Last month, the cinematic universe of James Bond endured a rather sad controversy when Amazon Prime, the company currently streaming all 25 of the official Eon Productions Bond movies, digitally erased guns from the promotional images.
A predictable storm of outrage ensued, causing Prime to reverse their policy, a course of events that made one wonder if it wasn’t a deliberate bit of no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity publicity, drawing attention to the fact that Prime is a one-stop shop for 007. Guns have been a marketing tool on movie posters for a long, long time and hey, one doesn’t see Clint Eastwood’s trademark 357 Magnum safely holstered in the info boxes of any of the Dirty Harry films currently on Prime. Indeed, that hand cannon is rather predominant.
The Bond realm has had more meaty controversies since its dawn in 1962, when, remember, Sean Connery’s Bond told his Asian nemesis Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman): “Your disregard for human life means you must be working for the East.”
Back in the 1960s, no less a critic than Mordecai Richler waxed on the perceived antisemitism in Ian Fleming’s novels, airing suspicions that it was no accident villains had names like “Goldfinger” and “Blofeld.” In his 1968 essay Bond, Richler mocks Fleming with regards to Le Chiffre, the card sharp villain of Casino Royale: “According to the head of Station S of the British Secret Service, Le Chiffre’s Jewish blood is signalled by small ears with large lobes, which is a new one on me.”
Brit writer Simon Winder, in his book about Bond, The Man Who Saved Britain, accurately describes what it’s like to have been a juvenile Bond fan who grows up to discover how horrendous some of the once-cherished films really are, using the perfect example of Live and Let Die (1973), Roger Moore’s first and, alas, not last foray into playing the character. Winder thought it was wonderful when he first saw it, but got a wake-up call when he bought a DVD to watch with his two young sons, an experience, he says, that “left me mute with grief.
“The film was a mean-spirited and offensive shambles, too stupid really even to be racist, too chaotic to be camp.”
The thesis of Winder’s book is that Bond was a kind of face-saving consolation prize for Brits in the postwar years, a man whose world-saving heroics provided fictitious counter programming to the grim reality that saw Britain’s once formidable stature brutally diminished.
Yet even Winder acknowledges that he remains a fan of some of the books and some of the movies. In that spirit, here are three Bond films that best pass the test of time, all available on Prime.
From Russia, With Love (1963): Adapted from Fleming’s fifth book, this 1963 film, and indeed the book itself, may be the least fantastic entity in the franchise. Bond himself barely appears in the first half of the novel, which is largely devoted to the Russian acquisition and training of psychopathic double agent Red Grant. No worries: Sean Connery, undoubtedly the best of the Bond actors, is very much present throughout the film, and for a change, he has some compelling company, including Russian spymistress Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), Turkish ally Kerim Bey (the wonderful Mexican actor Pedro Armendáriz), beautiful Russian pawn Tatiana Romanova (Italian actress Daniela Bianchi), and best of all, the formidable Robert Shaw as the sadistic Grant.
Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger.
Goldfinger (1964): Bond’s third outing amps up everything, pitting 007 against a master criminal, Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), who is on a mission to corner the world market in gold. This is the movie that led Bond into ever more exotic/ludicrous gadgetry, but given the coolness of Bond’s tricked out Aston Martin, we’ll let it slide. There may be a cringe element here and there, as when Bond sends sexy girlfriend Dink (Margaret Nolan) on her way for a conversation with CIA buddy Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) with a spank on the butt and a blunt two-word dismissal: “Man talk.”
Daniel Craig as James Bond in Skyfall.
Skyfall (2012): The most beautiful looking of the Bond movies (courtesy of cinematographer Roger Deakins), the 23rd film in the series is one of the tougher Bonds, befitting Daniel Craig’s “blunt instrument” approach to the character. The movie boasts one of the more terrifying villains in Javier Bardem’s turncoat Silva, but it also gives a proper sendoff to Judi Dench’s M, a boss who was in her way as adversarial a character to Bond as any of the Blofelds.
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