"When we get marry we make them grow": Dr. No

Having started my Bond film odyssey with Casino Royale, I've finally made it back to the first film, Dr. No. Like a lot of the earlier films, this one mirrors its book pretty closely in terms of plot, with relatively minor tweaks (in the novel, for example, Dr. No is a guano miner, while in the film, he's mining radioactive materials for a nuclear reactor). The biggest is probably that more overt danger is introduced: a lot of Fleming's novels really go for the slow build in a way that probably wouldn't work on film, so the movie introduces a number of extra attempts on Bond's life to the earlier parts of the story, at a point where in the original novel it's not yet clear that foul play is even at work on Jamaica.

Strike that: Sean Connery himself is the biggest change in the film. Obviously I've four more Sean Connery performances to go, included the oft-praised Goldfinger, but of the three Connery movies I've seen thus far, this is definitely the best. In the early novels, especially Casino Royale and Moonraker, I maintain that Bond is a callous brute playing at civilization. Connery captures that in Dr. No, with one important twist: his James Bond is cool. This is driven home to us right in his first scene, where he iconically shows so little interest in Sylvia Trench that she falls for him right away. Connery makes Bond seem casual and effortless; he's just above everything that happens to him, whether it's wrestling his chauffeur or having sex with a suspicious secretary to draw out the bad guys. The predominant attitude that Connery projects is that 1) he's having fun, and 2) he doesn't care. Sometimes this becomes poor quippery (his one about the people who died chasing him being on their way to a funeral was a groaner), but most of the time it works really well. Connery's Bond doesn't have the sensitive side that Daniel Craig's would demonstrate, or that we see in books like Casino Royale or From Russia with Love, but Dr. No doesn't call on him to demonstrate it. (Hence why I think Dr. No is a superior film to From Russia, even though From Russia is a better novel.)

A man who will sleep with you, then send you to jail.

In this film, Connery's Bond is brutal when he needs to be, and without the goofy humor that would undermine later Bond films. He drowns a guy right in front of Honey Ryder and there's another scene where we see him strangle a guy to get a radiation suit. Perhaps the harshest is the scene where he lies in wait for Professor Dent, a geologist secretly working for Dr. No. Bond sets things up to make it look like he's sleeping in bed, then sits by the door playing solitaire. When Dent comes in, he empties six bullets into what he thinks is Bond's sleeping form (actually pillows), before Bond reveals his presence, forcing Dent to drop his gun. They talk a bit, and then Dent goes for his gun... only it's empty. Bond points that his gun only had six bullets to begin with, and then shoots and kills Dent-- and then shoots him again for good measure. Then he just unscrews the silencer from his gun and sits there. Look, I don't glamorize violence, but when I finished this scene, I was like, "how cool is James Bond?" He's just so casual about it that it becomes art, the best scene in an overall strong film.

And a man who doesn't like to lose... not even at solitaire.

What I like about these early Bond films of the 1960s is that they fundamentally take themselves seriously in a way that the ones of the 1970s don't. There are quips and humor and ridiculousness, but the world is real, and the danger feels real. (I haven't talked about Joseph Wiseman, but he does a great job as Dr. No.) When people get hurt, it really does hurt, as opposed to the comic violence of Diamonds Are Forever, and that's what makes Dr. No one of the better Bond films thus far.

Other Notes:

• Since this is the first film, there are a number of recurring elements yet to be worked out. There is no big title song like there would be in later films, for example-- "Under the Mango Tree," which is performed in a bar, heard on a record, and sung by Honey, is as close as it gets. The visually distinct opening credits are here, but they're not as salacious as some later ones, being evenly divided between abstract dots, dancing women, and Jamaican assassins.
• Even though it was the first film, there are still some elements that pick up on previous novels, unchanged from the books, most notably that Bond switches guns at the beginning. Fleming needed to do this in the books, but the films could have just started him out with a different gun to begin with! Peter Burton fails to make an impact as proto-Q.
• Dr. No is linked in with SPECTRE, who we've already seen in From Russia with Love and Diamonds Are Forever in the film series. They've yet to appear in the books.
• The film is very tied into some contemporary events, like the moonshot (which replaces a guided missile test in the novel) and the theft of Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington (Bond does a double-take upon finding it in Dr. No's base).



Some reviews call her a "marine biologist,"
which seems to be overselling her qualifications somewhat.

• Honey Ryder's backstory is simplified from that in the novel. However, the way Bond listens to her tell the story of how she got revenge on her rapist with a poisonous spider (it took him five days to die) is hilarious. "Well, it wouldn't do to make a habit of it."
• Jack Lord turns up as the first of the many incarnations of Felix Leiter. He's not in the book.
• Bond flirts with a woman in a club at the beginning of the film, and his famous way of introducing himself is actually in imitation of how she introduces herself: "Trench, Sylvia Trench." I didn't realize it until I looked it up on Wikipedia, but Trench actually reappears in From Russia with Love, where Bond is once again called away on a mission during a date with her.
• Poor Quarrel.
  

Film Rankings (So Far):

1. Casino Royale
2. Dr. No
3. From Russia with Love
4. Moonraker
5. Live and Let Die 
6. Diamonds Are Forever