This 4th of July, The Charles is celebrating America’s Independence Day by screening 1962’s “Dr. No,” the first theatrical adaptation of British author Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Despite being an English cultural icon, Bond, specifically as a cinematic pop concept, has also been entwined with modern American history. Across 25 official films (27 if you count the noncanon entries), countless storytellers, and six distinct faces, everyone’s favorite globe-trotting superspy has become a complicated fictional figure.
Ever since the Obama administration, when people began wondering aloud if there could be a Black Bond, Idris Elba’s name has been synonymous with that hypothetical possibility. But recently, while promoting his supporting role in Amazon’s “Masters of the Universe,” Elba spoke rather definitively about the possibility. In his mind, it would have been fun to have that opportunity, but he doesn’t see global audiences accepting a Black man, or anyone who isn’t white, male, and a certain kind of “British” in the role. But deeper than the potential racebending, Elba doesn’t seem to think the franchise should do any further bending.
“Bond is so unrealistic, so a hint of reality is good, but let’s not try and make it woke,” Elba said to British GQ. “I think you’ve got to be pure to what it is: escapism. Don’t try and answer the world’s taste.” Fears of a “woke” Bond have been prevalent ever since Craig hung up the part in 2021’s “No Time To Die,” not too long after the word became a culture war klaxon for reactionaries to rail against. That manufactured fear has only intensified since Amazon spent a billion dollars to hold sole creative control over Bond’s future. Somewhere, right now, as you read this, a man who has never made it through an entire James Bond film in his life is petrified that social media will show him news that the next one will star a biracial trans man with blue hair.
But revisiting “Dr. No,” it’s clear that this is a franchise that has always been in constant flux, adapting the geopolitical realities and film industry fads it exists within. Refusing to acknowledge that fact is a failure to engage with why Bond has endured.
“Dr. No” adapts the sixth book in Fleming’s series, but it functions as a strong, rewatchable entry point into what the character could become on screen. In the film, James Bond (Sean Connery) is sent to Jamaica by MI6 to investigate the disappearance of a British station chief. Before being murdered, that man was assisting the CIA in finding out who had been interfering with NASA’s rocket launches. Along the way, Bond does what he will continue to do in films for another 60 years: he punches henchmen, shoots people, beds attractive women with colorful names, and looks profoundly cool while doing all of the above.
The particulars of the plot and its ensuing revelations are just not all that important. There’s a relative formula to the character and his adventures that remains largely unaltered over decades. Mirroring Fleming’s prose and his chapter breaks’ serialized nature, Bond’s investigations are just fetch quests from one exotic and alluring location to the next. Over time, the movies get bigger and the globe-trotting covers more miles, but this first film largely features one slow-build, sustained setting in a single country. There’s a purity to the pace of the picture that allows for powerful little moments to become iconic. The “Bond. James Bond” introduction that comes when we meet him gambling, smoking, and flirting is one of the most quoted and parodied exchanges in movie history, but it stands out in a story with this much breathing room.
Years before the film’s gadgetry would become so toyetic and highlighted, the worldbuilding here is so casual it scarcely registers. Early on, we see a false bookshelf give way to hidden radio almost as an aside. The first time Bond wields his signature Walther PPK, it’s given to him by his boss, M (Bernard Lee), in a scolding about how his Beretta jammed on his last job. The signature martini, the coveted cars, the sartorial specificity all accrue here as aspirational set dressing before they later become expected branding. These are elements that would calcify in the Roger Moore years, be sent up relentlessly in the “Austin Powers” films, and then be ritualistically interrogated by the Pierce Brosnan and Craig eras. Two of Bond’s most successful outings, “GoldenEye” and “Casino Royale,” distinctly do a lot of the “wokening” Elba claims to fear, but they were both made before that accusation became so du jour.
But Elba was onto something with the way he centralized “escapism.” The second half of “Dr. No” is not quite as thrilling or action-packed as some later entries in the series, but the brilliant way it transforms from a grounded, albeit pulpy, mystery into something more expansive and larger than life remains breathtaking. The work production designer Ken Adam put into the villain’s underground lair, the tattered, battle-torn clothes from the second act mirroring old adventure magazines for boys, it all works together to bridge an adolescent power fantasy with charming wish fulfillment of what being a man is supposed to look like.
Even within that escapism, however, it’s not as if this film wasn’t without its own social controversies. Connery, a man many still consider to be the definitive Bond all these years later, was a working-class Scotsman that even Fleming didn’t think suited his upper-crust creation. The film was set in Jamaica, which would gain independence from Britain a few months before the movie’s theatrical release. The Bond films have long been a weather vane for whatever the West has needed an alpha male fantasy to mean. There never was the pure Bond past that some alleged fans want to protect — and “Dr. No” proves it.
Jeff Bezos, a man who has more in common with Bond’s many rich, bald archenemies than Bond himself, is the last man I’d personally choose to steward the character in the future. But with a filmmaker as proven as Denis Villeneuve (“Prisoners,” “Dune”) behind the camera and “Peaky Blinders” scribe Steven Knight on script duties, they could do far worse than looking back to this first outing.
“Dr. No” plays July 4 at 11:30 a.m. and July 6 at 7:00 p.m. at The Charles. Get tickets at thecharles.com.