From Novel to Film pt. 23: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

THE NOVEL

"Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due."

(1963)

Fleming wrote the 10th book in the James Bond series at Goldeneye in January and February of 1962. At the same time and right down the road, production began on Dr. No. Fleming visited the set regularly. I'm sure there was a reasonable hope that the film would be a big success, but did anyone present have any inkling that the torch was being passed from Bond's creator to Eon Productions right in front of their eyes?

It puts the writing of On her Majesty's Secret Service at an interesting crossroads. The only in-text memento from this overlap is a namecheck of Ursula Andress, who at the time of writing was not a household name but at the time of publication was a global phenomenon. How it worked on Fleming's sub-conscious is unknown, but it's interesting to think about.

At the start of the novel, James Bond is in France - specifically that fictional seaside resort town Royale-les-Eaux where we first met him in Casino Royale. Officially, he's hunting for clues on the whereabouts of Ernst Blofeld, who disappeared after the events of Thunderball. Unofficially, he's there for his yearly pilgrimage to Vesper Lynd's grave and to gamble. 

The gambling can sometimes be a bit opaque:

"James Bond confidently bancoed the Lille tycoon on his left, won, made up the cagnotte with a few small counters and doubled the stake to two thousand New Francs - two hundred thousand of the old."

At the baccarat table he meets -

Teresa di Vicenzo aka Tracy aka the soon-to-be Mrs. Bond.

Bond takes her for a suicide, but something about her touches him deeply. He feels "for the first time in his life, totally inadequate." After he prevents her from drowning, they are quickly surrounded and taken at gunpoint to Marc-Ange Draco, 

the head of Union Corse

and Bond's future father-in-law.

Draco is more than a little reminiscent of Darko Kerim from From Russia With Love, right down to the rape in his origin story. He is concerned for Tracy, whom he tells Bond has been a deeply depressed wild child for years. He sees in Bond the man to snap her out of it, more or less, and offers up an old-school dowry of a million pounds. 

Bond wants nothing to do with the dowry but agrees to help, partly out of curiosity about Tracy and partly for any info Draco can provide on Blofeld's whereabouts. He eventually learns that Blofeld has assumed the identity of the Count Balthazar de Bleuville, an eccentric millionaire who runs a research institute atop his own privately-owned Alp, Piz Gloria. Bleuville has contacted the College of Arms in London for formal confirmation of his "Count" title. 

Bond visits the College and, with the able assistance of the awesomely-named Sable Basilisk

(Fleming came to the name through a rather involved process), comes up with a plan.

He pretends to be Sir Hilary Bray, a lineage researcher from the College who travels to Switzerland to allegedly assist the would-be Count personally.

Bond goes in cold - no weapon, no back-up, no easy way to extract him if things go pear-shaped.  

Bond is told the Count has been curing a group of young UK women of their livestock and food allergies. Through his own efforts, though, he learns the girls are being brainwashed to carry biological warfare agents back to the UK to destroy the agricultural economy.

This is ratcheted up to the world's food supply in the film.

Believing himself discovered, Bond escapes by skiing down the mountain. He is quickly pursued by SPECTRE agents.

This ski chase down the mountainside is easily the novel's most exciting sequence, perhaps the best action sequence in all of Fleming's writing altogether. It's damn difficult to choose a representative section, though, that backs up this sort of bold talk. Definitely a sum-greater-than-its-parts sort of deal. Suffice it to say, I agree with this Bond blogger's father: 

"It was pretty good in the movie," he allowed, "but it's awesome in the book."

The movie adds another ski chase - and Tracy to it -

as well as this blood-and-guts snow-geyser of an unfortunate SPECTRE agent's remains.

It also adds Blofeld as one of the pursuers and expands his final escape via bobsled.

Bond thwarts Blofeld's bio-terrorism scheme, but he and his number two (Irma Bunt) escape. Meanwhile, Tracy and James get married. 

The movie makes it a big wedding, with people like Q in attendance; in the book, it's a simple civil ceremony.

Symbolically wedding the Union Corse with MI6, as well - interesting.

Alas.

Please to pardon my broad-strokes overview. It's fitting that it takes place (at least in part) in the same locale as Casino Royale. The Bond of OHMSS is not the same, emotionally or psychologically, as the Bond of Casino Royale. By placing the action where Bond had his relationship with Vesper, it sets up an interesting parallel to how he absorbs Tracy's: in shock, cradling her body, repeating

"we have all the time in the world."

This completes (at least in my eyes/ as befits this novel) the "Bond family motto" motif: We have all the time in the world, (but) the world is not enough.

Unlike Casino Royale, where we sit with Bond in the weeks after Vesper's suicide and watch his emotions gradually calcify, the reader doesn't see the impact of her death on Bond until the next book in the series (You Only Live Twice.) For the dramatic purposes of this novel, however, we don't need to. It's all very dead-female-syndrome, sure, but they're used for different purposes at key junctures of Bond's original character arc. They mirror one another, but they emphasize and reflect different themes.

Fleming's writing is strong throughout OHMMS for the most part, though there is the occasional foray into exclamation-point-heavy interior monologue.

"You bastard! You're a dead duck! You can't stop or fire back. I'm coming after you like lightning! Soon I shall be only ten, five yards behind you. Then you'll have it!"

I'm fine with a little of that. And it's by no means overdone. Just an example. The writing is consistent with Fleming's other Bonds. Particularly his random observations, i.e. why do French girls have such prominent navels? or passages like this: 

"As the taxi got under way, Bond made his plan for the evening. He would first do an extremely careful packing job of his single suitcase, the one that had no tricks to it, have two double vodkas and tonics with a dash of angostura, eat a large dish of May's specialty - scrambled eggs fines herbes - have two more vodkas and tonics, and then, slightly drunk, go to bed with half a gram of Seconal. Encouraged by this prospect of cozy self-anesthesia, Bond brusquely kicked his problems under the carpet of his consciousness." 

The amount of eggs and drinks consumed and cigarettes smoked throughout these books is remarkable. I'm hardly the first to notice, but man. How did the guy get anything done?

THE FILM

(1969)

The plot is more or less the same. The beginning is retooled so Bond can save Tracy - without officially meeting her until the baccarat scene - and get into a fist-fight on the beach.

"This never happened to the other fella."

The Bondverse is not conducive to breaking the fourth wall, but all things considered, it works here. This was a great way to break George Lazenby as the new Bond.

Viewing Lazenby's performance through the lens of this From Novel to Film series made me realize how well the Bond character from the book materializes onscreen. I've always liked the movie, as well as Lazenby's portrayal of Bond * but I've always seen both in context of the Bond adventures surrounding it. This time around - and perhaps the credit is equally-if-not-more due to director Peter Hunt and screenwriters Simon Raven and Richard Maibaum - I focused more on film-Bond-vs-book-Bond's respective character arcs. 

"Oh, James..."

* Had the film been a huge hit and Lazenby not left the series on the mistaken advice of his agent, my intuition, based solely on his performance here, is that he would be one of the better-regarded Bonds. 

While we're here, I love this scene where Bond breaks into the solicitor's office to steal info regarding Sir Hilary Bray and Blofeld. It's not exactly a watershed moment for Bond, but Lazenby handles it seamlessly, and the score is absolutely perfect.

But Lazenby, alas, listened to his agent, who told him the Bond franchise would not survive. This left his costar Diana Rigg on her own to promote the film, and the two aired some of their dirty laundry from the set in the papers. 

Speaking of Mrs. Peel, fellow Avengers actress Joanna Lumley plays one of Blofeld's would-be Angels of Death.

Diana Rigg, of course, is fantastic. Without her - and the believability of the love affair between James and Tracy - the movie falls apart. 

We've seen Bond with a lot of women by this stage in the series, so Tracy has/had to be more than just someone Bond would sleep with. The Tracy of the book touches Bond because she is equal parts accidie and rage, the public school expelee redeemed and damned by war. Rigg is certainly all of that, but she has to be the right mix of vulnerable, enticing, aloof, sincere, reckless, resigned, and even relatable. 

No small feat to pull off, and she does, absolutely.

All the more remarkable considering how they didn't get along particularly well during filming.

I've mentioned my love of "We Have All the Time in the World" in these pages, but let me just say it again. Just a perfectly arranged and performed tune.

It takes another 6 Bond films for Tracy to be referenced again.

Draco is played by Gabriele Ferzetti and - as Darko / Bey before him in From Russia with Love - is softened considerably. (i.e. no rape-talk) As for Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas - 

is he the best Blofeld of the series? Probably. At least of the ones we've seen - I have a feeling we'll need to revisit this after SPECTRE comes out in a few months. Sure, there's some visual difference between Savalas and the Blofeld of the book, who is described as tall and thin with a shock of silver hair, but the visual of the character had already been established in the films. 

Curiously, despite meeting one another face-to-face in You Only Live Twice, the film prior to OHMSS, Blofeld doesn't recognize Bond. Another in-joke about Lazenby getting the role? Probably not. (In the book, it makes sense, as Bond and Blofeld never met face-to-face in Thunderball.)  

Two other small changes: Blofeld blows Bond's cover as Sir Hilary Bray directly in the film, and it is he (in a neck brace) who is driving the car from which Irma Bunt assassinates Tracy. 

What else? Piz Gloria looks fantastic.

Final Verdict: The book is my third favorite of Fleming's Bond novels. The movie is probably my third favorite of all the Bond films. Nice symmetry. As an adaptation, it's quite faithful: very much a worthy realization of Fleming's novel onscreen. 

From Novel to Film pt. 22: Children of Men

THE NOVEL

"We are outraged and demoralized less by the impending end of our species, less even by our inability to prevent it, than by our failure to discover the cause. Western science and Western medicine haven't prepared us for the magnitude and humiliation of this ultimate failure. (...) Western science has been our god. (...) It has been my god too, even if its achievements are incomprehensible to me, and I share the disillusionment of those whose god has died."

Theo Faron is a historian who lives alone. He's divorced, his wife having left him for someone else, a few years after Theo backed over their daughter in the driveway with their car and killed her. Unintentionally, but nonetheless.

Theo of the film is younger, not a historian, and did not run over his daughter (who is changed to a son who dies from the flu.)

His former mentor, Jasper, lives in seclusion with his invalid wife, and his brother Xan is Warden of England. Xan and his fellow Council members rule rather aloofly, which isn't a concern of Theo's until he is contacted by a former student, Julian, who asks him to go to the Council and deliver a list of demands from the would-be partisan group, The Five Fishes, she and four others have formed. 

Jasper of the film is changed to a rowdy marijuana grower.

Xan is changed to Nigel, a government minister, and he is confined to a single scene. While we're here, I wonder what Roger Waters thinks of this shot.

And - most changed of all - the ex-wife becomes Julian in the film, who is the leader of an already-active partisan group.

These demands are a) a return to unrestricted immigration, b) an end to the Quietus: 

this is the state-sponsored assisted-suicide program.

c) a shutdown of the brutal (and sealed-from-public-scrutiny) Isle of Man penal colony, and d) a shutdown of the state-sponsored pornography shops. Theo is disturbed by some of what the group tells him, particularly about the elderly being forced into Quietus rather than volunteering for it, so he visits a seaside town to observe a Quietus ritual firsthand. When he recognizes Jasper's wife, Helen, trying to escape the Quietus ship, he tries to help her and is knocked unconscious. After this, he agrees to visit Xan and plead on the group's behalf.

He is conflicted about this for many reasons. First and foremost, he doubts it will do any good. Second, when we meet Theo, he's a character who has largely surrendered. Along with most of humanity. He is suspended between the sublimation practiced by many of his countrymen (elaborate birthday and baptism rituals for pets, dollmaking, All Is Love cults and a Church of England that has "moved from the theology of sin and redemption to a less uncompromising doctrine: corporate social responsibility coupled with a sentimental humanism", and the lawlessness of "the Omegas," the generation born in 1995/1996) and the outright denial of most everyone else, who are content to keep their gardens tidy and keep up appearances so long as the electricity stays on and the streets are kept safe. 

Theo is blasé about the real suffering the Five Fishes describe - are things really so bad? Even if they are, is it realistic to expect to win hearts and minds given the impending end-of-everything? Also, his training as a historian allows him to see non-altruistic historical parallels within the group, particularly in their leader, Rolf, whom Theo suspects, accurately, as simply wanting to take Xan's place as unchallenged supreme leader of England.

The movie significantly ratchets up the police-state/ world pandemonium aspect.

Theo's arc is one from cynical inaction and (an understandable) lack of forward momentum ("even when he killed his daughter, he was moving backwards," says one Council member. Ouch.) to engaging with the present, sluggishly at first, and seizing the future. Making him a historian ("someone who interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future - the least rewarding discipline for a dying species") serves this well.  

What I felt was envy and regret, not for something lost but for something never achieved. 

He is the embodiment of the civilizational malaise that has come fully out of the shadows in humanity's eleventh hour. What spurs him from this observer role is the reveal that Julian is pregnant. Rolf thinks he is the father and plans to leverage his world-saving sperm into becoming the new Warden. Theo thinks Rolf is rather foolish, but the miracle of a pregnant girl in a barren world - and the affection and protectiveness it stirs in him - weds him to their cause. He agrees to help them get to Wales, where they will hide out, have the baby, and then make their demands of Xan's Council. 

Quite a few changes in the film:

Julian is, as aforementioned, the name of his ex-wife, not the pregnant girl, Kee:

an invention of the film, played by Clare-Hope Ashitey.

Miriam (Kee's midwife and protector) is an important character in both book and film, though film-Miriam is more a composite of many characters from the book.

And there is no Rolf, though Luke, the group's leader in the film (Chiwetel Ejiofor) also wants to harness the miracle for the increase of his own power. Chiwetel is always good - no exception here.

As predicted, Xan and the Council reject all the demands as insensible and warn Theo of aiding any state-subversives. After commandeering food and a vehicle from an elderly couple watching Neighbours - a detail I loved - Theo and Miriam spirit spirit Julian to the estate where Theo and Xan spent summers together as children. There, Julian gives birth to her baby.

Xan and the authorities arrive, and he goes in alone to talk to Theo. They get into a standoff at gunpoint, and when the baby's sudden cry startles and distracts Xan, Theo shoots him. He takes the Coronation Ring of England from his cousin's finger and slips it onto his own before revealing the baby to the other Council members. Theo puts the sign of the cross on the baby's forehead. The end.

Fantastic book. I don't think the Xan/Theo stand-off makes a great deal of sense, nor is it exactly clear why we're led to believe people would follow Theo simply for having the Coronation Ring on his finger. But it's also an ambiguous ending, perhaps suggesting that that miracle aside, Theo, changed or not, can only become only a kinder, gentler dictator. Is it an ironic gesture or an act of reclamation? The human comedy, after a brief intermission, perpetuates itself?

Pessimistic? Perhaps. But it's not really written that way. First off, it's much more explicitly religious than the film. Not in a preachy way, just that Theo's fall-from-faith is explored more, and the prose (which is quite beautiful - I'm highly motivated to read P.D. James' other work, which while I understand to be quite different, likely is still just as eloquently written) is definitely concerned with how faith and the supernatural might play out in a world where both the religion and science of procreation are so bewildered.  

"'I don't think (God) bargains.'

'Oh yes He does. I may not be religious, but I know my Bible. My mother saw to that. He bargains all right. But He's supposed to be just. If He wants belief, He'd better provide some evidence.'

'That He exists?'

'That He cares.'"

THE FILM

Where to start? What a fantastic film, easily one of the best the 21st century has produced thus far. Alfonso Cuarón has proven to be an ambitious director, and the long tracking shots (excellently augmented by CGI that never overwhelms) are as good as any out there. Not to mention the sets - the London and England of tomorrow look suitably familiar-yet-alien, majestic-yet-foreboding.

Cuarón grounds the fantastic premise with great little moments, too, such as the dreadlock-guy's bungled wrath, Theo's difficulty finding shoes that fit him once he and Kee begin their run, or the ongoing tease of Kee's baby's name (tied up so beautifully in her last moments with Theo.) While bleak and violent in spots it's a transcendent work: epic with a personal touch, moving without surrendering to cliches, and big-production-impressive without seeming ostentatious.

And the performances are stellar. First off, Clive Owen as Theo.

Brilliant performance. His best? Some say Croupier. I say this. On one hand, he's an Everyman-reluctant-world-savior; on the other, he's a self-medicating, broken mess.

His journey from anguish to redemption is brought home especially well at the end, where his face and whole body slowly unclench as Kee reveals what her baby's name is.

Throughout the film we see Theo smile and laugh quite a bit, but it's always with a remote sadness and detachment, never quite reaching the eyes. Compare those smiles to his face here in the boat, not necessarily this screencap but next time you see it.

Jasper's role is significantly expanded, and Michael Caine makes the character his own. The Jasper of the film and novel are wholly different.

Caine says he based his stoned-mannerisms on how John Lennon used to act when he was stoned. I have no way of knowing if that is accurate or not, obviously - just passing it along.

As a tangible presence of a sort of stubborn (if chemically induced) and zany optimism of humanity, irreverent in the face of disaster, defiant in the face of fascism, Caine is pretty much pitch-perfect. Theo clearly loves him, but the death of his son has rendered him too emotionally inert to be swept up in his energy. (It probably would have been one-bleak-bridge-too-far to retain Theo's infanticide from the book.)

I mentioned Chiwetel and Clare-Hope, above - they essentially play characters invented for the film, but both rise to the occasion well. There's no slack in the line - this is a great cast doing great work on the set-to-end-all-sets.

The Omegas of the novel are nowhere to be seen, but they aren't really missed.

Their symbolic "preciousness" and alienation are encapsulated quite well in the scene where Theo visits Nigel. (And yes, that's Chuck Bass.)

The ending is changed significantly. No Theo's taking the Coronation Ring for his own, no sign of the cross, no Xan. Theo and Kee go into Bexhill - the Isle of Man from the novel augmented considerably - where she gives birth, then there's a massive shootout set piece between the authorities and Luke's insurrectionist army. (If Cuarón wasn't chanelling Kubrick here, then it's the happiest accident in cinema history.) 

In one of the film's most memorable sequences, the sound of Kee's baby crying cuts through the air and brings all action to a halt.

The whole escape plan hinges on being picked up by the Tomorrow, a boat from The Human Foundation, a seed-vault of personalities sequestered on an Atlantic island.

I wonder how the film would come across without the shot above? Just Kee in the boat, and fade to black, draw your own conclusions? More like the novel, perhaps, but I'm glad they didn't elect to find out. As it is, it ends with John Lennon's "Freda People" over the end credits. (A song that usually ended up on mix tapes I made for anyone 1994-1998. Another? "In the Court of the Crimson King," also in the film, when Theo is driven to see his brother. Guess Alfonso Cuarón and I would do okay on a road trip.)
 
The film (timely for 2015) casts a withering eye on immigration paranoia, even within the heightened tension of the barren future. This is amplified from the book, but it's there, too:

"People became tired of invading hordes, from countries with just as many natural advantages as this, who had allowed themselves to be misgoverned for decades through their own cowardice, indolence, and stupidity, and who expected to take over and exploit the benefits which had been won over centuries by intelligence, industry and courage, while incidentally perverting and destroying the civilization of which they were so anxious to become part." 

You hear plenty of variations of that in 2015.

Final Verdict: As a novel: solid A. As a film: A+, maybe A++. As an adaptation: quite a fascinating mix of subtext from the book, intelligently transcribed to the screen. It's a great example of how a reboot / reinterpretation can both illuminate why and how the original was great and also create something new and original.