2393 Bond the genre is is established

It is with the second and third Bond films produced, From Russian with Love and Goldfinger that the genre became much as we know it to this day and a popular and commercially successful cinema form of entertainment.

From Russia with Love introduced the opening sequence immediately after the Bond front screen and the sequence was directly related to the story after which came the full credits and the second development a song embracing the title of the film with an established artist of the day (Matt Monroe), to best effect with Goldfinger with the first Bond Performance by Shirley Bassey. The opening scene in Goldfinger was unrelated to the story line a feature which some of the other Bond films followed.

The two films also established the involvement of the clever tricks department led by Q. In From Russia with Love the important extra is a case which has to be opened in a special way or a can of talcum power will explode in your face. The case also had an external knife hidden which can be released for an emergency and a high powered riffle contained within its shoulder rest plus two strips of 25 Gold Sovereigns. In Goldfinger the concept progressed several leaps forward to include a visit to the development laboratory and the famous Aston Martin car with the ejector seat, a tyre wrecker, a front machine gun, a rear bullet shield and the ability to create a smoke screen and a oil slick.

The inclusion of a gratuitously sexual relationship or two together with the demise of a friend or two, both male and female also became features but somehow always without the real horror and pain of reality.

Goldfinger also introduced the super henchman with Oddjob although the best known become Jaws. Bond is always captured and narrowly escapes death, more than once on occasions also becomes an established aspect. There is also the coda. Just when you think the film is over and Bond victorious there is a twist.

Now to the stories and main characters. From Russian to Love continues the involvement of SPECTRE and we are soon introduced to its hierarchical structure with number I 3 and 5 involved. Number 5 is an International Chess master who is called away from an international competition at a time when Russians champion dominated the chess scene versus Americans and tournaments were major events televised, reported and games analysed. He is the brains of a plan to capture a Russian decoding machine and set the Russian and British intelligence services into open conflict. The involves the head of the Russian counter intelligence service (SMERSH) led by Rosa Klebbs played by Lotte Lenya, the famous singer wife of Kurt Veil and actress. She has selected one of her best students to carry to the clandestine operation by contacting London and offering them the decoding machine because she has becomes infatuated with the picture and file information about James Bond. She is ordered to seduce him and offer to defect to London with the machine. N M and Bond are aware it is a trap but the opportunity get hold of the decoding machine is too good an opportunity to miss.

The film opens at night at the training centre for SPECTRE Operatives run by Walter Gotell as his best operative played by Robert Shaw as Red Grant. He is seen to garrotte Bond in a matter of seconds until we find that the dead man was wearing a mask and later in the film Walter explains to Klebb when introducing her to Grant that training is one thing but field experience is more important and which is why they use expendable people to practice on. Klebb is also portrayed as a predatory Lesbian although in the films this aspect is hinted at whereas in Goldfinger the book the subject is explicit. The role of Grant is to create mayhem between the two services and then when the girl, Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) leaves with Bond and the machine for England eh has to get hold of the machine the has to get hold of the machine and kill the couple. Thee machine is to be sold back to the Russians for an extortionate price.

The selected location is Istanbul where the girl works in Russian Embassy. Bond‘s contact us is Ali Kerim Bey who like Bond is a ladies’ man but unlike Bond Bey has many sons who assist him. In the world of post war Turkey the various intelligence services are open in following and keeping an eye on each other’s activities but they appear comparatively harmonious in their relationships. However Red Grant soon upsets the balance by killing one of those trailing Bond, and the local British agent, Bey, then narrowly escapes a bomb placed on the wall adjacent to his desk. Bond and Bey then escape a major shoot out when the local Russian boss launches an all out assault on the two when they attend a Gypsy camp. Grant steps in to ensure Bond is not killed before gets the girl and the machine.

At the camp Bonds present when two young woman fight over a man but when during the shoot out Bond saves the life of the Gypsy leader Francis De Wolff he is given the two young to amuse himself although the extent of the relationship during thee rest of the night is only hinted at. Sex with one is OK but with two was considered too risqué Bond then help Bey to assassinate the head of Russian intelligence.

Meanwhile Bond has moved himself from one room in the hotel which is bugged to the Bridal suit where Tatania is found in his bed and where unbeknown to them their love making is filmed. it is also during this film that the double entendre is perfected.

For some reason having secured the girl and the machine the couple arrange to travel on the Orient Express towards the border with when the train is to stop and the couple taken to an airfield for a flight although why they cannot board a commercial airline from Istanbul to London is not explained.

Again when Grant kills Bey and a Russian counterpart who has also got on the train, the plan is aborted and the couple continue to Belgrade and to the Italian border at Trieste. I am also not clear when and how Bond has arranged for another British agent to board the train who Grant kills when they stop at the station and impersonates. He drugs the girl when they are eating and drinking at the restaurant and then overpowers Bond who fails to suspect the man is a villain. However it here that the Talc Bomb in the brief case becomes useful and the knife is used to kill Grant.

Bond then overpowers the driver of a vegetable truck waiting to collect Grant and the machine and outwits and destroys a SPECTRE helicopter sent to pick up the machine/ guard the villain. Bond and the girl then use the motor launch ready for the truck driver to escape to make their way to Venice. They have a quantity of fuel on board in drums which begin to leak when the launch is approached by four others who open fire to stop the craft as the priority is the decoding machine. Bond appears to surrender and uses an emergency flare gun to ignite the petrol on both sides of the advancing enemy who become engulfed in flames and die through burning and explosion.

Because of the failure of the plan the grand chess master and SPECTRE’s number 5 is executed and Klebb is told not to fail by number 1(Henry Blofield), who at this point we do not know or are able to identify. This leads to coda event where the couple are celebrating their escape and unofficial marriage. Klebb arrives as a cleaner and takes the machine appearing to successfully order Tatania to assist but before she can shoot Bond, Tatania comes to the rescue. There is a memorable scene where Klebb, as had training master Gotrell earlier in getting rid of number 3 uses device in the shoe to strike and poison to death an adversary.

This is a rare ending in the sense that the female lead survives although it is evident that although the girl has fallen in love with Bond the relationship does not continue. The film was made for £2 and made close to £80 thus one of the great financial successes of that time in terms of ratio between cost and income.

I have not read the book but according to a Wikipedia article the emphasis in the book was for Smersh to kill Bond because of his success against them in earlier books and to discredit him by filming the sexual liaison with the expendable Russian Marta Hari to cloud his judgement. In the book the decoding machine is called the Spektor and was evidently based on the British successful computer cracking of the German coding machine Enigma. While the film closely follows the book in all other respects Bond escapes death at the hands of Grant by holding his cigarette lighter in a magazine before his heart. There is also a significant difference in the Coda as instead of Klebb finding Bond and Tatania in Venice he tracks her down to Paris and although she is killed she poisons Bond with a stroke from the device in her show and the book ends with Bond unconscious and presumably dying.

Goldfinger has a less complicated story and was even more commercially successful that From Russia with Love making £125 million at the box office from an expenditure £3 million. This I suggest is why subsequent films followed many features established in this movie.

The villain, called Goldfinger, has legitimate gold holdings and jewellery making firm but the authorities know he is up to something when he is shifting large amounts of gold but they do not know how or why and Bond is assigned to find out.

His first contact with Goldfinger is in Miami with the help of a CIA contact where at the best beachside hotel he spots Goldfinger cheating at cards with the help of an assistant based in his room who is able to read the cards of his opponent via a telescope and relay the information via a fake hearing aid, an early version of the communications earpiece which has become so familiar used by security staff at sporting events, the police and personal security officers.

Bond interrupts the assistant played by Shirley Eaton, a very attractive young woman who had featured mainly in UK films for a decade but became Internationally famous because after Bond interrupts the game an insists that Goldfinger not only loses all the money he has won by cheating but gives back more and Bond and Eaton get together. Goldfinger gets his revenge by painting Eaton with gold paint all over with the consequence that he skin is unable to breathe and she dies with Bond finding her naked body stretched out on the hotel bed and the image became an icon for the movies and the Bond Genre, to some extent eclipsing the main Bond girl in the film Honour Blackman who is another Goldfinger staff member with the glorious name of Pussy Galore.

Eaton retired shortly after the film to become a housewife and a mother to which she devoted herself saying these roles were more important than being famous although since the death of her husband she has come into the limelight a little publishing a second account of her life and interests this year.

Her death in the film fuels Bond’s determination to carry out his assignment and he arranges a face to face meeting by playing a competitive round of golf, at the club owned by the villain who he again beats by a little trickery after catching him cheating again, this time facilitated by the next memorable assistant after Klebb, Oddjob, strong as an Ox and with a metal rim brim to his hat which decapitates!

The Aston Martin previously mentioned has a tracking device which Bond has attached to the Rolls Royce driven by Oddjob and which he finds is being transport by plane to Switzerland. He also arrange to take the next transport plane, only half an hour later, so with a 150 miles radius he is able to catch up with the villain soon after arrival, stopping to overlook as the Rolls stops below him on a mountainside to partake of some fruit at a roadside stall, and unlike event, but which is the opportunity for Bond to narrowly miss being shot by a young woman who transpires to be the sister of the character played by Eaton out for revenge, although how she knew Goldfinger was the culprit and was able to be in Switzerland armed and waiting to kill him at the first opportunity is not explained and is one of several highly contrived sequences in the film which stretched credulity and which became a feature of the genre as it moved away from the story integrity of the novels.

Bond is able to stop her killing Goldfinger during her second attempt which results in her being killed by Oddjob and he being captured and just about saving his bacon by arguing that he is more valuable alive as a prisoner than dead.

Bond has established that Goldfinger uses his Rolls to transport the Gold to his factory in the country in journeys he makes several times a year and the with the help of the Chinese he has been developing an intense large laser beam which can cut through metal, including gold. Bond is tied to a solid gold or metal slab with the laser in a way which will split him in two.

For another unexplained reason Goldfinger travels separately to the USA with Oddjob leaving Bond to travel in the luxury private jet piloted by Pussy Galore coming down at a private airfield in Kentucky where she operates a flying school and a team of young women who have been on some kind of training exercise.

Bond is tracked by the CIA, he has a second homing device in the heel of a shoe, who are told to keep their distance by M and London assuming that Bond is in control and not in difficulties.

Bond manages to escape and find himself under a main room on the estate where Goldfinger is explaining to an array of mafia style gang leaders from across the USA who are portrayed in the way the UK portrayed gangsters in the forties to early seventies mainly as inarticulate and thick, who each has invested $1 million of gold and want either their money back or an indication of when they will get the substantial return promised. Goldfinger outlines to them his plan to break into and steal the Gold at Fort Knox, the depository surround by some 60000 service men and their families and which he claims will result in a tenfold return on their investment. He then gases all but one of the gang leaders to their deaths.

The one who leaves with his gold is then killed and which in turn leads to another of the memorable sequences in the film which introduced the general public to the motor vehicle crusher which reduced any car into a small chunk of metal which is returned to the estate for the gold to be extracted. Bond has slipped his tracking device into the car and although destroyed the CIA return to their vigilance on the estate where Goldfinger has entered the final phase of the build up to his plan having worked out the way he is going to kill Bond and this and the nature of his plan is then explained to the audience.

The plan is not steal the gold but to contaminate it was a dirty bomb which will render the material useless for sixty years such is his theory increasing the value of his gold ten fold. The author and film makers were not to know that that 20 years later the whole notion of the gold standard and a nations wealth and currency had to be backed by its supply of gold would be abandoned in favour of monetarism part of which is for the state bank to issue as much currency as it needs and the International financial institutions and markets will accept.

The plan which appears to be well executed is for the display flying team to spray the area with a toxic nerve gas which they believe is only sending the troops and their families to sleep but is in fact killing them, and then the laser weapon brought into to the USA is used to get into the vault where the bomb is then taken to the lower level with a five minute timer to which Bond is chained.

Before this there is a sequence in which Pussy Galore collaborates in posing as another Bond conquest for the benefit of the observing CIA which she has agreed as a Goldfinger measure to distract the watchers from realizing what is about to happen. Why Goldfinger needs to do this is not explained and proves his Achilles heel because Bond not only seduces Pussy but unknown to us persuades her to contact the USA government and military and switch the lethal gas to something which enables the troops and civilians to fake death, including vehicle accidents, to enable the military to kill or capture the villains and their forces and stop the bomb going off. Why again it is necessary to go through charade and permit the villains to enter depository so that only seconds remain before the bomb is due to detonate is again something which astute film goers will have noted.

It is also not clear why Pussy Galore does not appear to have advised Bond of the success of making contact and the counter plan. He has been fighting for his life not just from the bomb going off but with Oddjob who has become imprisoned in the vault along with the representative of the Chinese who have supported the operation with technical know how, finance and manpower in order to undermine the capitalist economy if the West. He narrowly avoids death by Oddjob and only a stroke of luck enables him kill the man by an electric shock. Bond does not know how to stop the bomb but fortunately a USA specialist has accompanied the CIA and military forces and is on hand to click the off switch. This is not the end of the story because the USA President wants to meet and thank Bond for his contribution and instead of travelling the normal way the CIA decide in the final ludicrous Coda that Pussy Galore should fly him in Goldfinger‘s luxury plane which once in the air we learn Goldfinger dressed as USA General has managed to disable the guards to the plane, who have been bound and gagged but not killed and taken over the plane. He and Bond fight with a bullet penetrating the fuselage resulting in Goldfinger being sucked out though a damaged window and the two escaping by a parachute as the plane nose dives into the sea. Bond covers themselves with the parachute to avoid immediate detection which again is another signature ending for the genre. The film was a huge success with the first major spin off in memorabilia with Corgi issuing models of the Aston Martin

According to Wikipedia Goldfinger was originally to be titled The Richest Man in the World when written in 1958, as the 7^th book in the series with Goldfinger suspected of being involved with the Russian SMERSH. Goldfinger is also presented as a villain with a more complex character, hence his propensity to cheat at games despite his wealth and power.

He appears to only enjoy sex with gold painted prostitutes and has a pornography collection in yellow surrounding himself with Orientals who he refers to as yellow faced.

This was the first time that Bond was also built up as the saviour of the USA which is hugely ironic given that the UK secret service was effectively being run by the Soviets with their ring of traitors. Fleming also used the names of people he knew with Goldfinger the name of a London Architect who threatened to sue with the matter settled out of court. Bond does drive an Aston Martin but is a car without the tricks.

In the book it is an acquaintance of Bond in the USA who asks him as a favour to check out Goldfinger’s cheating habit with does lead to the affair with his assistant Masterson, and to her death, however the gold when taken from the Rolls Royce is changed into aircraft seats for his line which is then sold on the market in India for vast profit.

Bond is captured by Oddjob who tortures him and threaten to split him in two with a circular saw as a means of finding out why he is trailing his boss. The plan to steal from Fort Knox is based his New York base with help of New York mobs and the plot involves poisoning the water with help of Pussy Galore who is the lesbian leader of a gang of lesbian burglars “The cement mixers” with Tilly Masterson (hinted at being lesbian in the film) but openly gay in the book, surviving the earlier encounter and engaging with Pussy until she is killed by Oddjob as she is in film. Bond converts Pussy to his heterosexuality and bi sexuality was not openly written or portrayed at the time. Felix Leitner the CIA man is greeted by Bond as a friend in the film because he has appeared in earlier books and lost an arm and a and a leg ( in Live and Let die) and in the Goldfinger book Bong admires thee way his friend drives a car with his hook!

Finally in the book’s Coda Goldfinger has hijacked a BOAC jetliner in which in the fight Bond strangles Goldfinger and gets Goldfinger’s crew to ditch the plane off the coast of Canada where he and Pussy as rescued by a weathership.

2392 James Bond in Dr No book and film

I am being overambitious in wanting to experience again all the 29 James Bond Films and the Harry Potter series back to back before I depart for a Christmas and New Year Break, weather permitting, although in this instance the task is not as great as Montalbano or George Smiley as I only possess two Bond Books, but which fortunately includes the first filmed, Dr No, and the sixth novel in the series.

Having recently seen and reported on the latest film Skyfall I want to begin with considering how the films have evolved if they have! While there are several changes between the book and the film, the emphasis is on the story rather than the action and the thrills in part because of the limitation of the cinema craft back in the 1962 and also studio reservations about expensive gimmicks. This is demonstrated in Dr No by a simple opening although colourful there is no explosive opening sequence before the main film commences and the technology is much flashing lights and also models and back screen projections.

At one point a tower rises from the sea in the Caribbean which contains an atomic reactor driven ray able to disrupt the path of a rocket fired by the USA and which is clearly a model. When Connery is escaping from a chasing car it is evident that scenes of him at the wheel are studio based with a moving back screen projection used for trains planes, boats and cars over several decades. There is also no presentation of toys for Bond to use with him only presented with the latest commercially produced hand gun and told to leave his familiar and trusted weapon behind. A dragon turns out to be a crude mechanical vehicle fitted with an extra large flame thrower

The film does introduce us to M and Miss Moneypenny M’s Secretary, and Bond’s skill at cards and roulette although the opening Casino scene is not in the book. The film also begins the caricature of Bond’s ability for beautiful women to offer themselves to him, a feature which if my recollection is correct Roger Moore perfected whereas in my judgement Bond is written as a character with greater depth looking for an ongoing and meaningful relationship. The films always have an end sequence with him getting the girl before the eyes of the world so to speak as officialdom seeks to retrieve him from some impossible to survive situation. Similarly this film commenced the myth of his indestructibility and ability to get out whatever form of imprisonment or close to death predicament he is placed and my memory is that all the films including the first end with a big bang or potential big bang averted as he, sometimes with support, takes on a vastly superior force of mercenaries in terms of numbers and weapons. There is no specially written number 1 hit tune performed by the leading songstress of the day.

Now to the film story and the substantial difference between book and film mainly I believe in order to create a fast moving and exciting thriller not restricted to adults but also perhaps because the book ending is flawed. I have mentioned that the films begins with Bond winning a substantial sum from woman at a Casino before being called away to see M at 3 am in the morning. He flirts with the woman and agrees to compete again in a round of golf before learning that he has to immediately travel away which handicaps his opportunity when he finds that she got into his home and is practicing carpet golf wearing one of his shirts. They have time to have sex off screen before his 10 hour flight Jamaica. She has no role in the main story or is seen again. In the sixties such scenes were considered exciting and revolutionary.

The film is story of Dr No, product of a relationship between a Chinese and Western couple who after making $10 million as part of a Chinese Triad he takes the loot which he uses to becomes a lead member of SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter Intelligence Terrorism Revenge and Extortion).

In the book he became a member of a Chinese Tong in the USA and written at the height of the Cold War Dr No he has done a deal with the Russians who help finance his lifestyle on the island purchased in 1943 from the British with his ill gotten gains. In book and film his sideline is disrupting the launch, direction and location of rockets launched by the USA although in the book the CIA and USA marines have no role as developed in the film.

In both as in the majority if not all Bond films, the chief villain is a ruthless maniac who has built at enormous cost a secret hideaway, strongly fortified with a huge number of expendable mercenaries and high tech weaponry but where his private quarters are luxurious, displaying his wealth with stolen works of art, commanding a superior chef and a cellar of the finest wines.

Whereas in the book the Russians fund and support with their technology in order to undermine the military capabilities of their enemy, the film skates over how the SPECTRE action will help their conquest of the world.

In the Film the reason why Bond has to suddenly leave the private casino is because the agent stationed in Jamaica has failed to make his daily radio call and the channel had remained open although unanswered after his secretary assistant had began the connection to the British mainland Security Communications centre. Soon after arriving in Jamaica Bond visits the residence of the agent when the Police Commissioner shows him the dried blood identified as that of the female assistant. In the book the agent and the assistant disappeared three weeks before with the residence burned to the ground and the view of the Island’s Governor is that the couple ran off together with whatever funds were to hand. In the film we know the agent was gunned down by three Chinese Jamaicans posing as blind men while the tune Three Blind Mice is played in the background after he left the club where he played cards with a small group of men including the local analyst who quickly is rightly identified as the suspect, although again he has no role in the book. In the film Bonds finds a receipt for the analysis of rocks taken from Dr No’s island which the man later denies had any value or significance and which he had thrown away. Bond on the ball had guessed correctly and arranged for a radiation detection device to be sent from London which when applied to the place on a boat where the rocks had been reveals significant continuing radiation. Having gone to island against orders to inform Dr No of the development, he is told to take a caged Tarantula back with him and later there is a great scene where Bond narrowly escapes death from the creature, although in the book we never know who directly placed the creature or delivered, allegedly from the governor a bowl of fruit where Bond spots the syringe marks which when analysed reveal lethal quantities of cyanide.

In the film the governor is alleged to have sent Bond a car whereas in the book given his anonymity as an Import and Export agent there is understandably no official link and he is met by Quarrel, a local fisherman and boat owner who he had contacted before setting off on the journey having used the man on his previous visit to the Island five years before. In the film he makes a phone call to establish the car and its chauffer are fakes and when he confronts the driver after giving the slip to a following vehicle, the man commits suicide with a cyanide filled cigarette. There is a fight when he contacts Quarrel after someone advises that the man will take visitors to the outlying islands.

Quarrel is suspicious of the stranger and Bond is prevented from seriously harming the man by the CIA contact that had needed the help of the killed agent because Jamaica was then a British Colony and Dr No’s island a former British possession over which the CIA had no jurisdiction. In the film the CIA man ferries them and a canoe to the outer waters of the Island and then arrives with USA marines at the end of the film to rescue Bond.

In both there is an attractive Chinese Jamaican who attempts to take a photo when he arrives off the plane and again when he is eating and drink with Quarrel at a restaurant bar. She is rightly identified as an agent of Dr No whose hold over her is such that she is prepared to withstand pain for him. However there is significant difference between film and book over another Chinese Jamaican. In the film she is secretary to the Governor and Bond correctly suspects she is the informant who has given away his arrival plan as well as being involved in the death of his predecessor and assistant. In the book she is secretary to the representative of the Colonial office who he notes had been examining files about the Island and its owner which had then disappeared and while she is identified as another agent of Dr No she also plays no further part in the book while in the film she invites Bond to her isolated home and first Bond is attacked by men in a car which crashes into a burning inferno, then after having sex with the woman who has been ordered to keep Bond busy for a couple of Hours, he arranged for her to be arrested and taken away while he waits for the arrival of the next assassin, who turns out be the analyst who Bond takes great delight in killing after they fight.

The film and the book are in two parts with the second concerned with the island of Dr No and what goes on there and it is with this second part that the differences become fundamental although there are several similarities which as I have previously mentioned include the luxury hideaway. In the film the original business of the island is a front for the creation of an atomic powered reactor to fuel the ray which is able to disrupt American rocket launches.

In the book the business of the island remain a crucial part of the story and while the technical disruption of the rockets is stated as a purpose this plays no further part in the story. In the film Bond’s capture coincides with a rocket launch and is why he is sent to island so quickly after the death of the former agent. Bond is able to prevent the intervention by setting the reactor to explode which it does destroying the island in a spectacular finale after Dr No dies in the reactor cooling system. My main criticism of this ending is that amazingly there appears to be no long term consequence from the radiation on Bond and his rescuers. The is a dangerously politically motivated device used by the film, no doubt on behalf of the then embryonic nuclear energy industry to suggest that it was and is possible to immediately decontaminate people from a major exposure when Bond and the female lead enter contaminated land although how the land came to be so affected is not explained and this in turn brings me to most important difference between the book and the film, the role, the personality and the back story of the female lead.

In the film she is played by Ursula Andress as a beautiful woman in face and body while in book important difference is that she has a broken nose. Another female actor is a voice over as Ursula did not speak fluent English at the time and a second actor sings a song for her. In a travesty of the plot the film makers wanted a super look Bond girl of the type glorified in Baywatch and since its creation by female announcers on Fox News. It is woman as a sexual object par excellence although the film also does attempt to portray the character as a violated virgin who lives a solitary life since the death feather bird studying father on the island sometime before.

Bond discovers the girl when he wakes first thing after arriving on the island in the cover of darkness the night before as she comes also is a canoe from the main island to collect large sculptured sea shells which sells in Miami at $50 a time. In the book she comes for a small closed coloured shell favoured by collectors which she gets for $5 and which she is saving to go to the States to get a nose job which occurred when she was raped by a worker on the plantation where her family had been one of the oldest and wealthiest on the island. She still lives in the decaying family home because the decline in the business and was cared for a servant friend since childhood when she became an orphan. Every year when the plantation was cleared the creatures who inhabited some furry and some dangerous had taken to the house cellars until the clearance ended and they could go back to their life in open. Because she had her carers had taken refuge in the cellars she had learned to lived with and become friends with the creatures and because she walked about with snakes cuddling her body she had established the reputation of having dark powers and which in turn had added to her isolation. This ability is to prove crucial to her survival in the book although is also where the book has a major flaw.

In the book she comes out of the water naked except for a swimming belt omitted in the film to enable a teenage audience to attend the film and there is a well described tender love scene as well as other moments of nakedness in the book which the film skates over or avoids. In both she does describes giving the man who raped and injured her nose a low painful death over a week through a tarantula bite. In film she fires at Bond a series of questions in the form of little known information which is explained in the book that her education consisted of working through an encyclopaedia from A through to a letter towards the end of the alphabet, but not the end. In fairness the film does manage to communicate aspects of the naive, trusting, young girl personality of the book, although this is more to do with the voice over and script and my view Andress is miscast and sets the trend of using actresses as sex object par excellent in the part of the main female lead.

In the book the main business of the island is the production of fertilizer from bird droppings although the trade has its ups and down with the development of artificial manure by the Germans after the War. However it is another bird, flamingo like, which has led to the interest of the authorities in the Island. Representatives of a society concerned with the welfare and protection of these birds with rights carried over from the sale of the island to Dr No had visited and told him of their intention to open a hotel and associated facilities including an air strip in the area of the reserve in order to bring visitors to view the colony. They had never left the island and the dragon fire giving machine was developed not just to scare off other visitors but also to destroy and frighten off these particular birds.

In the book Dr No dies under a mountain of birth droppings spilt over him from a crane controlled by Bond and not in reactor core cooling fluid.

As in the book Bond and the 20 year old girl surrender to the men driving the dragon armoured vehicle after they have survived being machine gunned from a patrol boat, and being chased by pack of hounds by staying under water using cut reeds to breathe but give up when Quarrel is burnt to death by the advancing weapon. They are first cared for by Chinese Women who operate clinic built inside the mountain rock as front should officialdom come to investigate the island, under which are the quarters of Dr No and the atomic reactor and rocket disrupting technology.

In the book Dr No explains his purpose and his background in a forty five minute chat before dinner at nine after the couple have been drugged and spend the day sleeping. During this time he had inspected the naked bodies of the girl and Bond. He then makes it clear that Bond and the girl are not to leave the island. For Bond he has devised an assault course which Bond survives and where the book describes his effort in details as well as various painful injuries he sustains.

For the girl he explains that once a year, fortunately coinciding with her arrival, there is the march of crabs from one side of the island to the other side and this phenomenon does exist in nature and hence the name Crab Island!

Because he is a sadist and a scientist he enjoys observing human pain admitting he admired the work of the Nazi doctors and experimenters claiming they made significant contributions to science and human progress. He had staked a black Jamaican girl naked in the pathway of the migrating creatures and observed how long she had survived which was short. Now he would take the opportunity of comparing her survival that of a white woman. In the film the young woman is given over to the guards for their pleasure and Bond does find her staked but in an area where will drown, a change I believe in part designed to protect the lower rating of the film to maximise the International audience.

I immediately made the connection between her experiences on the plantation and this planned death and I was not wrong for she explains to Bond that the creatures did not like meat and would only attack a human or other animal carcass if there was an open wound. She had lain there while they walked over and around her until they departed with the dawn and than she had freed herself from the stakes making her way to kill Dr No and where she had encountered Bond.

It is this aspect where the story in the book is flawed and which may explain why it was varied in the film. The man would have ensured that he had opportunity watch both trials and deaths as they happened in person and there was no need for them to occur at the same time or for his attention to be diverted by the arrival of a ship to bring supplies and take away the fertilizer and even then he could have arranged for the tests to be filmed and monitored by his guards so he could study and enjoy later. He would have added to Bond‘s horror and pain by making him watch the death of girl and in any event he would know the behaviour of the creatures and would have therefore given the girl an open wound to ensure she was attacked and eaten to death. This I suspect is the main reason for change in ending.

The book does not end with Bond having sex with the girl in the bottom of a boat which enables them to leave the island as it explodes and then releasing the tow rope attached by the rescue team of the CIA contact and American marines, Bond has to go to hospital, then needs to recuperate from his wounds and is cared for by the girl at her estate house which she fills with silverware which has been locked away unused and which again could have been sold to get her the nose job. Bond does arrange for the young woman to go to New York for the operation and for his contact and new friend from the Colonial Office and his wife to care for her when she first returns home while Bonds continues his adventures elsewhere.

In the book the Governor is portrayed as a reactionary figure, a portrait which I believe has some factual basis but while his inclination is for a complete cover up Bond persuades that by seeking anonymity himself the governor will be able to claim credit for aspects of the truth.

2391 The Lady and other films

The best film of the week by a distance was The Lady which I will leave to the end. The film is of political, social and historical significance and I debated whether to include with the rest of rubbish recently experienced or cover in the writing on political and economic matters of the moment. The other films are so bad that I concluded I had leave the Lady to save this writing from the shredder.

The first film therefore is Immortals the 20011 mythical story. The setting is a war between Immortals in which those who subsequently calls themselves Gods and those defeated, the Titans are imprisoned within a mountain.

The baddie is played by Mickey Rourke as Hyperion who has learned of the existence of a magic bow which can release the Titans from their imprisonment and help him take control of the known human world. He sets off to capture the virgin oracle Phaedra so she can help find the bow as part of her knowledge of his future.

Meanwhile in a village located on a mountainous cliff overlooking the sea, a peasant boy/young man, Theseus, with a single parent mother has been trained as a warrior by an old man played by the actor John Hurt who if I have understood directly is also the top God Zeus who is training the young man to become the saviour of human kind against the wicked Hyperion. There is a conflict between this involvement of Zeus and his stricture on pain of death to other Gods including his daughter, Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, that they should not intervene to help human kind against Hyperion because he believes that if he has the will Theseus will overcome Hyperion.

The problem arises when Athenian soldiers arrive to move the villagers away from the forces of Hyperion but leave the peasants to make their own way after the others have left with escort. Theseus protests and attacks one of the soldiers, Lysander for being offensive towards his mother and the other peasants. This soldier is demoted and told to help with escorting the rest of the village but rebels, escapes and goes to join Hyperion telling him about the villages and its remaining people. Hyperion attacks the village, the mother of Theseus is skilled and Theses shows such valour that he is not killed but taken prisoner to work in the Salt Mines. On his journey he meets up with party bring the virgin Oracle and her three assistants to Hyperion after their capture. All four ladies pretend to be the Oracle. With the help of the three others the Oracle escapes with Theseus and other prisoners including a thief called Stavros who proves his valour later. The problem is that the Oracle has a vision which shows Theseus bring the magical bow to Hyperion and swearing his allegiance.

It is the Oracle who persuades Theseus who like Hyperion has no belief in the Gods or his mother’s religion that he should return to the village to give her a religious burial. This he does but is attacked by the Minotaur a henchman of Hyperion who wears a metal mask of a bull. There are two development of significance in this part of the film. First Theseus discovers the Magical Bow which help him to destroy the forces of Hyperion sent to capture the Oracle as much as him after it is discovered that she is not among the three women captured. They are tortured, abused and killed imprisoned inside the metal cast of a bull. Secondly Poseidon helps Theseus and the Oracle escape and make use of a boat to get to Mount Tartarus and the Kingdom of the Hellenics to warn their monarch of what Hyperion is planning as seen by the Oracle.

Meanwhile the Oracle has given her virginity to Theseus and conceives his son when they return to her temple so he can recover from the wounds from his battle with the Minotaur. The couple are then lured into an ambush where in the fight he loses the magical bow which is taken to Hyperion massed with his forces outside the citadel stronghold of the Hellenics. It is at this point that Ares the God of War supported by Athena intervenes to ensure that Theseus and the Oracle survives.

The penultimate sections of the film involve two battles of good against evil. First Hyperion uses the bow to release the Titans who have been held within Mount Tartarus but Zeus and the other Gods have been prepared to do battle as had before. However Zeus has kept his word and destroy Ares for intervening which is a big mistake

The King of Hellenics believes that it is possible to negotiate peace Hyperion as this results in only Zeus and his daughter who he appears to have forgiven and who appears to be immortally wounded at one point to escape as they bring the mountain down.

Hyperion has also used the bow to destroy he one entrance tunnel through the mountain which leads to the Hellenic City. The King believe that he can negotiate a peace with Hyperion believing that the conflict is between the Hyperion and the Athenians and disregards the warnings of Theseus and the Oracle. Fortunately Hyperion is aware of foresight of the Oracle and demands that Theseus should represent the King at the negotiation. He offers Theseus place at his side as together they would be able to conquer the world but Theseus rejects the offer and when the entrance to the citadel falls it is he who rallies the panicking troops to defend the city despite the great difference in the sizes of the forces. The King is killed but Theseus and Hyperion fight to their respective deaths. Just when it looks as the might of Hyperion’s forces will overcome the city forces, Zeus and Athena depart the collapsing mountain, together with the souls of Theseus to the heavens. The mountain engulfs the advancing enemy killing many and causing the remainder to flee. The city and human kind is saved through sacrifice of Theseus. He is honoured and the film ends as his son Acamus is being tutored by Zeus again as the old man that one day like his father he too will need to fight to save humanity and the sky is filled with the Gods and the Titans fighting again suggesting a sequel!

I suspected Deck the Halls was not made for the cinema as it proved to be even worse than most cinema B film in the days when two features films were shown, plus the newsreel and a cartoon. I decided to watch because this is the time of the year when dedicated Christmas film channels appear together with seasonal films being added to the main Sky channels as well as being shown on other channels including the BBC and ITV. The film is about the kidnapping of a philanthropist whose main business is a funeral home together with an assistant and where his police detective daughter is joined by a Miss Marple like writer who has the support of an attractive young male detective. The kidnappers wear father Christmas uniforms and the event occurs a few days before Christmas allowing considerable product placement for large decorated Christmas trees.

I guessed who was behind the kidnapping and also identified the red herrings. The ending was predicable as well as the two families celebrating Christmas together and he Police detective daughter commencing a relationship with the Police leader of the investigation of the kidnapping.

Deck the Halls was not as bad as The Secret Agents Club film, a vehicle for Hulk Hogan in 1996 who had gained fame as professional Wrestling participant at a time when children persuaded their parents to see the entertainment, An excruciatingly bad group of young people hang out in the garden nuclear shelter of a toy store owner who has an Asian assistant, the significance of which only emerges when his young son arrives as the same time and the gang of children in search of the father and discover the assistant badly injured and the store wrecked. The parental home has also been wrecked. The Asian boy joins the gang while his father recovers and the boy is quickly able to show his Kung Fo fighting skills.

In this instance the kidnap is to try find a new Ray Gun which the father has created/ secured in his role as the leading member of a government secret organisation to protect the USA nation. The son has an uneasy relationship with his father because of the long absences from home and which he believes contributed to the premature death of his mother. Father leaves a message to say the boy can trust someone who the boy has not previously met so when someone who appears nice and normal comes to their rescue they are persuaded to enter his van to find themselves eventually captured having knocked out and tied up the man who came to save them and who is a secret agent colleague of the father. The main villain is a female who appears to have based her role on Joan Collins at her worst and is assisted by a Nazi style doctor who wants to drill into the brain the kidnapped father and a strong arm who wears a large metal boot.

The children determine to rescue the father after learning his location breaking into the fortified HQ defended by a force of 200 armed mercenaries with machine gun vehicles and other military support. The children use toys. The film ends with the arrival of the USA colleagues of the father and they escape after a massive explosion destroys he complex and the villains. What amazed me is the film was made in 1996 when it had the hallmarks of the films I viewed as a child at the Saturday morning club at the Odeon Cinema in Wallington in the later 1940’s.

I am torn between which film merits being covered before the Lady and which I should report. The two films Resistance 2011 an Independent film from the Welsh Film Industry and You’ve Got Mail the 1996 Hollywood Romantic film with some serious aspects and which is mislabelled a comedy.

I have settled for You’ve Got Mail because it is intended as entertainment and not be regarded as saying anything fundamental about the human experience and yet I felt it was a closer portrayal of reality than Resistance.

Meg Ryan operates a local community book store for children previously owned and managed by her mother, now departed. She treats her two assistants as friends and confide ads as she does her older bookkeeper. She has a long relationship with an intellectual writer for a New York paper and one day they notice that a local premises is being adapted as the latest of the chain of Fox Book stores who in addition to providing a large and comprehensive range of books tempt the customers in with a coffee and lounge seating inducing the ability to look at the books at leisure before making a purchase.

Fox Books is run by two brothers each married several times to much young women so that the son of one. Tom Hanks has an aunt who is a female child around 10-12 and a male brother who is around five years. five. Tom is a ruthless single minded business man who has no conscience about the local shop and any other competitor out of business. He also has a long term partner with whom he lives and is the book publishing. Meg and Tom find their relationships lack what they believe a relationship should and find they have more in common emotionally and in attitudes with each other when they communicate via a chatline from which they commence to communicate by emails using anonymous mailbox addresses on AOL. While they share intimate thoughts and feelings they agree at the outset not say anything which identifies who they are or what they do.

The two meet for the first time without appreciating they are having the communication when Hanks is asked to look after his young aunt and brother for the day which he spends at their request as local event which is rounded off by going into the store for a scheduled story read session after which there is a purchase of books and exchange of names with Meg giving her full name but Hanks only his Christian.

When she finds out that he is part of the Fox empire she is tongue tied unable to say what she thinks but on line he warns about the reaction after speaking the mind without giving thought to the repercussions. I cannot remember the order in which the two separate from their partners and they agree to meet after she seeks advice about what do as her business is under threat of closure. He stands her up when he realises who she is. She and her partner have an amazing amicable breakup when she realises she is in love with on line stranger and her partner that he is attracted to a TV interviewer after he has written about the fight to save the book shop. Less clear is reason for the break up between himself and the publisher, although she expressed the wish to offer Meg a job after meeting her previously.

Tom moves onto his father’s moored Yacht where he is joined by his father for a few weeks after the break up of his latest marriage. Meg closes the book shop and is impressed by the Children’s section in the new store. Hanks then visits with her favourite flowers on earning she had a bad cold and they become friends and she is torn between this new relationships and her continued good feelings for the on line stranger. They agree to meet and of course she is pleased when the stranger turns out to be Hanks. The reality aspect is that the book store shop[ closed and by down the Book store chain may have gone down the Swanee because of the extent to which people are using on line bookshop buying.

I am still not sure what to make of Resistance the 2011 film made with the help of the Film Agency for Wales together with other interests. I have watched the film twice in an effort to understand aspects of the story. The film is set in a quiet farming valley in Wales as the UK has been invaded by Germany after the failure of the D Day landings. A small unit sets up in a farm on a special mission by the German High Command. They have information that hidden is a special Artefact but when the officer in charge discovers it in a cave he keeps this to himself.

The film opens as the men in the valley leave home without telling their families in order to join the partisans. I could not I understand why none of the men disclosed their intentions or tried to get message back to their women folk. One young man in the nearest town to the valley is appointed as some kind of contact/postman with the underground movement by someone who then leaves and is also ordered to take action against anyone who collaborated with the enemy when it arrives. There is also a scene in which the unit is involved in killing some men although its not clear what the men have done and who they are. The unit also appears to have been involved in close fought battles on their way to Wales.

Because the discovery of the artefact is not disclosed the unit spend the Winter in the Valley during which time they get to know and help the women to survive on the farms and as the Winter becomes Spring and the uniforms of the men wear out the make use of the civilian clothing used by the men folk of the community for every day use.

It becomes clear from talk between the unit leader and one of the young wives that he does not intend to return to Germany once the war is over and hopes to settle in the community with her. He destroys letters sent home by unit members as well as letters sent to them. The young man left in the town kills the new foal owned by a woman on one of the farms because she is being helped by of the German soldiers after she goes into the town for necessary supplies for the community. There she learns that her husband has been killed as a partisan having said to a woman she knows that he was back home working hard. She dies what appears shortly afterwards from the loss of foal and the news about her husband which she keeps to herself not to upset the other waiting women. Following the death the young wife burns the artefact she has been shown by the unit leader and it appears she too is going off to join the partisans despite the expectation that the war will shortly be over although what happens to her and unit is left unsettled.

There have been other incidents before this which occur but are not explained. It appears one of the men returns and greets a man work on his farm only to realise too late the man is a soldier and he is captured and then executed on the orders of the unit leader, and for some reason that the man appears to have been tortured by the Gestapo is a factor in the decision.

I failed to work out the point of the film. That an enemy is no different from those who fight is one issue. That without their men some women will establish relationships with men who they come into contact whether allies from other countries or other men home on leave or working in the UK. Perhaps a prisoner of war allocated to work on the land in the or as we know women who fraternised with the occupying forces in Western Europe during World War II.

Another incident is when a member of the unit reports that orders were given to execute those on their own side who became wounded so that the people back home would not be demoralised if the men were allowed to be returned home for treatment, perhaps it is the nature of the regime they are furthering and what they are ordered to do as well as the length of the conflict which leads the unit leader to want to disappear and merge into this isolated community. Is the film entertaining ? No .It remains unclear to me what the purpose of the film is?

And so I come to the one film of significance, based on fact and the story of one of the most remarkable women of our time entitled The Lady.

Aung San Suu Kyi

was born on June 19^th 1945 when her father who had created the Burmese Army was instrumental in negotiating independence from the British for his country and which was achieved in January 1948 with the intention of establishing a British style democracy. He was assassinated by others from the army beforehand and who then established an authoritarian military dictatorship, which has consistently beat, tortured, raped, imprisoned and killed anyone who challenged their power and control. In addition there has been child labour, sexual and work slavery and all forms of human trafficking allegedly to this day centred on the army and its interests.

The population of the country is similar to the UK having doubled in thirty years and has a huge geographical area of over two hundred and fifty thousand square miles bordering with India, Bangladesh, China, Thailand and Laos.

Following the assassination of her father and several of his government colleagues she was brought up by her mother with her two brothers in the family home by a lake. One of her brothers drowned when he was only eight years of age and the other brother is now a USA citizen, Aung San Suu Kyi travelled with her mother India when the widow became Ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960 where she continued her education graduating with a degree in politics in 1964. She also studied at Oxford with a degree in Politics Economics and Philosophy in 1969 and then worked for the United Nations in the USA for the years. In 1971 she married Dr Michael Aris whose subject was Tibetan culture and they had two sons together with a family home in Oxford. It is important to appreciate that despite her academic education she was not active in political matters until after her return to Burma in 1989 when her mother became sick and then died. While there two events occurred which was to change her life, the relationship with her husband and children. The military head of state stood down and this led to significant demonstrations for democracy and she was approached by interests as the one person who could unite the state because of the legacy of her father and mother.

The non violent calls for democracy were violently put down by members of military Junta. Without previous experience of public speaking she address a huge crowd with estimates between half and one million people reported. She went on an extended tour of the country although at one point she non violently faced down a local military commanded who threatened to shoot her if she proceeded to where she was to speak. The regime was aware of her power in the country, the danger that with her death she would become and even great force as a martyr and they hoped by isolation she would be forgotten.

Although her husband and sons were with her during 1988 and 1989 he was then ordered out of the country and he only saw her five times after that, the last at Christmas 1995 and permission was refused when arrangements were made for him to travel to Burma with private medical and nursing assistance for his last months before his death from prostate cancer in March 1999 at the age of 53. She has only had open contact with her sons since 2011 and who had remained in Britain cared for relatives and friends of her husband.

Although she wished to be with him he was insistent that if she left she would not be allowed back. She has been under House arrest for most of her time in Burma, In 1990 soon after her return, the political party which she led was allowed to contest the first free election for 30 years and her Party won 392 of the 489 seats against the Military Party. The Military Junta refused to accept the decision or lift martial law and her house detention continued until 1995 when she was released as a consequence of external pressure and the wish of the Junta to become members of the Organisation of South East Asia States where China had a significant interest. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 organised by her husband whoa accepted the award on her behalf with one of her sons making the acceptance speech which according to the film she was able to hear on a battery radio after the regime turned off electricity to the house. She received other major awards particularly the Nehru Award in 1993.

In 1995 she was allowed to address the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. She was placed back in House arrests in 2000 despite various interventions around the world including by the UN General Secretary and in many way her circumstances got worse and she has required hospital treatment for ill health,

There had been several notable incidents widely reported around the world. In 2007 the Buddhist monks took to the streets calling for her release and for democracy and their protest was violently attacked. She was able to see them at the Gates of her home when a large party assembled and she gave them her blessing.

In 2008 Burma was devastated by a cyclone with an estimated massive loss of life which increased because of the failure of the government to allow the help from International Agencies. The cyclone destroyed the roof of her home and the loss of electricity was not remedied by the authorities.

In 2009 an American swam the Lake to her house alleging that he wanted to warn her of an attempt to assassinate. She was arrested because she had allowed the man to stay at her house exhausted from the swim. She and her maids were arrested and imprisonment with charges which could have led to a long term of imprisonment. She was sentenced to three years with hard Labour which was then commuted by the Junta to further House arrest although under International Law and Burmese Law she period of permitted House arrest was being exceeded. It was also seen as an attempt to prevent participation in the first General Election for 20 years in 2010, the second in fifty. However it was agreed that her home could be repaired and she was then released from House arrest on 13 November 2010 at which point the film ends.

He son Kim Aris was allowed to visit and accompany her on trips in July and August of last year and she met with representatives of the government on several occasions. About a tenth of the political prisoners have been released as a consequence of her new involvement.

After speaking with President Obama a visit of Hilary Clinton was arranged last year. She has also been allowed to meet with the Prime Minister of Thailand and in 2012 she met with William Hague and the Burmese Foreign Minister. She was invited to address the Swiss Parliament and to collect her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. Allowed to campaign for a seat in the Lower House in March of this year her speech calling for reform of the constitution, removal of restrictive laws, establishment of democratic rights and Independent judiciary was televised nationally. After successful election she made the Opposition leader of the Party in the lower House. She attended the Parliament for the first time in July of this year.

In September she made a coast to coast tour of the United States, accepting the Congressional Medal of Honour and meeting with President Obama at the White House and which she described as one of the most moving experiences of her life. It has to be recorded while it is hoped her story will go on, she has suggested from ill health over recent years. It is also not clear if the generals who have remained effectively in power since the End of World War II and British Independence intend to voluntary accept subordination to a civilian government. The position of China in this respect remains significant as does that of Aung San Suu Kyi.