The Beauty and Ugliness of James Bond

Promotional artwork for Dr. No, the first James Bond film, showcasing the attributes of 007's female interests

The Oxford Living Dictionary defines beauty as "a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight" and ugliness as "the quality of being unpleasant or repulsive in appearance." Without a doubt, in over 55 years of history the cinematic James Bond franchise has played with beauty and ugliness in 24 official movies. Even the two unofficial films, Casino Royale from 1967 and Never Say Never Again in 1983 have echoed these topics, the first one prominently teasing audiences with a tattooed woman holding two guns. 

The good looks of Sean Connery in 1962:
Dana Broccoli's female instincts told
her she was the right man for the job.

In Ian Fleming's novels, Bond was described as a handsome man resembling musician Hoagy Carmichael. The beauty of his women were thoroughly described by the author (their hair, skin, eyes and body shape) as -by opposition- the ugliness of the villains with their bad plastic surgeries or swollen heads. The first cinematic Bond adventure Dr. No, rather faithful to the source material, has respected the Fleming standards for beauty with a handsome and virile protagonist like Sean Connery and three handsome girls coming from different parts of the world: British gambler and playgirl Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson), the exotic and deadly oriental secretary Miss Taro (Zena Marshall) and the Jamaican native Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress). The film's nemesis were represented by the "three blind mice" assassins, corrupt Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson) and the evil mastermind Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), who of course couldn't match the elegance and physical traits of Sean Connery's 007. Something different, tough, could be said of his future opponents Red Grant (Robert Shaw) and Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) in From Russia With Love and Thunderball, who could perfectly match Bond's poise and looks. 

An interesting insight on how beauty was of the essence for producers Albert R "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for their shaping of the long-lasting 007 series was the way Sean Connery and Ursula Andress landed in their roles. Cubby and his wife Dana were watching Darby O' Gill and The Little People and when Connery had appeared in the film Dana thought he was an incredible handsome man. The producer followed the female instincts of his wife and on November 3rd, 1961, the then little-known Sean Connery was announced as the star of the adaptation of Ian Fleming's Dr. No. In the case of Andress, it was producer Harry Saltzman who felt absolutely stunned by a photo of the girl in a wet shirt (taken by her husband John Derek) and that eased her way into the role of the native woman Bond meets in Crab Key who doesn't become his love interest until the very last seconds of the film. 

Claudine Auger in a photoshoot for
Thunderball, showing the deadly
side of her character Domino.

Flash forward 55 years later and it looks as if beauty was an uncomfortable word when promoting the Bond films. Since the late 1980s and particularly in the 2010s, probably because of the resurgence of feminist movements, the intelligence of the Bond girls (sorry, Bond women) is emphasized to the point every one of the female leads in the series has become "Bond's equal": a cliché that now feels as a publicity tactic more than an actual definition of the new generation of Bond's ladies. Maybe only Camille Montes of Quantum of Solace can fit the description and only Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me or Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies can more faithfully fulfill that definition. The other Bond women could be an intellectual or emotional match or even have some knowledge of handguns. But that doesn't make them "Bond's equal" for sure. 

Probably some people would think Bond girls are mere sexual objects when they're not. They never really were and the James Bond saga has empowered much more than other action films. Take into account Honey Ryder wielding her knife and trying to defend herself of No's guards, or Domino Derval (Claudine Auger) saving Bond's life at the end of Thunderball. In You Only Live Twice, all three girls were far more than a pretty body or face: two skilled Japanese secret agents (Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama) and a deadly redhead vixen (Karin Dor) who pretends to commit to Bond's charm only to attempt against his life shortly later. Don't forget how Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) and Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto) dared to betray their dangerous lovers in The Man With The Golden Gun and Licence To Kill, risking their lives to help Bond (Andrea is ultimately terminated by a golden bullet). A good example is also given in The Living Daylights, where Kamran Shah (Art Malik) and his Afghan men look astonished as Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo) rides her horse in the desert with an AK-47 rifle in hand to help Bond, surrounded by the Russian army. Needless to say the Afghan troops weren't used to a woman in their troops and -much less- a woman disobeying a man and going on her own. 

Prelude of an all-girl fight: Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike)
threatens Jinx (Halle Berry) in Die Another Day.

Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) from The World Is Not Enough is a proof that female leads in the Bond films have been empowered by the James Bond series: she used both men for fools: her former kidnapper terrorist Renard (Robert Carlyle) and Bond himself, who believed her to be Renard's target for a second time and a woman who lost her in a terrorist attack, when she was actually the mastermind who employed and seduced Renard to kill her father in revenge for not paying her ransom. The following film, Die Another Day, is the first 007 film to feature a well-choreographed fight between the good and the evil Bond girl, and Pierce Brosnan's 007 debut in GoldenEye had an action scene only with the leading lady Natalya (Izabella Scorupco) escaping from all kind of explosions and finding her way out of the doomed workplace attacked by General Ourumov (Gottfried John) and Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen). 

Daniel Craig in a publicity still for 2015's
SPECTRE. His muscular body was displayed
prominently in his James Bond films.

"I wonder why I'm not seeing people comparing six different actors who played James Bond," said an Alicia Vikander fan Twitter account lately complaining on the fuzz provoked by those who preferred Angelina Jolie over the Swedish actress as Lara Croft in the recent Tomb Raider reboot. However, the six men who played James Bond were compared through their looks and acting skills ever since Sean Connery was replaced by George Lazenby in his one shot 007 flick On Her Majesty's Secret Service, released in 1969, almost half a century ago. Some said Lazenby was handsome but not in the scale of Connery, others that he was a complete failure and talked in retrospect of a "forgotten Bond". Roger Moore was labelled as attractive, but it was always pointed out his lack of virility and strength in comparison to Connery, particularly in his last three films where -despite looking very good at 57- he was "too old to play Bond". Then came Timothy Dalton, who received the tag of being too tight for the role and some humour was needed for Bond. Lately, Dalton was very much vindicated by the fans, but there were those who considered his second and last appearance Licence To Kill killed the franchise. The opposite happened with Pierce Brosnan: applauded and admired during his four films where he reinvigorated Bond as an action hero for the 1990s and the new millennium, but now slammed as being too cheesy, soft-spoken and slim built for a man of action as his replacement, the muscular Daniel Craig, who even tolerated the dishonour of a web site boycotting his choice as the rebooted 007 of Casino Royale. 

Ian Fleming's James Bond always had thoughts for appearances and looks: Donovan Grant's Windsor knot on his tie gives him bad feelings in From Russia, With Love and he suggests Honeychile Ryder not to fix her broken nose with plastic surgery in Dr. No. Moreover, in the John Gardner novel For Special Services, he comforts Nena Bismaquer after learning she had one breast removed. For Bond, reason is not always the answer and a lot is given to intuition, that's why someone's look, attitude, beauty or ugliness can tell him something. 

In the case of the EON Production's franchise, despite their political correct production notes, they always knew a reason why men go to watch James Bond films are the attractive women like Ursula Andress, Jill St. John or Britt Ekland. And a reason why women watched them is because they also felt attracted for the physique of Sean Connery, George Lazenby and Daniel Craig, not forgetting the bon mots of Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore and the virility of Timothy Dalton. 

Never judge a book for its cover, they say. But it's always better when a good book has a great looking cover indeed. 

Nicolás Suszczyk 

'Red Sparrow': From Russia, without love

Poster artwork for Red Sparrow, featuring Jennifer Lawrence as Dominika Egorova.

Nostalgics of the good old days where "Russia was the enemy" may be pleased with the cinematic adaptation of Jason Matthews' Red Sparrow, starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Francis Lawrence, from the Hunger Games saga and with no relation with the leading actress except directing her for a fourth time in a cinematic production.

Vanya offers Dominika a place in the Russian SVR

Any good Ian Fleming fan would notice that the essence of the film is reminiscent to From Russia With Love, dealing with a civillian sent to a training school to become an operative whose primary body is her sex and body. While Fleming's heroine Tatiana Romanova worked for the state in the 1950s Soviet Union and was sent to seduce and turn James Bond to the Russians, Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) faces a more complex situation.

A Bolshoi ballerina who is incapacitated after an accident on stage, Dominika might lose her main income and the pension paid by the theatre, which includes the modest apartment she shares with her ill mother (Joely Richardson). Feeling she has reached a dead end, she is forced to accept the help of her lascivious and greedy uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), a member of the SVR (Russia's secret service). First he asks her to perform a small job, to investigate Dmitri Ustinov (Kristof Konrad) a corrupt politican who ends up almost getting raping her. She is saved by a Russian operative sent by her uncle, who brutally strangles the aggressor, but since the SVR wants no witnesses of the death of Ustinov -a word that directly involves Dominika- she feels forced to integrate the ranks of Mother Russia's Red Sparrows, a group of women exhaustively trained (phisically, emotionally and psychologically) to get into the mind of their targets, discover their witnesses, seduce and kill them.

Dominika's target, in this case, Nate Nash (another From Russia With Love connection in the name) a CIA operative assigned to protect a mole in the Russian intelligence known as 'Marble'. Joel Edgerton's character is very good agent for the Americans but is known to have some vices, like drinking in excess, hiring prostitutes and watching pornographic videos with frequency - a situation that may facilitate Dominika's job. Nevertheless, she has started questioning the bases of her devotion to the state and sees in Nate the posibility of a escape route for her and her mother from Vanya and the SVR. 

CIA's Nate Nash comforts Dominika.
Is he a trustworthy escape route?

There are those who may agree that Red Sparrow is not a perfect movie and it has a rather morbid taste for violence and sadism. Over its 160 minutes a good deal of blood ("ten pints of blood" one could say to add more Fleming references) is splashed on the screen. It is, perhaps, the kind of film no-one should invite her girlfriend to watch unless she's really into the spy genre and has a very good stomach. However, the action scenes are not continuous and there is more space for intrigue and psychological introspection, a good example is offered by the scene where the Sparrows are trained by a Rosa Klebb-like matron (Charlotte Rampling) and are ordered to perform overtoned tasks as practising oral sex to fellow Russian soldiers because their body belongs "to the state". The kind of situations that are morally questionable but interesting to get us inside the cruel world of an agency who had their roots in the old KGB or NKDV, yesterday's enemy of civilized order. It may feel offensive to some viewers but perhaps the trick is, indeed, that the audience could be offended by Russia so that we can understand why America (and agent Nash) is the only salvation for this poor and extorted girl.

Jennifer Lawrence proves to be a very effective choice for the main role as a woman who is not the femme fatale the poster campaign for the film tried to sell and it's actually victim of her own country instead of a "black widow" victimizer of the opposition. Charlotte Rampling and Matthias Schoenaerts stand out in very believable performances as the deadly representatives of Mother Russia, while Ukranian actor Sergej Onopko perfectly embodies the lethal Simyonov, a skilled torturer that resembles all the dangers of Russia previously described in the Ian Fleming, Len Deighton and John Le Carré stories. Past meets present.

The technical aspects of the film are very well handled, particularly the use of Mozart and Tchaikovsky compositions and the score by James Newton Howard whose overture resembles Lalo Schiffrin's work for The Fourth Protocol (1987) and enhances drama with the use of violins and other wind instruments. The departments of Jo Willems (cinematography) and Maria Djurkjovic (production design) can transport the viewer to Moscow and Vienna making him forget he's actually located in the middle of a theatre.

Red Sparrow is an entertaining story dealing with intrigue and psychology. A story about survival and resistance more than an action film. A story about relatives, love interests, personal interests and Russian state dealing with all these intimate assets.

Nicolás Suszczyk

The Biggest and The Best: Remembering Lewis Gilbert

Lewis Gilbert directing Roger Moore in Moonraker (1979), his third and last James Bond film.

On February 23, 2018, director Lewis Gilbert passed away at the age of 97. He was the first "drama director" of the James Bond series, a path later followed by filmmakers like Michael Apted, Marc Forster and Sam Mendes. Curiously, while the later three "drama directors" embraced their genre and filled the characterization of Bond with complex internal conflicts about his feelings or dedication to duty, Gilbert tought differently.

Hired to direct 1967's You Only Live Twice (the first "last" Bond film starring Sean Connery) a year after the success of Alfie, starring Michael Caine, Gilbert said that 007 was meant to be a big entertainment and full of escapism without too much drama. And while Twice offers a rather poignant scene where Japanese secret service agent Aki accidentally swallows a poison meant for Bond and dies, the film would be the first extravagant Bond movie where the villain plots World War Three to his benefice, operates from a hi-tech lair (in this case, the interior of a volcano) and is run down after an epic battle between Bond's "army" (Tanaka's ninjas) and the opposing forces of SPECTRE guards.

1995 video artwork for The Spy Who Loved Me,
showcasing the climatic battle behind Bond

He wouldn't return to the series until the Roger Moore era with The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, released in 1977 and 1979, respectively. When Ian Fleming specified that the story of his 1962 novel (written in first person from the point of a kidnapped girl saved by Bond) should be avoided except of its title, screenwriter Christopher Wood had the huge challenge to start from the scratch for the 1977 film. This lead to a very suitable film for Gilbert to direct since the plot was very similar in structure and concept to You Only Live Twice: a powerful villain captures a Russian and a British submarine in order to use its nuclear missles to destroy human life and start again with "a beautiful world beneath the sea". 

There are enough quantities of chases and explosions in The Spy Who Loved Me that include a ski chase, a fight inside a train between Bond and the invincible Jaws and the patriotic finale inside the villain's supertanker which, according to author James Chapman in Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, it's a hidden recreation of World War Two were Bond is joined by the British, Americans and Russians (imprisoned crewmen from the kidnapped submarines) against the villain Stromberg of German lineage (curiously, Stromberg's plot involves the creation of a "new race", just like Hitler). Notably, there was a little drama involved in the story as Anya Amasova, the main girl and a Russian agent who cooperates with Bond, threatens to kill the secret agent when she learns Bond eliminated her boyfriend on a mission. However, this situation is barely a sub-plot hidden under the big action scenes: something that Forster or Mendes would have enhanced in the story much more as Bond's thirst for revenge in Quantum of Solace or his loyalty to Judi Dench's M in Skyfall and after her death in SPECTRE.

German lobby card for You Only Live Twice,
featuring Blofeld inside his volcano lair

Moonraker follows again the same "villain with new world ambitions" predicament with Hugo Drax, who changed sides from being Ian Fleming's bridge cheater war hero who resented England to become an industrialist so interested in the space conquest to the point of eliminating the human race and creating a race of "perfect" specimens on his outer space station. 

The elements of action and humour in Moonraker exceed the extravagancy of The Spy Who Loved Mee and You Only Live Twice with a scene where Bond goes trough St Marks square with a modified gondola (camera takes a detailed shot of a pigeon and a dog looking surprised, a waiter slipping a drink to a costumer played by Gilbert himself, etc) or a Star Wars-like laser battle between the US Marines and Drax's forces floating into space. Far from hiding the fact Moonraker was a tribute to the sci-fi genre in many ways, the classic tune of Close Encounters of The Third Kind is heard as a passcode to enter Drax's laboratory.

After Moonraker, John Glen took over the director's chair and the rest of the Moore films and the two Timothy Dalton adventures had more doseage of thrills and violence. The Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig films have sometimes recovered the grandilocuence of the Gilbert style, but the audience was always remembered not everything in Bond's life were tuxedos, girls and Martinis and that being him was rather tough. Those were other times and other Bonds, and the prospect of a successful hero was far more welcome than today were audiences want to empathise with the protagonist instead of envying him.

Nonetheless, Lewis Gilbert was responsible to make Bond GREAT in every sense. In his films, he didn't save England. He saved the world. And stopped being a British icon to become a worldwide icon.

This is your second life, Lewis. Thanks for the memories.
Rest in peace.

Nicolás Suszczyk