I think it is worth mentioning that the 60's Bond movies -- despite being made in the "Hays Code" era of censorship and before the R rating came in 1968 -- were considered very "hot stuff" indeed. With Connery's Bond, sex and violence in the movies took a quantum leap(even though NO Bond movie ever had R-rated content)
Key: up until that time, most American romantic movies led to the same place: marriage. And often, babies(or pregnancy -- the key way of showing that man and wife "had sex." For procreation.)
Connery's Bond would bed two to three women per movie. He would end up with "the one" at the end of the movie(often floating in a boat or raft with them, hmmm.) But came the NEXT movie, "the one" was gone, and he was on to two or three more conquests...and then "the one" at the end of that movie. (Yes, a non-Connery Bond eventually got married, but she got killed right after the ceremony and...back to tomcatting for James.)
So the Bond fantasy exploded the requirement that love and sex end in marriage and babies.
Over on the "violence" side, Connery's Bond was sold in ads as "the man with a license to kill!" And kill he did. Often brutally, sometimes with sadistic pleasure(if the victim was really BAD), but with a LICENSE to do so. Famously, in Dr. No, after a man tried to kill him by firing gunshots into a pillow where Bond was NOT, Connery's Bond pointed a gun at the now unarmed man, said "You've had your six..." and executed him.
The combination of a man who could have sex with multiple women without marriage or children required; and could kill people(men OR women, though women rarely) at will(as long as they were "bad") made James Bond an exotic commodity in the 1960's. And somehow Sean Connery was just right for those movies...a big brawny man with a certain sadistic edge to his smile. He enjoyed killing men(like Robert Shaw at the end of that mano y mano in From Russia With Love.) as much as he liked having sex with women, it seemed.
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
Weirdly, the sex and violence of the Bond movies seemed to get overridden by the "silly action plots" of the series. I think one of the producers said that the movies were starting to be produced as much for kids as adults(presaging Star Wars and Comic Hero movies.)
And the spy craze AS a craze died out very rapidly in the late 60's. All the American spy TV shows died fast(The Man From UNCLE, I Spy, The Wild Wild West) as did The Avengers in Britain. You Only Live Twice made less than Thunderball and On Her Majestry's Secret Service(without Connery) made less than YOLT.
As the 70's began, the James Bond series was just sort of holding on, for nostalgia's sake. And thus, the producer pulled out the stops to hire Connery one more time. They tried again -- Live and Let Die -- but even Connery had had enough(though he should have never said never again.)
Once Roger Moore took over, the brawny sexual sadist Connery was replaced with a cutie-pie wisecracker who never looked more out-of-his-depth than when trying to look ruthless. And the 70's Roger Moore pictures were really burlesques of OTHER 70's movies -- Shaft(Live and Let Die), Enter the Dragon(The Man With the Golden Gun), Jaws(The Spy Who Loved Me -- with a villain NAMED Jaws), and Moonraker(Star Wars.)
It has been said that Sean Connery in Diamonds are Forever was in "the first Roger Moore Bond) and the film does rather copy another hit -- "Bullitt"(1968) with its car chase. Still, anyway you cut it, the times they were a changing, and what Bond was in the 60's would never be duplicated. Now in the 21st Century, Bond is neutered and PC and anguished about killing -- which isn't so much as it should be, as much as it has to be.
reply
share