James Bond: The South Bank Show (ITV1)
Daniel Craig doesn’t say much, does he? We’re aware he can pack a pair of swimming trunks. He has arms like hams and eyes so blue that he could probably freeze you at 50 paces. The new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, begins with a brilliant, crunching scene in which he and a baddie chase and fight each other over a series of rooftops in Siena. When he removes his shirt, his beefcake body is a tapestry of bruises and you sense make-up wasn’t needed for that.
But as far as words go, Craig is economical. His Bond isn’t a riot of witticisms and wordplay: whole pages of the Quantum’s script must be littered with THUMP, CRACK, AAGGH, HMMMPFF. Craig’s Bond doesn’t waste time on niceties or explanation; he thumps people. In the rare moments when he isn’t beating up anyone, he stares broodingly into the distance, waiting to beat someone else up.
Poor Melvyn Bragg, tossing questions at this glacial mountain in a special Bond South Bank Show. How does Craig feel about playing such a demanding role? “It makes me feel sore,” was all he got out of Craig. Sean Connery, he said, was his template for Bond: he made all the brutal fighting look easy and there was a clip from Diamonds are Forever with Connery making short work of one opponent in a lift. Barbara Broccoli, daughter of the legendary producer Cubby and co-producer of the franchise since his death, noted Bond’s cultural influence: a certain kind of architecture, even villains from other movies are called “Bondian”.
The sharply dressed designer Ken Adam remembered the creative freedom of working on the films in the 1960s: “The British took their handcuffs off. F*** the empire. It doesn’t exist any longer.” When Dr No was released in 1962, the country was coming out of its grey postwar slouch, and absorbing the cultural impact of kitchen-sink drama. Bond was a splash of colour and bravura; the films were shot in exotic locations and Bond was a definably British hero for the Cold War era. Connery was sexy, stylish and arch: someone said women left the cinema lusting after him, men wanted to be him, but really even the straightest of men probably left the cinema lusting after him, too.
This South Bank Show was a discordant mix of cultural analysis and promotional celebration. If Bond sums up the era he appears in, perhaps Craig — nervy, violent, uncompromising, compromised — speaks of the post-9/11 terror age. Certainly in the new film, the shameful allegiances and activities of government are called into question: Bond is not happy to serve the powers-that-be because he is unsure what they stand for. There is no humour in the films any more and laughs on the South Bank Show were spartan, although John Barry recalled Shirley Bassey asking him what the words to Goldfinger meant. “I told her to ‘just get out there and sing your ---- off’,” he laughed. “And that’s what she did.”
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