I keep hearing over and over again that Sean Connery was the best James Bond and still is. Yet of all the actors who played Bond, I have only seen a few of his. Until yesterday, the only ones I had seen were “From Russia With Love” which is all you need to show me of how great Connery was, and the rogue Bond movie called “Never Say Never Again.” The Bond that I really got weaned on as a kid was Roger Moore who played the character like a flamboyant playboy who got caught up in events that you would think he had no business being in. But somehow, he managed to get the job done with great special effects to match.
Yesterday, the New Beverly Cinema (one of my most favorite theaters in the LA area) had a double feature of the first two Bond movies ever made: “Dr. No” & “From Russia With Love.” I had seen bits and pieces of “Dr. No” before, but never the whole way through. Watching this film today, it kind of seems like an average Bond with the megalomaniac villain bent on world domination. I was starting to get sick of that in the last few of the Pierce Brosnan Bonds. It helps to keep in mind though what action movies were like before James Bond came along. Compared to “Dr. No,” they were nowhere as gritty. Shooting female characters in a film was a no no back then, and this Bond quickly did that unwritten rule away. There was a lot more going on than just your average good guy here. I can’t believe it took me this long to get around to seeing this one. While it may appear to be something of an average film for those seeing it today, “Dr. No” was in many ways a groundbreaking film which led to a franchise that has lasted longer than just about any other.
OK, I am in agreement, nobody played James Bond better than Sean Connery (Daniel Craig is right up there though). Sean’s first appearance as 007 in the film was brilliantly shot to where you could see him at the card playing table, but you didn’t see his face until he uttered some of the most famous lines in movie history:
“Bond. James Bond.”
My dad is always kept telling me that what made Sean so great in this role is that he was so believable in how he could romance a woman one second, and then come around and slap her when she was holding back information from him. There was a raw danger to the character that Connery brought to the role, and he set the bar almost impossibly high for others to match what he did. The beginning of the movie where he lets a driver take him to his destination, even though he knows that the driver is up to no good, shows how quickly Bond can change from being suave and debonair to lethal and dangerous in a second. This Bond (for the most part anyway) keeps his cool and manages to get his way in the end. The bad guys think they have him, but that’s what he wants them to think.
It is endlessly interesting to see how far the Bond movies have come from watching this one. “Dr. No” still remains the only Bond movie never to have a pre-titles scene like all the others. It just goes right into the whole looking through the scope as Bond shoots right at us. The titles look cheesy today as “Dr. No” and “007” are put everywhere on the screen. It was the first of many opening credits sequences designed by Maurice Binder, and this one is the most disjointed of the bunch. It goes from the unforgettable Monty Norman theme we all know to some other song while dancers dance all over the screen to three men superimposed over the credits to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.” The audience at the New Beverly laughed this up a bit, and I couldn’t help but laugh myself. Things have changed a lot since this one came out.
Seeing the flirting relationship between Bond and Miss Moneypenny (the late Lois Maxwell) here makes me miss the banter these two characters have had over the series. Miss Moneypenny was not in “Casino Royale,” and I have no idea if we will see her again in the future, but seeing these characters here for the first time reminded me of how great and fun their banter was until M buzzed her so that things could stay professional.
Bond in this film actually gets to bed several different ladies instead of just one. Connery makes seduction look so easy to do. The fact that it isn’t in real life is utterly frustrating. That lucky bastard had a selection before he came to meet the first Bond girl, Honey Rider played by Ursula Andress whose entrance in her flesh colored bikini is still one for the ages. Her entrance also marked the first time Bond actually sang in a movie. It also hasn’t happened again since this one. I can’t help but wonder if that was a good or bad thing. I can’t quite picture Timothy Dalton singing “Thunderball.”
One of Bond’s first death-defying moments in movie history involved a tarantula, and just typing out that word sends shivers down me spine! UGGH! This may have been why I never got around to seeing this movie earlier. Those damn things creep me out like nothing else. Get that thing away from me! Easily one of the scariest moments in any Bond movie, the tension escalates so quickly that the rest of the movie can’t quite match it. It wouldn’t be the last time we saw these things in a Bond movie. My brother covered my eyes during that one scene in “Octopussy.” The less said the better.
Watching “Dr. No” was fun, and it is an excellent Bond movie in a lot of ways. Time has not been exactly kind to it though. We can see the green screen being used, so we have to snicker some. The pace is a lot more leisurely, and that would not be the case in any Bond movie today. That Bond theme is played throughout the movie endlessly to where you almost get sick of it. The music scores for the future films kept building up the different themes in inherent in the story. It also got a little ridiculous as the Bond theme started to sound all disco.
The print that the New Beverly Cinema had of “Dr. No” was in peak condition despite being separated in parts. It was actually a recent printing down for the occasion of United Artists’ 90th Anniversary, so it was great to see it on the big screen in this version. From here, the Bond series really had nowhere to go but up. The formula was more or less perfected with the next one ‘From Russia With Love,” and that has more or less been fooled around with over the years. I enjoyed “Dr. No,” but I think it laid groundwork for better Bond films to come. It’s not perfect, but it was still groundbreaking, and it is still exciting and enjoyable.
***1/2 out of ****
Yesterday, the New Beverly Cinema (one of my most favorite theaters in the LA area) had a double feature of the first two Bond movies ever made: “Dr. No” & “From Russia With Love.” I had seen bits and pieces of “Dr. No” before, but never the whole way through. Watching this film today, it kind of seems like an average Bond with the megalomaniac villain bent on world domination. I was starting to get sick of that in the last few of the Pierce Brosnan Bonds. It helps to keep in mind though what action movies were like before James Bond came along. Compared to “Dr. No,” they were nowhere as gritty. Shooting female characters in a film was a no no back then, and this Bond quickly did that unwritten rule away. There was a lot more going on than just your average good guy here. I can’t believe it took me this long to get around to seeing this one. While it may appear to be something of an average film for those seeing it today, “Dr. No” was in many ways a groundbreaking film which led to a franchise that has lasted longer than just about any other.
OK, I am in agreement, nobody played James Bond better than Sean Connery (Daniel Craig is right up there though). Sean’s first appearance as 007 in the film was brilliantly shot to where you could see him at the card playing table, but you didn’t see his face until he uttered some of the most famous lines in movie history:
“Bond. James Bond.”
My dad is always kept telling me that what made Sean so great in this role is that he was so believable in how he could romance a woman one second, and then come around and slap her when she was holding back information from him. There was a raw danger to the character that Connery brought to the role, and he set the bar almost impossibly high for others to match what he did. The beginning of the movie where he lets a driver take him to his destination, even though he knows that the driver is up to no good, shows how quickly Bond can change from being suave and debonair to lethal and dangerous in a second. This Bond (for the most part anyway) keeps his cool and manages to get his way in the end. The bad guys think they have him, but that’s what he wants them to think.
It is endlessly interesting to see how far the Bond movies have come from watching this one. “Dr. No” still remains the only Bond movie never to have a pre-titles scene like all the others. It just goes right into the whole looking through the scope as Bond shoots right at us. The titles look cheesy today as “Dr. No” and “007” are put everywhere on the screen. It was the first of many opening credits sequences designed by Maurice Binder, and this one is the most disjointed of the bunch. It goes from the unforgettable Monty Norman theme we all know to some other song while dancers dance all over the screen to three men superimposed over the credits to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.” The audience at the New Beverly laughed this up a bit, and I couldn’t help but laugh myself. Things have changed a lot since this one came out.
Seeing the flirting relationship between Bond and Miss Moneypenny (the late Lois Maxwell) here makes me miss the banter these two characters have had over the series. Miss Moneypenny was not in “Casino Royale,” and I have no idea if we will see her again in the future, but seeing these characters here for the first time reminded me of how great and fun their banter was until M buzzed her so that things could stay professional.
Bond in this film actually gets to bed several different ladies instead of just one. Connery makes seduction look so easy to do. The fact that it isn’t in real life is utterly frustrating. That lucky bastard had a selection before he came to meet the first Bond girl, Honey Rider played by Ursula Andress whose entrance in her flesh colored bikini is still one for the ages. Her entrance also marked the first time Bond actually sang in a movie. It also hasn’t happened again since this one. I can’t help but wonder if that was a good or bad thing. I can’t quite picture Timothy Dalton singing “Thunderball.”
One of Bond’s first death-defying moments in movie history involved a tarantula, and just typing out that word sends shivers down me spine! UGGH! This may have been why I never got around to seeing this movie earlier. Those damn things creep me out like nothing else. Get that thing away from me! Easily one of the scariest moments in any Bond movie, the tension escalates so quickly that the rest of the movie can’t quite match it. It wouldn’t be the last time we saw these things in a Bond movie. My brother covered my eyes during that one scene in “Octopussy.” The less said the better.
Watching “Dr. No” was fun, and it is an excellent Bond movie in a lot of ways. Time has not been exactly kind to it though. We can see the green screen being used, so we have to snicker some. The pace is a lot more leisurely, and that would not be the case in any Bond movie today. That Bond theme is played throughout the movie endlessly to where you almost get sick of it. The music scores for the future films kept building up the different themes in inherent in the story. It also got a little ridiculous as the Bond theme started to sound all disco.
The print that the New Beverly Cinema had of “Dr. No” was in peak condition despite being separated in parts. It was actually a recent printing down for the occasion of United Artists’ 90th Anniversary, so it was great to see it on the big screen in this version. From here, the Bond series really had nowhere to go but up. The formula was more or less perfected with the next one ‘From Russia With Love,” and that has more or less been fooled around with over the years. I enjoyed “Dr. No,” but I think it laid groundwork for better Bond films to come. It’s not perfect, but it was still groundbreaking, and it is still exciting and enjoyable.
***1/2 out of ****
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