché film reviews so much fun, is McKay’s ready wit and refusal to be circumspect, plus his obvious pleasure in this caper genre. For McKay, the Bond series is “a big-budget Bayeux Tapestry that encapsulates everything from fashion to geopolitics.” It is “the purest expression of the entertainment possibilities of the big screen.” It is “bangs and flashes and sex and kinetic energy.”  It is “bright colour and arresting images thrown up by intriguing locations.”
The films could also be classed as “cult” flicks, “not only in the sense of appealing to fannish enthusiasts, but also in the sense that they are built up of single [distinct] elements that are just as important as the prevailing narrative.” Those elements include the score and title song, which are often masterpieces, from Shirley Bassey’s rendition of “Goldfinger” to Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World” (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service); and there are the villains, often sporting some outrageous, physical marker, from the steel teeth of Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me) to the blood-weeping Le Chiffre (Casino Royale).
And what about the girls, the gadgets, the gunplay? As McKay says, with flagrant enthusiasm, after seeing a Bond extravaganza, “No one feels cheated, no one feels left out, everyone leaves the cinema with a smile on their face, feeling that they have had a terrific night out.” McKay is a smart read of social contexts, and his insights are as accurate as they are often acerbic or just comic. True: the critically applauded French film, Last Year at Marienbad (1961), “might not have seemed so lengthy if it had featured psychopathic lesbians and garotting wires concealed in wristwatches.”
Yes, Sean Connery exudes “insouciance”; but Roger Moore’s “great talent for light comedy” makes him just as watchable. In the end, the Bond series is about style given a memorable unveiling before it is put away to make room for the next ‘new’ thing. These films are, to refer to Ezra Pound, The Cantos of the cinema. Watching them, we are always watching EON Productions “Make it new.” Indeed, the Bond films are showy; they are huge adventures that yield belly laughs as well as unforgettable, vivid bloodshed.

Ben MacIntyre’s For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond is a photo-packed examination of the parallels between author Fleming and character Bond, produced to accompany an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum that was staged in honour of Fleming’s 2008 centenary. MacIntyre shifts easily and irreverently among examinations of Fleming’s biography, Bond’s novelistic life, and the related but different Bond who occupies the cinema.
We learn, among other things, that Fleming was a womanizer, but his novel Bond is serially monogamous, while the cinema Bond is a definite playboy. Here’s one case where the movies are closer to the author’s life than they are to that of his invention. MacIntyre is pithy and witty: “Fleming understood the extraordinary attraction of ‘things’. Not just material things …, but things that did things….” If gaudy spectacle and a deathless spy interest you, these books are must-reads. Shaken, not stirred.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7