Dr No. (Blu-ray)
Take 1Where it all began on a relatively small budget of $1.1M.
But boy does it show! There’s no way one could expect anyone to predict 50 years into the future and to the home comforts of blu-ray. But that aside there’s little excuse for some of the poor attempts at continuity - and the audio? Why was that not treated with the same care and attention to the picture when they transferred it to digital? The levels are all over the place with one having to turn the volume up to hear parts of a conversation only to have the windows blown out in the next scene. Overdubs? Ursula Andress has her voice overdubbed and the guy on the boat with the mega-phone, he’s overdubbed, probably because it was distorted on the playback, but the poor attempt leaving him saying ”Full speed ahead” off megaphone but the overdub keeping it on megaphone.
The screen play sticks largely in principal to the Fleming novel, is void of the soon to be gadget world of Bond and does a good job of setting the stage for what’s to come with the format of M, Moneypenny, Leiter and the girl(s) all set in an exotic location.
After a while I gave up noting down the poor continuity and the strange quirks that may or may not have been continuity issues but even so they had little or no explanation and some were downright poor filming mistakes. Here’s a photo of one of the crew wearing shades sitting just behind and in the middle of two arc lights as the hearse departs with Strangways:
When Bond goes to see M something strange happens to M’s communications tray on his desk. He loses a piece with the title ON HER MAJESTYS SERVICE:
When Bond arrives at Kingston Airport we see Leiter standing upstairs waiting for Bond. As soon as he sees him he lights up a cigarette and goes downstairs where he then doesn’t have it anymore.
Bond is approached by Jones the driver and he gets into the car sitting on the near side. He leaves the airport and in the next shot driving down the road he’s on the off side. Okay so we could say he moved his briefcase over and swapped sides when we weren’t looking but it just seems odd.
Bond looks at the dashpoard. We then get a close up of the dashboard showing the car going from 50-ish mph to 60-ish mph. Except the engine temperature is reading cold and if you look at the reflection on top of the dash – the car isn’t moving!
Bond tells Jones the driver to pull over. He gets him out of the car and when he punches him he pulls back his right fist and goes to throw the punch – change camera angle – and Bond uses his left to finish the throwing of the punch.
Jones the driver asks to have one of his cigarettes, brakes it in two and swallows the cyanide pill. When Bond shows the cigarette laid out on a handkerchief the cigarette has a burnt smoked end on it! Then change camera angle to show Bond putting it back in an envelope and the way the bent cigarette was laid out on the handkerchief has altered.
Bond, no make that Connery, Bond would never make the mistake, Connery is back at his hotel getting ready to go out. He lays the traps to tell if anyone has been snooping and then dons his gun holster. The edit was put in just before he finishes putting it on because Connery got his right arm side of the holster all twisted up.
I’d had enough at this point. The frequency of “errors” was spoiling the film for me, or more so my noticing them, it was really more my fault than the films. Blu-ray which is new to me had shown me how great the picture quality was but it had made me notice the detail, which is in part the point of it, but that was good detail and bad detail. These errors were nothing to do with the films budget, it would have cost no more not to have had them. I decided to stop the film and watch it again the following day but just allowing myself to get into the film, to get lost in it, to be a part of it and not worry about the rights and wrongs of incidentals
Take 2.This film as the one of the guys from Lowry puts it, looks like a film shot today but set in the sixties. This is very true.
The introduction of Bond to the public is superb. We get the sum of Bond in a matter of a few gestures. Dressed as a gentleman, wins all the girls money, finds her playing with his indoor golf set and then shags her. Fleming would have been impressed.
This film is a little “quieter” than the rest of the franchise becomes as far as pace goes. Bond flies from London to the Carribean. That’s it for globe trotting pace. But this also works well with the underlying cool pace of Jamaica. Quielty spoken officials never breaking out in a sweat help build the tension when contrasting with Bond’s no nonsense approach.
The sets built at Pinewood look convincing (Pleydell Smith's government office, Miss Taro's apartment etc) and I never felt we weren’t in Jamaica. Connery got good acting support in Jack Lord’s portrayal of Leiter (maybe Lord played it a bit too cool?) and John Kitzmiller’s Quarrel with Joseph Wiseman setting the benchmark for the cool megalomaniac Bond will encounter time and time again, this time as Dr No. Anthony Dawson plays the man instructed by No to kill Bond. Actually, when I saw Casino Royale (2006) I was staggered by the character Mr White. How did the guy who played Dent in 1962 age just 15 years when he should have aged 45 years. Okay, I know they’re different actors after I saw the film, but it did leave me wondering for a spell.
Here’s Anthony Dawson and Jesper Christensen who played Mr White:
Exotic location for the films last segment in Crab Key, a beautiful girl in Ursulla Andress and start how you mean to continue with the baddies lair, a bigger than big set from which one day he will rule the world. Of course despite Bond seemingly stuck in a situation where we can’t see how he’s going to get out of it followed by him then doing so, getting the baddie and then for a finale UA stumping up another $100K to pay to blow up the baddies lair. Whilst it did only add a minute or two to the film AND it looks like a model that was blown up it was costly as it added 10% straight onto the budget of the whole film.
Add in the soon to be customary, make that compulsory, car chase (not so convincing these days with Connery in a stationary car being chased by the baddies in a car on the screen behind him) and you have the base formula for how to make a good Bond film. Blu-ray really does add a new life to the film, it doesn’t look dated but instead looks like it’s set in that date. The niggles I initially had I overcame and fell in love with the innocence of the movie for the first time, the “is this how we need to make Bond movies?” YES IT IS!
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