OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo

Tokyo Selves To Death

OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo
aka Atout coeur à Tokyo 
pour OSS 117
aka Terror In Tokyo
aka From Tokyo With Love
France/Italy 1966
Directed by Michel Boisrond
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

The fourth feature in Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray set of the five 1960s incarnations of OSS117 is OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo and, I was kind of holding out hope that this one would be a lot better than it’s predecessors, being as it’s not directed by André Hunebelle this time around... just ‘presented by’ him. Instead it’s directed by Michel Boisrond and, to further whet my appetite for the movie, instead of being based completely on a Jean Bruce novel, it’s instead ‘adapted by’ two people (and apparently the adaptation is pretty much a completely new story, such as often happened with the James Bond films this series was trying to compete with, up to a certain point), one of whom is Terence Young, who of course directed Dr. No (reviewed here) and helped groom Sean Connery to bring a definitive image of Bond to the screen. And I was similarly impressed that it’s set in Japan with many of the kinds of cultural elements utilised in You Only Live Twice (reviewed here) all present and correct here... a good year before the Bond film was even released. I guess the producers must have got wind that the next Bond would be set in Japan. 

But yes, even with all these good things going for it, this one is still quite a dull and disappointing affair and, perhaps better than the previous one but maybe not as good as the Kerwin Matthews films. Once again Frederick Stafford takes on the role of Hubert Bonnisseur de la Bath, aka OSS117, for his second and final time and, he’s not completely unlikable but, once again, I have to note that Matthews was a much more animated personality than this guy... which is really saying something. Although in fairness, Stafford does look a lot more like the typical movie spy of the time. 

The plot involves the world being blackmailed by a secret organisation who are using miniature planes to launch nuclear missiles at secret US government intelligence headquarters around the world unless, of course, they are paid huge sums of money. So OSS117 is sent to Tokyo for no earthly reason that I could fathom. I can only assume the Japanese were widely admired for their miniaturisation techniques and leave it at that. There’s a turncoat gal, played by Marina Vlady, who provides the story twists when she’s revealed to be helping the bad guys before turning coat again and working with Hubert. Plus there’s a second OSS117 girl in the form of a Japanese secret service sergeant played by Jitsuko Yoshimura, who you may remember as the younger of the two female protagonists/antagonists of Onibaba. There are the usual twists and turns plus the odd fist fight or car chase (although the opening action pre-credits sequence is nowhere near the quality of the Bond pictures) and it’s pretty much business as usual as far as this film series goes. 

One interesting bit of business, which heavily foreshadows You Only Live Twice, is a rival faction of thugs who you assume are out to get Hubert in the opening half an hour or so of the movie (but, yeah, not really... you’ll see it coming as soon as this bunch are first introduced) but who turn out to be the Japanese secret service, who then team up to help OSS117 fulfil his mission. 

And, there are a few nice shot set ups too. One such occurs when a character is in long shot and walking back towards his car from the right of the screen to the left. The camera starts moving sideways until a decorative architectural detail of an upright post with an elabourate carving, hollow and leaving a big hole in the middle of it, hits the centre of the screen and the car has shifted with the camera viewpoint until it’s directly lined up in the centre of the opening of that upright. Then the character continues walking to the centre of the shot and gets in his car in the small opening in the centre of the screen. Which is a nice way of doing things. There also a huge amount of effort to get the look right, such as a shot which reminded me of something of the deliberately controlled lighting in a specific sequence in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (reviewed here). As a shady figure in a raincoat at the end of the corridor, his face under shadows like a film noir, lights his cigarette, it lights up his face just a little too much when the lighter is engaged, making it evident that a light source hidden from view has been switched on at the same time to complete the effect, before being switched off again when the lighter is flicked closed. 

All in all, it’s not a terrible film but, accompanied once again by Michel Magne’s rather tepid score... which is fine as a stand alone listen but certainly doesn’t really seem to elevate the on screen action and pacing of the film... it’s all just a little dull and struggles to engage the viewer, at least this audience member, it has to be said. 

So that’s me done with OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo. Some may find it more yawn inducing than thrilling, I suspect. For the last film in the set we have American actor John Gavin taking over the role but we also have André Hunebelle back in the driving seat so, yeah, I’m maybe not looking forward to it as much as I’d hoped, to be honest. I’ll report back here with a review when I can. 

Thunderball

Bomb De Plume

Thunderball
1965 UK
Directed by Terence Young
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

He’s tall... and he’s dark,
And like a shark,
He looks for trouble.
That’s why the zero’s double,
Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

And those, as you may or may not know, are the first lines in the song Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, one of the greatest and most powerful Bond songs ever written... and it was originally supposed to be the opening title song to Thunderball. But I’ll get to the music later.

Thunderball is the fourth Bond film and the third and final film in the series for director Terence Young, who practically reinvented the Bond character for the big screen and helped Sean Connery pull it off in the first two movies which he directed in the sequence, Dr. No and From Russia With Love. It has some interesting little things to look out for but, again, before I go into that, let me give you just a taste of the film’s checkered history.

Thunderball was developed as a script by Ian Fleming to be the first James Bond film. A collaboration which included writing components from his various producing partners, two of whom were also rights holders and caused a lot of trouble for EON on a number  of occasions in the courtroom. The two more famous collaborators, Kevin McLory and Jack Whittingham, are even given collaborating credits in the title page within the novel that Ian Fleming turned his screenplay adventure into once the movie obviously wasn’t going to happen. EON wanted to make this their first film but had trouble getting the rights from McLory and co, at the time... so they made Dr. No instead. Ian Fleming’s novel was then published in 1961 and the movie version of Dr. No came out in 1962.

By the time EON wanted another crack at Thunderball, McLory and the gang joined forces for producing the movie... which was now after Fleming’s untimely death, sometime during the production of Goldfinger. However, Fleming had granted rights for McLory to make films based on the characters and ideas in this book, and that’s exactly what he did in the early 1980s with the Sean Connery Bond vehicle Never Say Never Again... which is pretty much a remake of Thunderball... although it also included characters from early drafts of the script which didn’t make it into the final screenplay from the 1965 movie. There were various court battles over the years and the last one over the rights means that EON now has soul ownership of all the Bond movies ever made (including the 1967 version of Casino Royale and, I suspect, the 1950s TV version too). I think similar legal proceedings were happening a long time before this and were the cause of delays in shooting another Bond movie after License To Kill, and which unfortunately cut short Timothy Dalton’s brief but effective turn as Bond.

The Thunderball movie from 1965 is a, mostly, simplistic but (again, mostly) effective Bond movie. I say mostly because the plot idea is over with fairly quickly and everything from then on becomes a “hunt” for missing atomic bombs (the Thunderball’s of the title, presumably). It’s also a bit draggy in places because a lot of the action takes place under water and, frankly, there’s a lot of time wasted due to various underwater establishing shots slowing down the pace of the piece... contextually, though, I’m guessing this was more of a novelty back in 1965 and you certainly didn’t hear me complaining when I saw it as part of a Bond double bill at the cinema around about 1973/74 when I was 5 or 6 years old. I absolutely loved it and that underwater battle stayed with me forever.

So, yeah, now I look back on it... a bit leaden in places but still a solid Bond entry with quite a few items of note in it...

Okay... so this was the first Bond film to be shot in a long, thin 2.35:1 aspect ratio (probably Cinemascope or Panavision... but that kind of ratio anyway). The aspect ratio would change over the films from one kind of size to another, but this marks the first time that the compositions of a frame in a Bond movie could be played about with in this specific shape. This also gave the films producers an excuse (if they really thought they needed one) to rectify something they maybe should have done at the beginning of the series. By which I mean...

The opening gun barrel sequence had to be re-shot to accommodate the new aspect ratio that Terence Young was shooting in. So instead of seeing stuntman Bob Simmons walk on and shoot into the camera, like you do in Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, you actually see Sean Connery perform gun-barrel duties for the first time in the films... and he does it quite differently. Down almost on one knee if I recall correctly?

The pre-credits sequence opens with another in a line of little gags where the producers try to alarm you into thinking Bond is dead, a theme which had started in director Young’s previous Bond movie From Russia With Love. This one focuses on the JB initials on a coffin at a funeral, before Bond and the woman he’s working with fill the audience in on the fact that it’s not Bond’s funeral. These pre-credits are also of note because it’s the last time you will see the famous Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger actually showing off some of it’s gadgetry in a working environment (although it had kind of a cameo, sans gadgets, in Goldeneye) until you get to last year’s Skyfall... which finally got the Aston Martin out as more than just a tool for visually ticking a check box and turned it into an important Bond prop again for a small, nostalgic section of that movie. After Bond’s daring escape by jet pack (which is actually not a special effect in the long shots you see and which was actually flown on that day by, I think, the inventor of the machine) we get to see the famous bullet-proof back windshield, made famous by then from the Corgi toy, and some water squirters which help Bond and his girl (an actress who returned as one of the card players in the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale decades later) escape SPECTRE’s operatives before going into the Tom Jones performed title song. Johnny Cash sent his own Thunderball song to the producers in an attempt to secure him the honours but it was rejected, although I believe it finally turned up for public consumption on YouTube a couple of years ago.

It’s also, hands down, got the most gorgeous Bond girls in any of the Bond films (excepting the astonishing Caroline Munro in The Spy Who Loved Me, obviously), including a more significant role for Martine Beswick, one of the girls featured in the gypsy wrestling scene in From Russia With Love. 

There seem to be various versions of the prints of the movie too, with different bits of scoring and different lines of dialogue and takes used, depending on which version you see. It’s also one of the Bonds which is the most heavily cut on TV... the torture scene I remembered as a kid, seeing it at the cinema, was always eradicated completely on television and for years I thought I’d just made that scene up in my head until I got to see it again on various home video releases. On some prints the next Bond movie mentioned on the end titles is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service... although the producers changed their mind and made You Only Live Twice as the next one instead.

All in all it’s not a bad film... with my main problem being the contrast of fast, tightly edited scenes juxtaposed with shots of the ocean which are just plain boring.

The score, however, is wonderful but...

He’s suave, and he’s smooth,
And he can soothe,
You like vanilla.
The gentleman’s a killer,
Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Another verse from one of the great Bond songs, Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Dionne Warwick’s original recording, which is great, does synch perfectly with the opening credits for which it was written once again, by the winning team of Barry and Bricusse. They didn’t think Thunderball would mean anything for a song lyric and the producers agreed and then this title song was recorded. Then United Artists said the song must have the film’s title in it so they could get recognition on the radio, so Barry then turned to Don Black for a new title song which was performed by Tom Jones... which, to be fair, is also a powerful, killer ballad worthy of many a Bond film... it’s just not as good as the original song (something similar happened with David Arnold’s Tomorrow Never Dies, performed by K. D Lang, which had to be retitled Surrender and placed on the end credits of that film when Sheryl Crow recorded her song for it... Sheryl’s song is great, until you hear the original, which is just a powerhouse of perfection).

But the thing is... most of the score, and it’s a brilliant score, that Barry wrote for Thunderball is based on variations of Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang... so Shirley Bassey was then called in to sing a shorter version of Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for the end credits of Thunderball... and that wasn’t used either. So Barry wrote a few Thunderball variations and plugged those into the score in a few places, so the Tom Jones song wouldn’t feel tagged on at the last minute (which it was) and the result is a powerful score... based mainly on the tune to Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (and again, David Arnold’s powerful score for Tomorrow Never Dies is all based on the melody from the song which ended up being retitled to Surrender). There’s some lovely, slow stuff for harps and vibraphone in this score too, to musically enhance the feeling of being underwater.

If you’re interested in seeking out this paragon of a Bond song, Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, then the Dionne Warwick version can be found on the single disc edition of the 30 Year Anniversary Compilation CD and the Shirley Bassey version can be found (along with the Warwick version) on the expanded double disc edition of the 30 Year Anniversary Compilation CD... they’re worth checking out.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say on this one... some great and brutal (more brutal then you get to see on TV) underwater action sequences, truly beautiful women, kick ass music and the usual Bond humour all come together in this superbly acted, brilliantly designed and, occasionally, draggy Bond movie. Not one to miss, though, that’s for sure.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

From Russia With Love

Russian Around

From Russia With Love
1963 UK
Directed by Terence Young
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Okay... so following fast on the heels of Dr. No came the movie adaptation of the book that preceeded it. This, of course, created some weird continuity problems for the series (see my review of Dr. No here) but From Russia With Love is, as far as I’m concerned, the movie where the producers and director hit the ground running and made the quintessential Bond film which was the template for pretty much most of the rest of the series. I don’t quite think it’s the best Bond film ever (I reserve that for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service)... but I do think it’s the best of the Connery Bond’s and, therefore, the second best movie in the entire series.

The film opens with the same gun-barrel shot (which, incidentally, featured stuntman Bob Simmons until they reshot it properly with Connery, for a later film) and then it goes into the first of the regular elements of the Bond films, the pre-credits sequence. Dr. No didn’t have one, of course, and it’s down to the idea of über-editor Peter Hunt, who decided to move it there from within the main body of the film and use it as a prelude/teaser. This helped define the shape of all other Bond movies that came after it.  This particular teaser also has the “shock” of having the audience see the Bond character die within the first few minutes although, unlike many other similar sequences where the character appears to have died before the main credits, that tension is lifted before the credits actually start.

Then it goes into the credits which are quite different from the opening of Dr. No and really set the tone for the title sequences which came after them, by having all the information involve a scantily clad, young lady with names and job titles projected on to her. The sequence doesn’t feature a title song (that would finally come with Goldfinger) but it does follow the tune of the Bond song used for the film and, although not used in the titles, the famous Matt Monroe performed song From Russia With Love must be one of the few times that a Bond song is heard in the film more than once... here it’s heard both as source music, on the radio when Bond is on the river with the original Bond girl Silvia Trench, and also over the end credits of the movie.

The music is also interesting in the credits because John Barry’s first proper Bond score, his excellent pre-credits music aside, starts off with a phrase before going into the main From Russia With Love theme which would come to be one of three main musical statements that people would associate with the character. Known, pretty much, as the "Bond Is Back" melody, this doesn’t actually appear in too many movies but it was always used in trailers and adverts for TV screenings for decades and is a significant piece of music for all Bond fans... and instantly recognisable. So recognisable, in fact, that David Arnold re-used it for Pierce Brosnan’s opening scene in Tomorrow Never Dies. This is not the only significant bit of Bond music Barry wrote for the series... more on that a little later in this review.

Now about that sequence with Eunace Gayson reprising her role of the original Dr. No Bond girl Sylvia Trench... this was supposed to be a regularly occurring set of sequences in the series as it progressed but, unfortunately, this is the last time that character and actress appeared in the Bond movies. Such a shame because I really think she adds a missing part of Bond’s character which is absent in later movies. She made the character a little more human when it comes to loyalties to women. Also in this scene you get to see Bond’s Bentley from the novels, for the first and, I think, the last time in the movies. After this movie, the cars became just another gadget from Q branch, which I’m not knocking but which I don’t, looking at the track record of the movies, think is a necessary component. Okay, so he has a Bondmobile but they are rarely gadgeted up and, when they are, a big thing is made of them... which works really well but, I don’t see it as a necessary ingredient. The gadgets are more the thing, I think...

And talking of gadgets... here you have the return of Boothroyd from Q branch, but this time played by the series regular Desmond Llewelyn in a role he would seriously make his own until his last appearance in the role in The World Is Not Enough. Also, he gives 007 what is really the first Bond gadget, which is an attache case which is quite heavily and usefully “weaponised” as they say today. I remember seeing this in the cinema in the early seventies and really getting into the idea of the briefcase... even more so when the film was televised and was accompanied by some great illustrations of how the case worked in TV Times in the early seventies.

So what regular features do we have so far, debuting in From Russia With Love? Well we have the John Barry score, we have a hit song (albeit not played over the titles yet), we have a title sequence which is very indicative of the way the future title sequences would go, we have Q and his gadgets... it’s all pretty much there now as far as the Bond formula goes. We also have a continuation of the kind of one-liners which would come to be a trademark of the Bond character which Connery and director Terence Young had started slipping in on the Dr. No shoot, and this really does cement the character in place for the remainder of the films in the “still going strong” series.

Robert Shaw plays Red Grant who, unlike the book, is never referred to as “Red” in the movie, which is an acknowledgement of his bright red hair. For the film the producers decided to go with a shock of bright blonde hair and Shaw is such a brilliant and cold actor when he wants to be, that he makes for one of the greatest villains in the Bond series, even though he only says his first actual lines more than three quarters of the way throughout the film... his presence is felt all the way through, however. This “hard man with a shock of white/blonde hair” is something which would be taken and come back to again and again in the Bond series... I’ll try to remember to point it out when I review them.

There are also some little oddities such as the main villains being SPECTRE again. They were SMERSH in the novels but, in a bit of early "PCness", the producers decided to let Russia off the hook, so the main villains in the movies for a while are SPECTRE (they even make a reference in this movie about their operative Dr. No) even though they only appeared in the book Thunderball (and get a mention again in the original novel of The Spy Who Loved Me, one of the most interesting novels in the series). Blofeld is only seen as hands and the actor responsible for Blofelds hands (but not voice) got to play the character twice (the only actor to do so, I believe)... here, and again in Thunderball (he also played a main character, Professor Dent, in Dr. No).

Another oddity occurs in the appearance of a famous film star, by way of a billboard poster from which one of Bond and Kerim’s foes tries to escape, via a trapdoor in the film star’s mouth. In the original novel the film star depicted on the poster is Marilyn Monroe... perhaps one of the reasons why President John F. Kennedy listed From Russia With Love within his top ten favourite novels. For the movie, however, the poster for another Broccoli/Saltzman/EON production is used, Call Me Bwana, with Anita Eckberg being the lady on the poster. Personally I’d have preferred Marilyn but since she’d died the year before, one can understand the film-makers reluctance to use her here.

The casting is great too... I’ve already mentioned Shaw as Grant but you also have Kurt Weill’s wife Lotte Lenya playing Rosa Klebb, with her venomous knife-shoe (which is the death of Bond in the original novel... again, see my review of Dr. No here). And Armendáriz as Kerim Bay has got to be one of the most likeable Bond characters ever put on film... apparently the actor struck up a good friendship with Bond creator Ian Fleming on set.

And then, as I said earlier, you have the first full John Barry Bond score (apart from a couple of places during a helicopter crash and a series of colliding boats where Monty Norman’s Dr. No score is tracked in) and this definitely sets the tone for the films to come. It also features his other big melodic contribution to the Bond series for the first time, in a piece which makes its initial appearance in a gun battle in a gypsy camp and which is then reprised when Bond stages a raid to get a Lektor decoding machine. The is Barry’s “007 theme” (as opposed to Monty Norman’s James Bond theme) and it’s a key theme for those early Bond films, a fan favourite and it was used by Barry in no less than five Bond films; From Russia With Love, Thunderball (and he really goes to town with some interesting progressions and variants on it in this one), You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever and, in it’s most diluted form, in terms of tension and orchestration, in Moonraker. Barry really owns the “sound of Bond” with this score, as he did for all his subsequent scoring adventures in the world of 007 over the years, of which he scored ten (not including his contribution to Dr. No).

From Russia With Love was one of the more gruelling shoots of the early Bonds with the production plagued by near lethal accidents (the director was stuck under the sea in a crashed helicopter on location and had to be pulled from the wreckage before he drowned), tragedies (Pedro Armendáriz who plays Kerim Bay was rushed through his scenes when he was found to have incurable cancer and, as soon as his scenes were finished, he checked into a hospital and shot himself) and various problems and days called off etc. This didn’t stop with the shooting either, and Peter Hunt had to get very creative in the editing room, even using a mask of an actress over herself to create a new shot and then running another shot both forwards and backwards to fill in holes in coverage which were there. The film also ran over budget, which was already twice the budget of Terence Young’s earlier hit, Dr. No.

Bearing in mind the lengths that the film-makers went to, to lick this movie into shape by the time of their release deadline, it’s a real wonder that From Russia With Love turned out to be an absolute classic in the James Bond cannon. Completely entertaining and still pushing that hardened edge to the Bond character which got lost along the way, some way in to Roger Moore’s run with the character. If you want to watch a really great Sean Connery James Bond film... it’s this one.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Dr. No

Toppleganger

Dr. No
1962 UK
Directed by Terence Young
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Right. I apologise in advance if, in the next few months, you see a load of Bond reviews on this site. Normal service will be continued as soon as possible but, you see, I got given the 50th Anniversary Bond Box on blu-ray as a Christmas present... so this may take me a while to get through.

I’ve been a casual and sometimes not-so-casual observer of the James Bond character since I was five years old and saw Live And Let Die, followed by the majority of the Connery films, in the cinema around 1973/74. For further information about my relationship with the Bond movies, see my Skyfall review here. 

I’ve seen most of the Bond films at the actual cinema, with the exception of two... A View To A Kill is something I passed on (having gotten so fed up with what the Bond films had turned into by the time they got to Octopussy) and this one, Dr. No. My first viewing of Dr. No came when I was about 6 years old and we went around to my uncles house to watch it on television because, unlike us, his television set was a “colour” set. This was one of two such trips I remember that year going to see a movie on his colour TV, the other being Hammer’s Taste The Blood Of Dracula... which has a sure influence on th mind of this six year old.

Dr. No is one of those films which, from our perspective now, can be seen as being a “not-quite-Bond-film”. That is to say, it’s half in the sixties, carrying an edge to it which was a little unusual for the time, but at the same time is immensely “fifties glamorous and charming”... you can easily see why Cary Grant was originally considered for the role. Many people say that the full-on Bond style didn’t completely emerge until Goldfinger and, while I concur that the “Bond vehicle” which isn’t always a highlight in the series, and the “vocal backed” title sequence weren’t there until Goldfinger... I would humbly disagree with all the “experts” out there and say that From Russia With Love is really the one that defined and polished the formula which came to be instantly recognisable as “the Bond formula”. However, I’ll leave that elaboration for the From Russia With Love review I’ll need to do soonest.

When you look at Dr. No now, and place it in the context of the time of the films original release, it’s very easy to see why this was such a hit. It may, indeed, look a little rooted in the fifties now but from the vantage point of an audience back then the similarities to other films around them would probably not have been that apparent and it must have seemed so different to anything else on offer at their local fleapit cinemas. This film had a very hard edge to it which is one thing, and then it wraps it all up with bright colours (almost Bava-esque when Connery and Bond-girl Ursula Andress step out of decontamination near the end), clean shot set ups and a pop-culture casualness which would have been an amazingly seductive cocktail for anyone back in 1962... and let’s face it, it still is today.

The influence of Bond was huge and one of the things which it changed for a while was in the editing. Future On Her Majesty’s Secret Service director Peter Hunt edited the first five movies and he did so in a style which must have shocked a lot of his fellow professionals at the time. Bond dared to break one of the unbreakable rules of editing, you see... “Thou Shalt Not Cut A Shot On Movement”. Yep, this one does this all over the place... it doesn’t wait for the camera to stop moving before cutting away if it doesn’t want to and Hunt was smart in this respect... he knew this would ramp up the action shots to an unbelievable degree and, although the sound hits weren’t up to their abstract best on this movie (that would cement in From Russia With Love), the editing was enough to give the audience of the time an absolutely amazing juxtaposition of potential to kinetic energy in the action, whizzed along at 24 frames per second on to their retinas.

I’m not knocking the sound design on this movie though. Oh no. It’s brilliant. The familiar gun barrel opening starts up with weird trills and hums which I don’t think were kept for any of the other movies in the series... but instead of going into the traditional pre-credits sequence, it goes straight into the titles, designed so smartly (with the aid of little sticky, coloured dots bought from Woolworths... no CGI then, folks) by Maurice Binder. The sound throughout the movie continues to be fantastic. There’s a sequence where Bond is trying to escape through a bizarre (and in the book, deliberately deadly) ventilation system and the sounds you hear on the soundtrack during this sequence are amazing.

I say the ventilation system was in the book... it was in a much different form and it would be true to say that Dr. No is not the most accurate in terms of adaptation of the source novel (but closer than many of the movies that followed it over the decades). The original novel, Casino Royale, was already a TV play in the fifties and that version was decidedly closer to that book than any of the versions of it that came after. Dr. No was an unusual book to start the franchise off on because it comes somewhere near halfway through the run of books.

Indeed, the events of the previous novel, From Russia With Love, produce an interesting cinematic anomaly in the series as this became the second movie. Bond dies in the original novel From Russia With Love, you see. Killed by a deadly, poisoned kick from Rosa Klebb’s knife-shoe thingamajig. It was, if my memory is serving me as I would hope, only due to the influence of Philip Marlow writer Raymond Chandler, who persuaded Ian Fleming to carry on writing the character, that the Bond character was taken up by Fleming again and resurrected at the beginning of Dr. No... where he is rushed to a hospital at the start of the book and cured of the poison which flooded his system and “done him in” in the previous novel. All very interesting but, considering that From Russia With Love became the second movie, it’s interesting that there is a reference in the movie version of Dr. No about those events in From Russia With Love. When Bond is being given his Walther PPK in M’s office by Major Boothroyd (who is Q, but not yet played by Desmond Llewellyn, who made the role famous), where Bond’s is reminded that his Beretta jammed on him and he ended up spending six months in hospital as a result... those six months were the time it took to recover from Rosa Klebb’s neatly timed kick after his gun jammed. So it’s an interesting little thing to note in the movie and it’s one of many unusual anomalies thrown up in the Bond series.

There are other major changes from the source novel... such as the book being about the plot revolving around guana (droppings) for their rich soil enhancing properties and being replaced with something more palatable to cinema audiences... the “toppling” of American rockets. But there’s also another little “long term” jam the producers got themselves into because of the sequence in which they chose to film the series, and this time it was because they did follow the events of the book...

The character of Quarrel, the guide who takes Bond to Crab Quay, was already a recurring character in the book, having played a big part in an earlier book, Live And Let Die. Dr. No is Bond’s second encounter with the character and in both the book and the film versions he is burnt to death by the bad guys. However... this obviously left the filmmakers with a slight (it’s a question of taste and respect) problem when it came time to shoot Live And Let Die a decade later. How did they solve that little problem? Well, wait until I review Live And Let Die and I’ll tell you.

Felix Leiter is another big change... missing an arm and half a leg from the second book on, due to a nasty encounter with some sharks in the novel Live And Let Die (this particular encounter finally turned up on film as part of the movie License To Kill), here he has miraculously got all his limbs, and doesn’t wear a fake leg and hook in place of his gun hand either. Felix has never been done quite right on film, I believe.

What else is there to say about this movie then, without giving too much of the action away? All of the performances are solid with series regulars Sean Connery (personally groomed for the role by the director to lose the rough diamond quality... although I think it would be fair to say that the Bond character has always been a bit of a government hired thug), Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell and Eunice Gayson (who only stayed for the first two films), are all great and it also has the “iconic” turn from a dubbed out Ursula Andress, which epitomised the Bond films in the sixties and for years to come.

Then there’s the music, which is by Monty Norman... and it really is by Monty Norman people. I love John Barry as much as the next person and his arrangement of the Bond theme (featuring Vic Flick on guitar) is one of the most powerful and recognisable pieces of music in film history. But the basic melody is Norman’s and I’m sick of people saying it isn’t... so let’s look at the facts.

Norman had finished his score. It was done. Barry was brought on to do a theme tune and he arranged Norman’s melody line from his opera A House For Mr. Biswas. How can I be so sure that it was Norman’s melody line which was taken? Well just listen to the film... the Bond theme is all over it... admittedly because the sound guys kept slotting in Barry’s excellent arrangement of it all over the movie when it was needed... but this isn’t the only occurrence of “the Bond theme” in the movie, there are several instances where Norman has also used his theme throughout the soundtrack and, like I said, he’d already done his bits. There was even a cue where Norman utilised his own theme in this movie which was tracked into Barry’s score for From Russia With Love (when the helicopter crashes, if memory serves) and so I really am sick of people levelling accusations of “Norman didn’t write it” at the composer. Seriously, John Barry is easily one of the greatest composers (and arrangers, for that matter) in English music... but he didn’t write the Bond theme... just added to it.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about this particular movie, methinks. It’s a real blast and has a certain 1950s charm to it while still having the hard edge (and the hard edge of old school male chauvinism which is also a defining part of Bond’s basic character... although I don’t believe the character is particularly misogynistic, as some people believe) and sense of danger to it. It was also a huge influence on almost every technical aspect you can think of... and I haven’t mentioned Ken Adams’ amazing sets for these movies but, seriously, they are works of great cinematic art in the series (especially the simple room with just a chair, a grate and a shadow... you’ll know it when you see it but I also put a picture at the top of this page). If you’ve not seen a Bond movie before then this first one in the regular EON series is definitely worth more than a casual glance... it’s quite groundbreaking in many ways and certainly a lot of fun. Ignore it at your peril.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Red Sun (Soleil Rouge)

Bron-shido!


Red Sun (Soleil Rouge) 
France/Italy/Spain 1971
Directed by Terence young
Optimum Region 2

I’ve been trying to obtain a watchable home video edition of Red Sun for many years now. Usually the prints available of this one are presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio but we’ve finally now got a release which restores the original theatrical 1.85:1 ratio (even though I suspect, having now seen it in this aspect ratio, that it was originally shot in 1.33:1 and cropped down for cinemas).

This is good because, Red Sun is a bit of a curio as a Western, in that it stars my favourite actor Toshiro Mifune, rubbing shoulders with an all star cast which includes Charles Bronson, Alain Delon, Ursula Andress and Capucine.

I’ll say that lot again while elaborating further so it can sink in why this movie screams out to be watched by anyone who loves cinema...

It stars Toshiro Mifune as a yojimbo who finds himself in the Wild West, aided (unwillingly at first) by the roguish outlaw Charles Bronson as they seek the current possessor of a precious sword and the loot which Bronson’s gang had stolen from the train carrying Mifune and his diplomat/retainer. The villain who has run off with all this is Bronson’s double crossing, evil and deadly former gang member as played by Alain Delon. On the way they stop by in Capucine’s whorehouse to pick up Delon’s girlfriend Christina, as played by Ursula Andress, to use as a bargaining chip. And the whole thing is directed by James Bond director Terence young, who also taps one of his regular character actors Anthony Dawson in a small role (well it would have to be a small role sharing screen time with this cast, wouldn’t it?).

Despite the pitfalls of the enormity of these stars coming together in this movie, and the politics of three countries co-financing the venture, Red Sun actually turns out to be, not just an interesting movie, but an entertaining one. It’s a little inconsistent in places but ultimately it’s held together by the strength of the actors (who really are, in this case, very much “movie stars”) and you really can’t fault the performances here (this is possibly the best I’ve seen Ursula Andress do in a movie, if not the most I’ve seen of her in a film... although she does briefly go topless for one scene).

The film seems, maybe, just a little too comfortable to watch in places although I don’t know why that is because in terms of content, Terence young doesn’t steer clear of nudity and he certainly doesn’t skimp on the blood, usually evident when Mifune runs someone through with his sword. But I did have some issues with some of the footage and the way it’s been cut together in general. There are a lot of Western landscapes with the small figures of our main protagonists (usually it’s Mifune and Bronson together in these kinds of shots) in contrast to the environment which threatens to engulf them and this visual style seems to work really well in some places, nicely framed with a sense of scale implied within the confines of the shot... and then there are other shots of a similar content which just look sloppy and badly framed like they’re missing a major element which could have made them work. Unfortunately, the two kinds of shots are cut next to each other as often or not which gives the viewer a sense of unease... it’s like some of the shots were taken by the main crew and other shots were taken by the second unit, who were perhaps a little less on the ball when it came to selecting a similar style of shot design. It does tend to lend some sequences in the film a certain lack of consistency which I found wore on my nerves after a while.

This movie is a bit of a Western road movie so there are a lot of shots which are one or two (occasionally more) riders on the trail of their ultimate treasure but it’s the characterisations when the camera moves in a tad tighter that make this movie so darned entertaining. Toshiro Mifune’s “honourable warrior” who has seven knots tied in his sash and who has to undo one knot each day, moving him further forward to the point where, if he fails to recover the sword after seven days have passed, he must commit seppuku and join his ancestors... is a typical Mifune characterisation. That is to say it’s damn good and you can just feel the loss of history in the character when he reveals that, due to the political climate in his own country as forced by people like the Americans, he is probably of the last generation of samurai before they are no longer needed and die out as a breed.

Charles Bronson’s relationship to Mifune in the film is not dissimilar to the relationship dynamic which plays out between Mifune and Lee Marvin in John Boorman’s Hell In The Pacific. Bronson always trying to lose Mifune or get the drop on him and Mifune repaying in kind... and sure enough the two soon become thicker with each other and form a genuine friendship, a friendship which ultimately leads Bronson to throw away his dreams of finding the gold and instead, at the last knockings, embracing the strength of character to sacrifice his goals and instead, do the honourable thing.

Alain Delon is just bad and you can’t trust him from the start. You know he’s bad because he’s incredibly well dressed and wears a black jacket and jeans. You also know he’s evil because he enjoys killing people more than... well... more than not killing people and also, he tries to kill Bronson, who is supposed to be his partner in crime... his boss even. Delon plays the most ruthless of the characters in this movie and you absolutely buy him as a villain. A thinly drawn, clichéd villain to be sure... but one who will worry you as to what he will ultimately do to the characters you have come to care about.

Then there’s Andress. She’s got “a thing” going with Delon and her character matches him in some aspects. You learn fairly quickly not to trust her (bewitching a man with her topless breasts before reaching for his gun... hey, she’d have shot me no problem) and luckily Bronson’s character knows not to trust her too. This doesn’t stop her having some depth to her character when she speaks up on behalf of our heroes after they have rescued her from a Comanche death torture. Andress doesn’t have a lot to do in this one but she really brings the character to life when she gets the chance. True, like the majority of the performances in this one (perhaps excluding Mifune’s who’s vast experience invests his character with a certain gravitas), it’s a very comic-book, stylised and blatant characterisation... but it’s just right for this film and it fits right in.

The music to this film comes from someone who is, to me, a surprising source to get to score something which is trying very hard to be an American Western. Directed by Young who was actually born in China, as was Mifune (although he was always synonymous with Japanese film), with a prominent French actor and a famous Swiss actress (who had worked with both Young and Dawson before on the set of Dr. No)... its a film where you wonder if Charles Bronson was just cast in it to be the “token American”. But it’s a Western with a difference and so to find the score written in a mode which doesn’t really harken back to Western Americana in it’s construction, nor more obviously to the then more fashionable style that Morricone brought to the Italian Western, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that famous Lawrence Of Arabia composer Maurice Jarre was chosen for scoring duties. He seems to have approached this very appropriately in some ways, highlighting a theme which is very much something with an “oriental” flavour to underline (and, of course, underscore) the unusual element of Mifune as a samurai in the West. It’s less of a Western score and more of a score which illustrates the warmth which grows between the characters... as opposed to relying on the tools-in-trade of the Great American Western. It’s not an absolutely wonderful score, but it is pretty interesting and won’t bump you out of the picture too much.

I could go on and try to persuade you as to why Red Sun is a gentle Western with a difference but I don’t think I really need to do that. Nor do I have to give it a full on recommendation because the main reason for seeing it is right in front of your face.

Mifune! Bronson! Delon! Andress! Capucine!

How many more reasons do you need to see this movie?