FROM 00's EYES ONLY: BOND ON THE EDGE THROUGH THE MOVING IMAGE

“Shaken, not stirred”. The phrase could describe the fine line the creative talent behind the James Bond movies it comes from have attempted to walk during the franchise’s tenure. For all this time, artists in front and behind the camera have come, stayed and gone, imprinting their sensibilities yet working to maintain the personality of the series – the pact between filmmakers and spectators for the former to produce more stories and for the latter to attend them on the big (and small, post-theatrical) screen. With a growing history and awareness of it, each film faces the following challenges: how to manage the evolving conditions these are made in, avoid wearing repetition and not stray too far from what interested parties have come to look forward to in order to keep them engaged. The overall outcome for this is that James Bond has continued to bring about films through stories that test, but not batter down, the established formula.

Ever since its inception with Terence Young’s From Russia in Love (1963) following up on Young’s Dr. No (1962), the series has acknowledged its rear view, at first in narrative, but then in reflective and meta-narrative ways. Addressing this complicity of storytellers and audience to confirm it operates in mechanics both internal (the way an individual cinematic narrative is assembled) and external (its place as part of a history of related productions) to each film. These stand out when examining the series around Peter R. Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), John Glen’s Licence to Kill (1989) and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time to Die (2021), borderline transgressive pictures of Bond at their time of release. Like viewing the same character through different optical devices, these entries, set in significant points of the series’ years, consider forms of reiteration, evolution and revolution to meet and subvert expectations.


➤Licence to Kill: An open window

➤No Time to Die: The legend in the looking glass

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