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CBn Reviews Dr. No
Forum members review the first James Bond film

Dr.No is the first James Bond film & while it's not one of the best, this created a worldwide phenomenon & practically invented what we know today as B-movies. I'm going to rank all the different elements of the formula & then add them up & divide them to get a score & rank it among all the Bond films.

Lead Actor:7.5 Sean Connery was simply the perfect choice to play 007 although he wasn't totally comfortable as Bond when he was appeared in Dr.No. He was a little too cold & not enough suave. But he did say the famous line "Bond, James Bond" just perfectly & the scene where he shoots Professor Dent is classic. He improved in his later Bond films.

Villain:8.5 Joeseph Wiseman set the standard for the Bond villain. He was creepy & sinister with his metallic & creepy way he moves. It's the Dr.No type villain that would be parodied for decades on end.

Henchmen:7.0 Oddjob made the Bond villain's henchmen required in every Bond film, but the henchmen here are good. Along with Professor Dent(Anthony Dawson) we also get the seductive Miss Taro, Mr.Jones who pretends to be Bond's driver & the photographer who tries to take pictures of Bond.

Bond Women:8.5 While Eunice Gayson is just good as Slyvia Trench in the beginning, it's Ursula Andress whose a perfect 10 & still the best Bond girl to date. She's beautiful, she's tough & she's a fabulous screen presence. The scene where she comes out of the water is simply wonderful.

Allies:8.0 Of couse you have to love Bernard Lee & Lois Maxwell as M & Miss Moneypenny, but Desmond Llewelyn doesn't appear as Q until FRWL. Jack Lord is the first person to play Felix Leiter & is one of the best & John Kitsmiller plays Quarrell the local fisherman.

Plot:8.0 Great use of the classic villain who wants to take over the world scheme.

Action:5.5 There aren't that many thrills in Dr.No. This is a very low-key adventure. The car chases are straight forward. However, the scene where Dent puts a spider in Bond's bed is creepy & the xplosion at the end of the movie is nice.

Gadgets:6.5 This is a film where Bond relies on his wit & not gadgets. The only real gadget is the Walther PPK.

Exotic Locales:8.5 This is a great looking movie with Jamica looking fantastic.

Title Song:8.5 The James Bond Theme is possibly the best movie theme ever.

Score:6.0 The music here is pretty lame. John Barry is a much better musical composer than Monty Norman.

Title Sequences:5.0 Maurice Binder is the essential Bond tile designer, but there isn't much evidence of it here.

Total:7.29

Final Thoughts:Dr.No is not a great movie or one of the best James Bond movies, but there are some classic scenes that make the film worthwhile.

Welcome to the CommanderBond.net Forums, PierceConneryMoore!

[Moderator's Note: Poll added to this thread.]

No matter how much anyone could say about this, it can NOT be knocked down. This is the movie that set the Bond standards (action and dialogue wise), and if it wasnt for this film, we more than likely would NOT be talking about it this moment.

This movie was also what made Connery a household name, and for that we should all be thankful.

And Honey, oh Honey, standard of bond girl hotness.

I really wish i could review this to more length, but fact is there is to much GOOD to talk about, and i jus recommend people go out and see it if they havent, and if u have, go and watch it again.

8/10

M_T

I voted an '8'. My review is in the mainpage story.

I voted an '8'. My review is in the mainpage story.

Qwerty . . . do Posts #6 and #7 count as two votes?

Ah, double post.

Ha, Qwerty, my dear!

Just teasing!

The lonely hero pours himself a martini in his Kingston hotel room, cleans his gun and picks up a newspaper; the next day, that same hero is fighting a brilliant Chinese scientist with metal hands, on top of a nuclear reactor. It's difficult to imagine how Dr. No was perceived in the early 1960s. Did it strike people as part Hitchcock, part film noir, part Corman Science-Fiction B flick and part Irving Allen action quickie? Or was it received as a break from tradition? Its lack of a clear moral center was probably innovative, as it revelled in Bond's decadent tastes and careless treatment of women and human lives- those characteristics were already at the heart of noir, but Bond wasn't punished for them, he was rewarded. Dr. No has dated pretty badly, that's for sure- more so than, say, Nort by Northwest. It's especially crude in its assumptions: Bond travels 'the West' like a colonial prince, ordering his black associate Quarrel to 'fetch his shoes'; the film was shot quickly and cheaply, which accounts for its many technical and narrative goofs; and at times, the movie itself seems unsure about what it wants to be. That last observation is, in my opinion, most evident in Monty Norman's jumpy score, with its droll cues, Mickey Mousing effects and Fu Manchu motifs.

From a designer perspective, the film still seems fresh however: Dr. No's exotism is shot through with surprising references to German Expressionism, such as the Nosferatu-like shadow that announces Dr. No, and of course there's the stages of Ken Adam, with their use of grids and weird angles. The room where Professor Dent is handed the tarantula spider is most definitely the shape of things to come- it's a study for the Dr. Strangelove war room, Blofeld's volcano from YOLT, etc. Adam's conception of No's world links the SPECTRE scientist to earlier modernist villains, but Adam also does great work with more low-key sets, such as Bond's modish Kingston hotel room and the 'mink-coated prison' (one of my favourite moments in the film is Bond and Honey being welcomed by the efficient Sister Lily and Sister Rose- a pair far creepier than Wint and Kidd).

Together with editor Peter Hunt, director Terence Young invents the characteristic Bond movie 'rhythm': smooth dolly-shots, a measured use of low-angle set-ups, and fast, disorienting cutting that is especially effective in the fight scene with Jones. Scenes of brutal violence are immediately neutered by a dry-laced quip of Bond himself. Most of Dr. No's 'classic moments' don't stand up anymore, however. Take the entrance of Ursula Andress, who (after Fleming's own description and according to movie mythology) rises from the Caribbean like Botticelli's Venus- don't believe a word of it. The 'Bond lured to pyramid' scene in Moonraker tries to achieve the same dream-like effect, and is much more effective.

Connery is a wolf among sheep in his first Bond picture, using his wicked smirk to devastating effect and wearing his hat and jacket like Sinatra, despite his tall, muscular build. The actor moves like a dancer, light on his feet and with incredibly vivid, instinctive physical responses, as if he were trained by Meyerhold. This sense of a dancer in a big man makes the performance a thrill to watch, even if Connery is not as assured throughout the whole movie- sometimes he relies on the pleasant toothy smile from his days of belting out 'There's Nothing Like a Dame' in Darby O'Gill and the Little People. His Bond can certainly be human: in No's headquarters, he admits to Honey that he's scared, and we see him trying to hide his nerves. Dr. No also marks the first (and nearly last) time we see Bond portrayed as a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer, even using his bare hands when necessary. There are moments when Connery encapsulates the character to perfection- when he glances at his watch while kissing Miss Taro, he is seductive and coolly calculating at the same time. The essence of Bond.

Despite Bond having no gadgets, there is a certain man vs. machine dynamic going on here- No's threat is a nuclear one, and the fire-breathing dragon-tank represents a nice paradox. Honey tells Bond she knows the 'secret of nature', so the dragon-tank really stands for a clash of Bond and Honey's worlds. The first image of Bond in the movie is that of a nonchalant lounge lizard with a 'slim jim' bow-tie, he ends up being stripped of his sophisticated clothes, and becomes his true self- an unrestrained animal man, ready for the kill.

Ursula Andress and Joseph Wiseman set the standards for Bond girl and villain respectively, with glossy wet T-shirt contestant Andress frankly forgettable (I always had a soft spot for that little tease Miss Taro), and Wiseman admirably low-key, relying on the intensity of his gaze. We all know Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell are top-notch. Some members of the British support are particularly wooden, for instance the bespectacled MI6 operator. It's not difficult to spot the Jamaican locals in the supporting cast, but some of them are well-cast- the guy that plays Puss-Feller has an ease and naturalism about him, that is at odds with the self-conscious hamming of professional actors in later Bond films. When you watch DAD for example, even the smaller supporting parts (like Dr. Alvarez) are mannered to the extreme. In Dr. No, the local actors ensure the movie feels 'closer' to our world.

Dr. No is a difficult film to review; if you weren't there in 1962, and weren't aware of its impact, you can only review it in terms of what came after it. Still, I have one thing to add, for sentimental value: it's my mother's favourite Bond movie, because it is so pure and simple.