Your Favourite James Bond Director

I voted for Young, though I've seen no evidence of his directing magic outside of Bond. Conversely, Gilbert has made some fine films, but his work for EON is undistinguished.

EDIT: usual appalling typing

Louis Armstrong wrote:

Hunt. Way too many cool stylistic touches in OHMSS for me not to pick him. And he understood Bond just as much as Young.

Indeed. Not only did he understand it, but he had a literary passion for it greater than perhaps any of the other directors I would say. Plus he had the advantage of working through the ranks and 5 movies to hone his vision and craft. His tenure (along with Lazenby's) being kept to one film is the biggest tragedy in the history of the franchise imho.

Respect chap! I went for Hunt also...

Young seemed to get disinterested towards the end. Hunt was more enthusiastic during the duration of his Bond career...

ambler wrote:

I voted for Young, though I've seen no evidence of his directing magic outside of Bond.

Watch WAIT UNTIL DARK.

Sharky wrote:

ambler wrote:

I voted for Young, though I've seen no evidence of his directing magic outside of Bond.

Watch WAIT UNTIL DARK.

Yep.

And only that.

FourDot wrote:

Sharky wrote:

ambler wrote:

I voted for Young, though I've seen no evidence of his directing magic outside of Bond.

Watch WAIT UNTIL DARK.

Yep.

And only that.

Agreed. I'd happily put it in my top 20 films. And Hepburn is amazing.

Thought I'd pump out a list.

1. Young
2. Hunt
3. Spottiswoode
4. Glen
5. Apted
6. Gilbert
7. Mendes
8. Campbell
9. Hamilton
10. Tamahori
11. Foster

Campbell would probably be last if it wasn't for GE. While I prefer GE to SF, I dislike CR more than I dislike SP, hence the placement. The Mendes to Hamilton section is because the three of them all did one exceptional Bond film and at least one very flawed one.

I wish Hunt accepted one of Cubby's many offers and returned to shoot another. While I love FYEO, if Hunt was available and directed it, it could have been my favourite overall.

Heh, I was recently in a discussion about ranking the Bond directors and I ended up with a list quite similar to above.

1. Young

His contribution to the series is immeasurable. From shaping Connery and casting the other roles so perfectly to establishing the tone, enough can't be said about how realised his films are. 3/3 are top 10 films, bursting with sex, danger, humour-- in fact all the ingredients necessary for Bond's world to be as attractive and enduring as it has been.

2. Hunt

Really, he's just like Young- I feel OHMSS is a continuation of the glamour, danger, humour and humanity of Young's three films and the scale certainly matches the direction the series was taking with Thunderball.... Though perhaps it's just he, like Young, understood Bond's world so he knew what was needed. That's not to say OHMSS is without Hunt's own directorial style. The fight scenes, for one, have a slightly different, more brutal energy about them. And we can't forget the performance he managed to draw from Lazenby, who feels much more complete than he's given credit for.

3. Spottiswoode
He finds the character moments amongst all the chaotic action and they're all perfectly pitched. He understands Bond's world and his psyche so wonderfully that moments like Bond's glare at Carver's paper at the airport or his winding down after the party give depth to our international man of mystery without lamenting on it. His handling of the action sequences makes him the perfect successor to Hunt, whereby it's all so inventive and exciting (and his direction to Brosnan and Yeoh for the bike chase is particularly superb!). How he managed to pull TND off given its production really is a testament to his ability and vision for the film.

4. Glen

The direction he took Bond in for the 80s perfectly matched what I want in a Bond film: a return to character. Everyone from Bond, the girls, villains and other supporting cast, there seems to be a proper, rounded human within - something we rarely saw in the 70s. Returning to more Cold War inspired stories brought Bond back to where he started. At worst, Glen's weakest film may only be middle of the road so it's a pretty successful run in my book. Had he hired better DOPs, and shaved some goofiness off OP (and maybe AVTAK), I'd probably rank him higher.

5. Apted

I'd rank him higher if he did another one and also kept his scripts away from his wife. His biggest strength is creating such a moody film. There's a positively Bondian vibe to TWINE that balances romance, sex, grit and geographical tension in a unique (yet informed) way. His insight into Bond's frame of mind when a bird with a wing down gets under his skin is something I think Fleming would have been proud of. And how he handles Bond's relationship with Christmas, as a point of contrast to that with Elektra, is something not really acknowledged-- and it should be.

6. Hamilton

He gave us Goldfinger! And then he took the elements of Bond and embraced them to give us enjoyable romps. He established the fantastic interplay with Q, provided so many iconic images, amped up the focus on jazz in his films... much of this hardly makes him one of the lesser directors. His only crime is enjoying the conventions of Bond so much that there was less focus, it seems, on his latter three scripts. But they are still recognisably Bond, and they never set out to do anything other than ask us to have a good time.

7. Gilbert
Similarly, Gilbert ensured his audience had fun, however at best, his best film is middle of the road. Despite that, the sheer scale of his productions needs to be recognised, as should his eye for gorgeous visuals. There's an inherent romanticism and lightness to his films which negates much of the critical danger that must always be present in a Bond film. Overall, TSWLM almost manages palpable danger, but it's usually sidelined for a bit of humour and is undercut by Stromberg's cartoonish ambition. On the flip side, some very intense, suspenseful and human moments occur in MR, arguably the lightest not just of his Bonds, but of them all.

8. Campbell
He gave us GoldenEye... but he also gave us a film I outright dislike in Casino Royale. They are polar opposites: One feels like a Bond adventure and one takes a Bond novel and completely abuses it... and without the visual flair of his debut film. It's hard to rank because they are so different. Where he took Bond's character in the 90s felt right. It was perceptive, it was informed, it was logical. GoldenEye was invigorating in so many ways. Casino Royale is a structural, sterile, politically correct mess it's hard to recognise them as being from the same director.

9. Mendes
He gave us Skyfall. And he gave us a Spectre. And he brought hack Thomas Newman to the series. Like Campbell, hard to rank because both films are so different, in terms of style and character. I may have ranked him higher than Campbell had it not been for his most ridiculous choice of making Bond and Blofeld foster brothers and shaping the film around that. Cuckoo!

10. Tamahori
There's a vitality to DAD that goes unrecognised. There's a brutality and style to some of the more grounded scenes. He also draws another layer of cynicism from Brosnan. But it's those outlandish, misguided creative decisions that prevent him from delivering the film DAD should have been. Had Eon kept him on a leash, I have no doubt he'd be more highly regarded. Because those London, Hong Kong, NK and Cuba scenes, for most part, are excellent. And had Campbell/Mendes not have given us GE/SF, I'd rank Tamahori above them.

11. Foster.
Jonathan Pryce's observation of Danny Boyle applies also to Foster: he's too socialist for Bond. I appreciate his desire to introduce actual (and metaphorical) colour to the series after the clinical CR, but his anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist politics and Bourne-esque vision don't just hinder the film-- it forms the basis of the film. But his casting of Almaric and discovery of Arterton are highlights, as is his direction for Arnold to score from the script, as he provides the Craig era with the only solid score in this film.

Since this is a poll of our favorite directors, not a debate about who is best, I chose Guy Hamilton over Terence Young, for all the reason Mr KKBB offered. If his are my favorite films, he must have had something to do with it.

It's always between Young and Hamilton. Young set everything in motion but Hamilton made some absolutely inspired choices however his influence created the alternate path and thus the eternal seesaw of Young/FRWL-Hamilton/GF yin and yang began for the series.
Then comes Hunt and Gilbert followed by Glen. All five are criminally underrated, undervalued and disregarded by the film world.

As I've said before a great shame is that Hunt never did another Bond. I've never read why, I've read the rumour he was in line to direct FYEO, but if there had been another Hunt Bond who knows.

Terence Young had an idea of Bond which seemingly half-translated to Triple Cross but between him and Hunt that's the perfect Bond.

I don't think anyone else will ever come close.

Maybe if Lazenby hadn't jumped ship after OHMSS, Hunt would've continued to direct him through the Seventies.

I don't think either of them would have wished for that.

Sad but true. Either direction would've been relayed via an intermediate or Lazenby would end up killing Hunt.

Cubby apparently considered and approached Young and Hunt and some others for FYEO. I'm not sure how serious any of this was but they also sat around at EON discussing it with the top line crew-and in one of my favorite bits of behind the scenes anecdotes finally Derek Meddings just point blank asked Cubby: "Why don't I just direct it, Guv?

I do try and picture a Young or Hunt return in 1981 and I don't know how it would have worked exactly with all the time passed. Glen does incredibly well. My one thing with the film is the lack of engagement with Melina and as they all said: "she never smiles except once or twice". I finally realized her coldness is because she's too consumed with revenge and Bond allows her her own space as a person to deal with this as a gentleman would. I cover this in my commentary track.

Then I found the bit where Maibaum criticizes John for one thing on FYEO. One thing. The Bond-Melina relationship. I remembered the Starlog Battle of the Bond issue which I finally found a physical copy of. The main article is worthless with a lot of pointless Roger bashing but they did an interview with Maibaum who is fully open and honest and not shy about talking over his frustrations-his original TSWLM concept, hatred of the tanker business, hatred of the campy overload with Jaws and MR, hating Roger re-writing his harder dialog, frequent attempts to get back to the original FRWL tone, speaking about Roger not having the steely nastiness of Sean and that being hard to overcome in scripting and so much more. While I do think he was a bit frustrated at the time with Roger adjusting his written lines everything else is priceless.
"And I was very disappointed with the way the love story was handled. The whole idea was that the great lover James Bond can't get to first base with this woman because she's so obssessed with avenging her parents' death. Nothing was ever done with it. It was as if the director didn't feel there was a love story there at all."

If I could sit at a dinner table with anyone in history that table would not only be with Orson Welles, Kubrick, Hitchcock and primarily stacked with many Bond alums: Fleming, Young, Hamilton, Hunt, Mankiewicz and more and more....I wish I could just have the opportunity to meet Richard Maibaum, to shake his hand and give him such a massive hug.
Losing Cubby post LTK as the hand on the tiller was massive and caused a shift. But the older I get and the more I continue to analyze the films the more it becomes painfully obvious that there was always one lone voice somewhere in the series fighting to retain Bond's purity and to get back to the original spirit the films started with. The more of Maibaum's unused concepts that surface the more it just absolutely breaks my heart. (As much as it does him not being able to see Roger's strengths all the time or that in the same article he says he hated LALD because Tom didn't give the story enough world shaking gravitas-I totally get his point but the film is trying something different in terms of narrative)

I've also heard versions of this IMDB trivia post before: An early draft of the script cast Octopussy as the villain, using her research on Tracy Bond's death to manipulate Bond into joining her vendetta against S.P.E.C.T.R.E. The on-going legal battle with Kevin McClory put a stop to that.

Maibaum called LALD 'a lousy cooking dope in the middle of the jungle movie', if memory serves.

Don't hold back, Richard!

Shame Maibum didn't live to DVD commentaries. Him, Sir Roge and Guy Hamilton commenting on LALD.

He's on the Criterion Laserdisc "banned" tracks which makes them even more priceless. He appears most on the FRWL track and is so warm and upfront that it kills me every time re-listening to them when moderator Steven Jay Rubin announces they completed recording about a week or two before he died.
Young and Hunt sound similarly candid on these. Young sounds like you're in his living room and he's just shooting straight with a bit of "my word, we really achieved something special"-and Hunt is equally upfront.

I do wish I could have also spoken to Maibaum also about the lighter touch and the later films and how everything developed. I've wondered for years how his ideas and unused concepts got handled along with how he worked with other writers-especially Mankiewicz and eventually MGW. I understand his feelings on the 70's films and being in and out of the series at the time-but all we really have is that one Starlog article, one or two other bits, excerpts from a Writer's guild seminar in some of the DVD documentaries and his participation in the Criterion LD commentaries-that's it.

I will say though that I think from a narrative construction and storytelling standpoint he'd have been apoplectic nowadays at what goes on.


Hamilton has this slight flying under the radar quality. Too often he gets pigeonholed as the GF man but he really did do the harder edge and it must be stressed it was Hamilton who always emphasized roughing up the female characters as well. He also had a more relaxed pacing and style that Hunt alludes frequently to having to bash together to make GF more in the Young style-but ironically later on LALD is very much DN. Too few credit Hamilton for his amazing ideas and imagination-and for being a very strict schedule minded director which Young wasn't exactly. They were contemporaries who really were complete working opposites.

I've often wondered, felt and now strongly suspect (Maibaum alluded to it too) that the whole GF style and lighter touch everyone remarks about wasn't started by Hamilton at all who merely picked up on it, ran with it and worked it into his direction-I think the factor was Paul Dehn's script drafts that did it. Why in all the years later they didn't bring him back when chasing the GF formula style I'll never know.

Didn't know about the Criterion side of things. Have to see if I can find Young and Hunt talking.

Not too sure on Hamilton but stories from Battle of Britain are sometimes entertaining. When Adolf Galland ruined a take and Hamilton going into a screaming fit. (Hamilton served in MTB's during the war, helped ferrying agents to France).

All sounds fascinating.

To quote Ricky Gervais 'Adolf ... now there's a name that decreased in popularity'.

Morticia: "It was agony. We went through all the usual baby names - Lucifer, Benito..."
Gomez: "Mao..."

I told people I was going to name my son Judas, because that was a name you didn't hear much anymore.

"Judas Iscariot (Hornet) - has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

1 Peter R. Hunt (his one film is at the top of my list, so..)
2 Terence Young
3 Cary Joji Fukunaga
4 Marc Forster
5 Lee Tamahori
6 Guy Hamilton
7 Sam Mendes
8 Lewis Gilbert
9 Martin Campbell
10 John Glen
11 Irvin Kershner
12 Roger Spottiswoode
13 Michael Apted

Young, by a country mile.

Glenn's Dalton pics are faves of mind, but largely despite Glenn rather than because of him, as I think they'd be awesome films with somebody else who paid attention to important details (like Dalton's HAIR!) If LTK looked like an early Ted Moore film, it'd almost be rivalling FRWL for my top spot, as the Daltons usually come in at 2 & 3 on my iist, which has had FRWL at the top since I first saw it at a revival house in 1976.

I find parts of Forster's picture of interest (the only stuff in the Craig era that rates for me), but hate other parts, esp the ADD editing. I've interviewed him twice (once about QUANTUM and once about WWZ) and he seemed to think he was making different movies than the ones I actually saw in each instance. He really seemed convinced that QUANTUM wasn't going to look anything like BOURNE, but the only way you can tell is to freezeframe the lovely compositions before the camera jerks.

Spottiswoode is especially a dud for me; except for UNDER FIRE and maybe AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, I've found his work to suck. The one time I met him (at a VFX review for THE SIXTH DAY) he seemed to be a petty man and something of a nervous wreck, which was borne out by what various VFX folk had to say about him -- Arnie was spending a lot of time making fun of him on set, so I guess he was a token presence at best, and like a lot of editor-turned-directors (looking RIGHT at Stuart Baird, the only filmmaker in history who went zero-for-three in directing despite having Jerry Goldsmith to score all his movies), he wasn't about finding the right spot for the camera, just about piling the cameras up and burning a ton of film so he could do things in post.

Sam Mendes was a disaster, tho to be fair, I haven't liked anything of his except for the first couple, AMERICAN BEAUTY and especially ROAD TO PERDITION. Ditto for Tamahori.

I really wish Frankenheimer had done a Bond; possibly Franklyn Schaffner as well, though he had a lot of turds mixed with his winners.

I've see a lot of Hunt's work and nothing impressed me except OHMSS (and that is a qualified impress, not a wholehearted endorsement), so I'm not sure if he'd stuck around if things would have been much better than Hamilton, which I find workmanlike for the most part, though GF still feels gorgeous-slick at times.

Lewis Gilbert made the same film over and over for 3 pics, which I find rather shameful.

Martin Campbell did some smart stuff with GE but I hated CR so that cancels out. Apted was the wrong call, probably to appease Broz after he failed to get anywhere with Scorsese and Ang Lee. I think John Boorman would have been a much better call going by TAILOR OF PANAMA, which is Pierce's best Bond film by far, even though it isn't one.

The guy who did the last one did good work on TRUE DETECTIVE but I haven't liked anything else of his since; I interviewed him a couple years before NTTD and he seemed kinda full of himself.

Both Young and Hunt excelled at serious Bond, which I prefer when done right. It is more in line with Fleming than fun Bond, which I also love when done right. Hamilton was the King of that movement, except for in LALD where there is no fun at all. Wonder what happened there. I liked it when I first saw it, but after that it has just kept plummeting.