Casino Royale, the new James Bond movie

This video is called Casino Royale trailer.

By David Walsh:

Casino Royale: the new James Bond film

8 December 2006

Casino Royale, directed by Martin Campbell, screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, based on the novel by Ian Fleming

The James Bond films have been with us for more than 40 years, for better or worse.

They are not so much a barometer of popular moods but of the thinking of a layer of mercenary film studio executives attempting to gauge or guess at popular moods.

Ian Fleming (1908-1964), who wrote the books on which the films were initially based, was a fairly unsavory character.

The son of a Conservative Member of Parliament who died during World War I, Fleming worked for British naval intelligence in the Second World War and used some of this experience for his Bond novels. The first one, Casino Royale, appeared in 1953.

As numerous commentators have pointed out, James Bond’s rise as a fantasy secret agent coincided with Britain’s actual decline as a world power during the postwar era.

In Fleming’s fiction, however, the cool and collected Briton outthought, outfought and outloved not only his Soviet opponents, but also his American “allies.”

The Bond novels were vaguely risqué in their time (Fleming’s wife called them “Ian’s pornography”), with hints of unusual sexual activity.

Many adolescent boys were drawn to them in the less permissive atmosphere of the early 1960s.

A number of the female characters are lesbians and have to be returned to “normalcy” by Bond.

The relationships are generally of the dominator-dominated variety.

In The Spy Who Loved Me, Fleming’s narrator, a woman, explains: “All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken.

It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.

That and the coinciding of nerves so completely relaxed after the removal of tension and danger, the warmth of gratitude, and a woman’s natural feeling.”

Ayn Rand [see also here and here and here and here] was a big admirer, unsurprisingly.

Quantum of Solace: James Bond vs. imperialism: here.

David Walsh’s views on film and politics: here.