Dr. No oddly often gets forgotten despite being the first James Bond movie. Think of Bond and your mind immediately turns to the likes of Goldfinger, Live and Let Die and Casino Royale.
But Dr. No, released in 1962, is where it all started, and rewatching it I was reminded that Sean Connery was seriously menacing as 007. Take one scene where Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson) comes to dispatch Bond, firing bullets at the bed where he thinks he's asleep. Bond, who's so relaxed he's been playing a card game as he waits for his foe, then allows Dent to retrieve his weapon. Dent tries to shoot, but Bond dismissively tells him: "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six" before brutally shooting him dead.
Connery looks the part of the super-stylish smooth, upper-class assassin and this isn't by chance. Director Terrence Young took him shopping at his own tailors in London and made sure the young Scottish actor and former bodybuilder looked like an English gent. "Terence knocked me into shape,” Connery once commented. What this does is make Connery believable as Bond, which isn't always the case with later actors who took the role. Connery's acting skill also meant when you watched Bond kill Dent you believe him capable of such a violent act.
Dr No., unlike all future James Bond movies, has the advantage of not knowing it's going to be hugely popular. It therefore takes the job of converting Ian Fleming's creation for movie audiences seriously. There's none of the later in-jokes which can make some of the films a little too knowing. That's not to say the film lacks humor. At Dr No's underground lair, Bond does a double take as he spots a painting, Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, which had in real life just been pinched while on display at London’s National Gallery.
Bond is also witty in his cruelty. When a car chase ends with the chasers falling off a cliff to a fiery death, Bond turns to a construction worker and dryly quips: "I think they were on the way to a funeral."
Dr. No lays out the format for future movies but again it wouldn't have been predictable to audiences at the time because they wouldn't have known what a Bond format looked like. You have the Bond theme, the Bond girl, Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), and a baddie after world domination.
Previously I wasn't the biggest fan of the villainous Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman). But on rewatching, I've warmed to him. He delivers the best putdown of the entire series while he shares dinner with Bond: "Unfortunately I misjudged you. You are just a stupid policeman whose luck has run out."
Mind you Bond has his own moment during their meal after Dr. No tells him SPECTRE stands for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Revenge and Extortion. He sniffs: "I'd prefer the Revenge Department."
That isn't a real fish tank in Dr No's lair!
Dr. No's ultimate demise is a little underwhelming but on the positive side, the final scenes don't draw out into some ridiculously long fight sequence. It's also a benefit that Dr No. doesn't have a sidekick that Bond has to kill first. It helps the movie achieve a swift 1 hour and 50 minutes run time, rather than the bloated 2 hours and 43 minutes of the most recent Bond movie, No Time to Die.
There's so much more joy in Dr .No compared to No Time to Die. Bond is a flawed hero but ultimately he triumphs while relishing his work.
It's a credit to its makers that Dr No. looks so good considering its tiny budget. Producer Ken Adam, famous for his Bond set designs, once told The Guardian: "The budget of Dr. No was under $1 million for the whole picture. My budget was £14,500. I filled three stages at Pinewood full of sets while they were filming in Jamaica.
"It wasn’t a real aquarium in Dr No's apartment. It was a disaster to tell you the truth because we had so little money. We decided to use a rear projection screen and get some stock footage of fish. What we didn’t realise was because we didn’t have much money the only stock footage they could buy was goldfish-sized fish, so we had to blow up the size and put in a line in the dialogue with Bond talking about the magnification."
Give Dr. No a rewatch and it will remind you of what drew you to James Bond movies originally. It's not the best Bond movie of them all, but it's a damn good one and underrated. Watching Sean Connery there doesn't even seem to be an argument worth having. He's clearly the best Bond.
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