It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
And yet even Michael Caine got his start in theater, which suggests that before what to operate with, one had better learn how to operate first, and for an actor the most valuable place for that education is the theater. I think your earlier post made an excellent case why.
And now that we've brought up Caine I have to share this:
In response to some of Tuulia's points:
--Screen actors go back on the boards in New York and London because they are where the important critics, industry folk, and most sophisticated audiences are. If you want to prove that you can carry an evening performance in a challenging part, those are places where you'll get the largest and most committed audiences.
--The results of casting on looks are much less bad onscreen, especially if the camera loves their looks. Barbara Bach in TSWLM is an example. It is easy to forgive a bad performance in the sight of great beauty.
--Versatility is usually the goal of theatrical training, which is usually more rigorous, and since theater casting is less reliant on looks, actors are less prone to typecasting.
--Theater acting tends to give an actor a greater box of tools, which can be easily calibrated for the (overstated) difference in screen acting. It doesn't usually work the other way. And even in film an actor works before an audience, whether it consists entirely or partially of his fellow actors, the technicians, the director, or the camera.
--Yes, the camera can capture subtle acting in close-ups, especially in the eyes, since it's true that not everyone can sit in the front row in a theater. And yet Olivier said his eyes were one of his most important attributes as an actor, and he was not referring solely to screen acting. An actor acts for all rows--if he or she doesn't, they act badly. To scale back and act for the metaphorical front row of the camera simply requires an adjustment of powers already gained.
I'll now try to get back to Bond. As noted earlier, theatrical training is something every Bond but Lazenby had, and while he did a fine job at several points in the picture (including the end), it's universally acknowledged that his performance had some problems. If he did better than expected, he also had the assistance of a director who was also a master editor. And Hunt also had Lazenby dubbed at Piz Gloria, which suggests a lack of confidence in some areas. In any case, I'm 99% sure that the next Bond will have had some theatrical training.
And, putting aside the theater versus film question, the role of Bond undoubtedly requires a good degree of acting talent. Here's what Sidney Lumet said about Sean Connery: "When you look at the Bond characterization, everybody says, ‘Oh, well he’s just charming.’ Well s***, that’s like saying Cary Grant was just charming. There is more acting skill in playing that kind of character. What he’s doing, stylistically, is playing high comedy. And that is extremely difficult to do, which is why there are so few of those actors, so few Cary Grants and Sean Connerys. But it’s acting, don’t kid yourself."
Whatever happened to his face, its over and he looks better then ever!
http://www.itv.com/news/granada/update/2018-03-26/watch-daniel-craig-sends-message-of-support-to-students-performing-aladdin/
I hope some people will remember this next time something like that comes up,
but who am i kidding...
EDIT: Profitability was also down in comparison to the films which came after (although Connery's charity got a large chunk of money for DAF).
The movie was more popular than Lazenby--even critics who praised him did so grudgingly. And though it did very well, grosses were disappointing compared to YOLT's. And when Connery returned Lazenby was forgotten about. Had Lazenby continued in the role things would have been different, but for a long time he was regarded by the public as a failure. Most of the casual Bond fans in my family and elsewhere used to completely dismiss him. OHMSS's reputation began rising steadily in the 90s, and so did Lazenby's, but before then only cultists thought highly of him.
My shelves at home include half a dozen books of Kael's reviews. She was a great writer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema. Sometimes unfair, usually controversial, but she trod her own path.
She was fulsome with praise for the 1976 King Kong when everyone else hated it. Yet she tore into popular films like Doctor Shivago and The Sound Of Music.
A true one off.
I think the opposite is true. Critics were far more influential back then because there were fewer media outlets before the internet. People make a big deal of Rotten Tomatoes nowadays, but in 1969 folks relied more on the opinions of a smaller number of critics, almost all in newspapers and magazines, and there were a smaller number of these as well. This meant that individual critics counted more, whereas today people rely on the consensus grade given by Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritics.
Kael was also a genuine fan of the Bond films (unlike many other highbrow critics and her rival Andrew Sarris). She loved the Connery Bonds and Connery himself--"With the glorious exceptions of Brando and Olivier, there's no screen actor I'd rather watch than Sean Connery. His vitality may make him the most richly masculine of all English-speaking actors." She evidently grew to like OHMSS more over time; when she reviewed DAF she said OHMSS was "otherwise topnotch."
Kael was a very highly regarded critic among the intelligentsia (and rightfully so, I love her writing), but she wrote for a magazine, The New Yorker, that didn't have a mass readership. She even said her influence was much less than that of the critics for The New York Times, who were read by far more people. The NYT critic who reviewed OHMSS wrote that Lazenby was a "casual, pleasant, satisfactory replacement" (faint praise); the NYT critic who reviewed DAF was so happy about Connery's return that he called OHMSS the worst Bond film. I think those attitudes sum up the critical and popular attitude treatment of Lazenby, who received grudging praise at best in 1969 and was reviled and forgotten afterward, in the wake of Connery's return and Moore's tenure (to his credit, Moore always spoke highly of OHMSS).
Of course, Barbara Broccoli told the paper late last year "anything is possible" regarding changes to the character after the Craig era. And Craig basically agreed. But I think Moore was right on. Not everything has to change with the times and "political correctness". Doing so would violate the inherent nature and impression of a character that was created and had the same sex, ethnicity and basically the same habits throughout Fleming's original literary run. If that changes, it wouldn't be Bond to me, even if it is to Broccoli. Things change in life, but not everything does--some things are always the way the way they've always been, because of their inherent nature.
A few examples showing many Americans still want what they want, even if these things are said by segments of "society" to be bad in whole or in excess. U.S. gun ownership stats show a slight drop-off since the early 1970's, but apparently one in three households now has at least one gun. Despite the dangers and stigma of smoking, about 15% of Americans say they still smoke, though that's down from previous years. And in the last two decades, Americans have been drinking more alcohol, especially more wine and hard liquor. Bond would appreciate knowing these things, but likely he wouldn't care and would just do his own thing...like many of his fans, I think. By the way, I think it's a great photo of Roger in the link.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3288147/Bond-row-looms-Roger-Moore-says-007-t-gay-woman-Star-88-says-political-correctness-not-considered.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5627359/Nicholas-Hoult-welcomed-child-model-girlfriend-Bryana-Holly.html
Good guy, you mean!
No. Just no to Hoult.
Agreed....he is a bit of a wet fart atm...have a look in another 5 years (or more ).
"James Bond legend Sir Roger Moore has courted controversy by insisting that 007 could never be portrayed as a gay man – or be played by a woman.
Sir Roger, who has previously come under fire for questioning whether the spy could be played by a black actor such as Idris Elba, risks a further backlash over his latest comments.
He said: ‘I have heard people talk about how there should be a lady Bond or a gay Bond. But they wouldn’t be Bond for the simple reason that wasn’t what Ian Fleming wrote"
Back lash for common sense. Laughable.
Informative @Revelator. I had a few books by Pauline Kael in the late 80s. The reviews for the Bond movies were not what I would've called written by a "genuine fan". I seem to recollect that her review for Dr. No wasn't particularly glowing apart from praise for Connery holding the screen. She seemed to soften her stance by the time of YOLT and OHMSS. Of course, Kael's retrospective "otherwise topnotch" comment about OHMSS would not have helped its BO by the time of DAF's release. If indeed Kael's reviews influenced anyone at all, much like other movie critics of the time.
He’ll need his legs lengthening at 5ft 8 in tall.
I wasn't alive during the 60s or 70s, but my assumptions are based on my knowledge of film history and criticism. In the case of Bonnie and Clyde for example, Pauline Kael's rave review is legendary for making other critics reconsider their stance (like Joe Morgenstern at the Washington Post) and it helped publicize the movie. Beyond that, it's always been possible for big Hollywood movies with large advertising budgets and good word of mouth to overcome bad reviews. But I'm not convinced that Psycho, 2001, or Dirty Harry received uniformly bad reviews. They had some high profile detractors, but they don't necessarily represent the critical consensus (or even that of New York and LA). Kael for example was among the first to label Dirty Harry fascist, but the country was in a conservative mood (Nixon's landslide re-election was around the corner) and primed to make the film a hit.
Like many original Bond fans, Kael wasn't very fond of Roger Moore. But she still praised TSWLM as a "triumph" and was positive about OP. And it should be taken into account that in the 1960s lots of highbrow critics, such as Sarris, dismissed the Bond films as Hitchcock ripoffs. Kael by contrast said she loved them on one occasion. I don't recall her ever mentioning Dr. No, but she did call FRWL "exciting, handsomely staged, and campy." TB was "Not bad, but not quite top-grade Bond. A little too much underwater war-ballet" and YOLT was "probably the most consistently entertaining of the Bond packages up to the time." OHMSS was "marvelous fun," "exciting," and "the director, Peter Hunt, is a wizard at action sequences, particularly an ethereal ski chase that you know is a classic while you're goggling at it, and a mean, fast bobsled chase that is shot and edited like nothing I've ever seen before."