CONTINUITY
IN THE BOND FILMS (OR: The
ties that Bond)
Usually in the world of movie-making, the concept of "continuity" is fairly
simple: if, for example,
James Bond walks into a
phone booth wearing a blue
suit, then he shouldn't walk
out wearing a gray one.
Pretty simple (although it
doesn't always work out;
remember the car in DAF that
enters the alley on one set
of wheels and comes out on
the other).
In
a larger sense, "continuity"
is what connects one story
to another to form a
cohesive, consistent series.
Comic book fans debate
matters of continuity for
hours on end ("How could
Batman not recognize Green
Arrow in Issue 421 when we
all know they met back in
issue 332?") as do fans of
television shows with long
and complicated histories,
like Star Trek and the
X-Files.
So
what about James Bond? Well,
in the novels, there's quite
a bit of continuity. Bond
drives his Bentley in
several books, thinks back
on girlfriends from previous
novels (especially"Casino
Royale's"
Vesper Lynd), and even
shacks up with Tiffany Case
from the end of "Diamonds
Are Forever" to sometime
just before the events of
"From Russia With Love." But
the movies are another
story. Believe it or not,
for a series that's been
around close to forty years,
and which inspires trivia
tests and in-depth studies
by the score, there's very
few tidbits out there to
connect one Bond adventure
with another.
Let's
start with what does stay
the
same. In thirteen of the
eighteen EON Bond films so
far, we see the offices of
MI6, where Bond usually
receives a briefing on his
latest mission. From Dr.
No to The
Living Daylights, M's
office remains relatively
unchanged, with lots of
leather chairs and wood
panelling in evidence,
creating the atmosphere of a
smoke-filled "gentlemen's
club." Or perhaps more
accurately, considering the
various naval relics in
evidence, an Admiral's cabin
in an old ship-of-the-line.
No
other sets endure. Bond has
one apartment in Dr.
No and a very
different one in Live
and
Let Die (the only
two films to show us James
at home). And once he's on
assignment, of course, the
scenery changes constantly.
Even Q's workshop is
inconsistent. We can always
tell when we're there, but
if you line the scenes up
next to each other, the
workshop seems to change
around and get bigger and
smaller as the script
demands. Of course, we might
assume this is because Q's
experiments result in the
periodic destruction of his
workshop, making it
necessary to rebuild
completely between films.
Hey, it could happen!
If
there's little continuity in
the sets, then how about
characters? Well, we always
have Bond of course, and his
support team of M,
Moneypenny and Q.
The actors who play them may
change, but the
characterizations remain
relatively the same. Their
mere presence brings up fond
memories of past adventures,
which is just as well
because it's usually the
only connection we're going
to get.
At
no point does "M" say, "Now
I don't want you running off
half-cocked again like you
did in that Goldfinger affair."
Moneypenny never asks, "So
whatever happened to Pussy
Galore, anyway?" Q comes
closest, with his
remonstrations to "take care
of your equipment for once,"
but even he never comes
right out and says, "I'm
tempted not to give you the
BMW after what you did to
the Aston Martin."
Of
course, if the films WERE
more overtly linked, you'd
start running into trouble.
Viewers would start asking,
"Wait a minute, if he fought
Goldfinger in 1964, how can
he look so young today?" If
Bond really busted up
SPECTRE's Japanese volcano
operation in YOLT,
how can he not suspect
Trevalyan's very similar
hideout in Goldeneye?
And so on. Whether
intentional or not, EON has
done well to keep continuity
to a bare minimum, making it
possible to watch the films
in any order without getting
confused, and keeping Bond a
simple character without a
lot of historical baggage.
Even
so, there are indications
this was not always the
plan. Way back in FRWL,
we see Bond on a date
with Sylvia Trench,
the gal he picked up in a
casino in Dr. No.
This makes her the only
girlfriend to appear in two
films, and it seems a
deliberate attempt to tie
the films together. When
Bond's called to the office,
Sylvia complains about the
last time he went away, all
the way to Jamaica! Later,
SPECTRE agent Kronsteen says
James Bond is the perfect
victim for his schemes,
since he's the one who
destroyed SPECTRE's last
operation and killed their
agent, Dr. No. With the
exception of Blofeld, this
makes Dr. No the only
villain to be mentioned in
two films.
After
that, there's few ties
between films. One is
the Aston Martin DB5.
In Goldfinger,
when Bond is presented with
the car, he asks "Where's
the Bentley?," referring his
old car, seen briefly
in FRWL. (Q
tells him the Bentley's "had
its day," which is a bit
confusing as Fleming
established the Bentley as
Bond's personal car, not a
government issue vehicle.)
In Thunderball,
the Aston Martin's back, but
no overt references are made
to the previous mission
(like, "Hey, you can hardly
see the dents where I hit
the wall in Goldfinger's
factory"). Later models of
the Aston Martin appear
in OHMSS and TLD,
then suddenly the DB5 is
back again in Goldeneye,
with Pierce Brosnan at the
wheel. Based on its
appearance here and in TND,
it seems the car is now
Bond's personal vehicle,
purchased perhaps as a
souvenir of the Goldfinger and Thunderball missions.
At which times, by the way,
Brosnan would have been 11
and 13 years of age!
After Thunderball,
It's not until OHMSS that
continuity becomes important
again. In an effort to
remind us that this is
indeed the same Bond we
remember, George Lazenby
goes through his desk and
finds souvenirs from the
Sean Connery era. As he
regards Honey Rider's knife,
Red Grant's wristwatch and
his own underwater
rebreather, music from Dr.
No, FRWL and Thunderball play
in
the background. Even
so, OHMSS also
presents us with the most
glaring instance of
"anti-continuity," as Bond
and Blofeld fail to
recognize each other,
despite having met in the
previous film!
The events of OHMSS also
provide
the one element that ties
together Lazenby, Moore,
Dalton and Connery; the
death of James' wife Tracy
De Vicenzo Bond.
Lazenby gets to play the
actual death scene, then
in DAF, Connery
picks up the thread, hunting
down Blofeld in his thirst
for vengeance. (At least
those of us who saw the
Lazenby film know why Sean's
doing it. For the benefit of
anyone who missed it -- and
at the time there were
plenty! -- no specific
mention of Tracy is made.)
Just
when we think James has
forgotten poor Tracy, she
comes up again in TSWLM.
Roger Moore's normally
invulnerable smirk takes a
direct hit when Anya Amasova
mentions his widowhood. With
an uncharacteristic
seriousness, he basically
tells her to shut up. This
is a remarkable moment of
sobriety in a relatively
light-hearted film. Two
films later in FYEO,
we see Moore's Bond visiting
Tracy's grave before being
whisked away to danger
again. When the chopper
lands to pick him up, he
pauses an extra moment
before leaving the grave, as
if reluctant to go, or
perhaps thinking how costly
the call to duty can be.
In
contrast to Moore, Timothy
Dalton's Bond never seems to
have much fun, and when he
finally does relax at Felix
and Della's wedding in LTK,
he's brought crashing down
to Earth again by Della's
innocent mention of
marriage. "He was married
once," explains Felix sadly.
"But that was a long time
ago &" (No kidding! Try
twenty years!)
So
what's the point of all
this? Hey, who said I need
to have a point? But the
concept of continuity does
create another interesting
lens through which to
examine Bond film history.
Besides, I think it's a
pretty cool irony that OHMSS,
the one film most often
forgotten by the public at
large and generally
dismissed by the man on the
street as "not really Bond,"
is the one film that
connects four Bond actors,
and features the only event
in Bond's life that everyone
seems to agree happened.
