Much thanks to Volume122 for drawing and designing this cover!
For those not in the know, fan albums are the attempts of me and many others to take songs and put them on an album, typically they’re made to improve upon something, such as an existing album or to take non-album tracks and put them on an album.
Sadly, eight days ago the world lost a legend, the irreplaceable talent Brian Wilson, someone I hold very dear to myself. I have a far more ambitious project in mind that restructures his entire career, but I also wanted to do something that co-exists with his official canon and is suitable as something that covers the end of his career…
Including the Beach Boys works where he had significant involvement, Brian’s decades of musical output have the following number of official studio albums: Fourteen albums in the 60s, Two in the 70s, Two in the 80s, Two in the 90s, Four in the 2000s, Four in the 2010s, and Two in the 2020s. At a glance, this reflects the perception of Brian of peaking early before quickly burning out in the 60s before mostly becoming a recluse with occasional reemergence. However, this isn’t really true. He continued to work on numerous projects, though much went unreleased or incomplete. For example, if we draw together various songs he worked on and sometimes completed from when he more or less withdrew from the band after Friends to right before his return with 15 Big Ones, he could have released about five albums of material. Despite releasing two albums in the 2020s, some think of his last true musical statements as 2012’s That’s Why God Made the Radio and 2015’s No Pier Pressure. Both feature more significant production from him and aren’t quick n’ dirty releases. Thus, I wanted to re-write history a little and ask, “What if instead of Brian making two albums dominated by older songs of his, he instead made one more ‘proper’ album before retiring?”
While there’s a lot of decent rarities across Brian’s entire solo career, even the early 2010s, I set a hard rule to only include stray songs from 2013-present. 2013 was when he started NPP, so they would be “recent enough”. The main source of this project is his actual technical last album Long Promised Road. As a documentary soundtrack, its priorities were seemingly to remind us of some, admittedly more obscure, oldies of his and due to the number of rock songs, tell us he’s still got it. I removed any of the Paley-session tracks, and covers of his own canon. I did keep the title track as that was a Carl song Brian hadn’t recorded before. The twelve-track album only has four songs due to these removals. He also had a few other bits and bobs here and there. Ultimately, this was not enough, so I used three quasi-bonus tracks from NPP to add more runtime.
The result? Surprisingly cohesive, but not very strong (no pun intended). What the 2010s albums’ apparent message was, was that Wilson was slowing down and couldn’t be the more active creative force he was in the fifteen-years before their release. Thus, it was a strange decision to include rock songs and material obviously worked on by many others to sound like classic Brian, both probably to suggest that he isn’t stopping anytime soon. I suspect that choice was made to ring as much from the brand as possible, make Brian look hip and current and worth investing support into. As such, the material has an identity crisis and comes off as very awkward. If Brian was going to release another album in 2021, it should have been a coda to his work. Due to the relative weakness of what’s here, you can argue he should have quit while ahead, but as a hyper fan I get something out of these and I think other fans of his will as well. I don’t mind this era, though if it all had been recorded at the latest shortly after 2015, it would probably be more worthwhile. It can’t be ignored that the best of what we have is the No Pier Pressure bonus tracks.
The cover was drawn and designed by Volume122 and the title just had a nice ring to it. I was considering the name Wilsonlust, but he convinced me it would not work.
“Right Where I Belong” (Recorded Late 2018-Early 2019)
“Honeycomb” (Recorded Late 2018-Early 2019)
“Don’t Worry” (Recorded 2013-2014)
“Wanderlust” (Released 2014)
“Strong” (Brian Part Recorded October 2022)
“My Sweet Lord” (Released 2014)
SIDE B
“Rock & Roll Has Got a Hold on Me” (Recorded Late 2018-Early 2019)
“Somewhere Quiet” (Recorded 2013-2014)
“Run James Run” (Released 2017)
“Long Promised Road” (Recorded Late 2018-Early 2019)
“I’m Feeling Sad” (Recorded 2013-2014)
Funnily enough, a 1970 country album that Brian worked on called Cows in the Pasture is supposedly going to come out this year, which means Brian’s canon will probably close out on a high. If I wanted to wait, I could release this album with the one or two lead vocals Brian will probably have on it, but I don’t want to wait. That release will almost certainly find its way on my more ambitious project.
This is a passion of mine and if one person likes what I do, I’ll feel honored. I like suggestions on what artist to cover next, so if you know of one you’d like me to look at, feel free to suggest ‘em!
The opening impression of the opening hour of Columbo is of the expressive psychedelia that defined the late 60s. The title credits are accompanied by colorful and trippy visuals, featuring horns and sound effects that will later appear in the story. The ample use of red, especially behind a title reading Prescription: Murder, brings to mind blood, which seems oddly lighthearted. What’s to come is not a comedy, and it’s not about a cold disregard for the weight of such an act. The murder itself doesn’t have blood in it at all. However, it’s notable that what is depicted appears to be essentially a Rorschach test. While the colors don’t directly lead into the narrative, what those images depict are details that the protagonist, at least for this outing, perfectly captures. He is the type of man who takes pride in figuring people out, out-planning and out-thinking them. Beyond the lead, without this inquisitive spirit, the episode would functionally be completely different.
Gene Barry is an absolute powerhouse as Dr. Ray Flemming. From his first scene he is portrayed as very intelligent and worldly of different people, but ironically out of touch with them at the same time. His friends guess who he is thinking of in a game of Botticelli, yet no one can figure him out. Against the other main player he is straightforward and thoughtless in how he comes across. The first time Ray learns surprising news after meeting him, notice how he stops to collect himself before very slightly over-emphasizing a fake gleam of joy for the bad news he’s heard. Another highlight is when his accomplice asks if what he did was excusable. He looks at the person in the eyes and says there was no other option. He’s looking at them the same way he looks at the police when lying about the case or smugly determined by how well his plan is going. While not apparent from this scene alone, in context he is hoping to push down any doubt or concerns about him.
He makes a fiery double act with his wife Carol, donned by Nina Foch. The two’s constant arguing opens the door to a probably turbulent and hostile relationship. That pretty much could have been the movie, with the murder being the very end. What were the circumstances of the terms of their relationship that Carol discussed? Why would she want to ruin Ray if they were to divorce? Why does she flip so suddenly from loving him to being furiously angry to back again? These tantalizing glimpses offer a taste of these people, making them feel real in a way you don’t usually see, probably so you want more, at least from the writers. You can only imagine how rough Ray’s had it. You don’t wish for Carol’s demise, but Ray is still given a sense of a day in his life, something that puts you in his head of how stagnant his existence is, more than other murder mysteries would get. Carol burdens that she’ll try to destroy him if they divorce, spelling out a bit too clearly how nasty they are. Carol gives Ray a look of daggers when he walks out of their party—with that and her wanting to ruin him, made me wonder if she was going to be the killer.
This script is based on a play of the same name, which was itself based on a 1960 TV episode called “Enough Rope”. While the focus was definitely on Ray, even up to and including this 1968 outing, viewers noted that the focus gradually shifted to the detective over time, as he was such a fascinating character. Much acclaim and attention would ultimately come to Lieutenant Columbo, played by Peter Falk, in a series about his adventures. Falk gives the character numerous subtle gestures and moments that you might not even notice, with the purpose of Ray lowering his guard around him. Falk speaks very slowly, trying to come off as dimwitted to the other characters, but not doing such a crystal job that the audience thinks he’s actually stupid. An entire show of this version of the role could get annoying, but as part of his profession is a cunning way to wear people down while looking innocent. This is the first sign of his manipulative ways, as he is using social expectations of politeness to lead people on without them calling him out. At one point he talks on the phone, hardly intelligible due to a cigar in his mouth, which makes him come off as clueless. Another favorite is when he says, “No offense” and smirks, not able to contain the amusement of his persona breaking momentarily. Look out for a scene about Columbo questioning someone, followed by him and Ray discussing it. Despite the pretense of the conversation being about the third person, the leads realize that each is maintaining their charade a little too long and thus try to figure each other out. As a story about psychology, this presents an opportunity to see the unstoppable force meet the immovable object of wanting to keep your cover.
As we progress, we focus more and more on Columbo, seeing him take over more screen time and learning more about him, with this sometimes disguised through him forwarding the plot by picking up subtle clues. Instead of the typical trope of gradually unpeeling the aftermath of a murder to the point where we learn enough about the characters to know whodunnit, now we come to understand the murderer and discover a whole side of the detective. This is almost a little too fortuitous for a first episode of a show that didn’t know it was going to be a show. There was no plan for more Columbo installments, which would be a tad disappointing if this were all we got. Gratefully it is not, as it’s hard not to be on the edge of your seat for the next slice of his life. Due to not being a recurring character, Ray doesn’t have anywhere else to grow, which is all well and good, but in his own story he loses focus to the point of him playing second fiddle to the series star. Take the famous psychiatry scene near the end where Ray is putting off his plans to talk to Columbo, like he’s demanding his attention. Afterwards, we get the only lengthy sequence without Ray. There was palpable possibility for there to be a diegetic reason for this. What if Ray consciously ignored Columbo due to not wanting him to figure him out, and thus only then do we spend time without him? This could suggest that Ray is losing the plot, rather than him being kicked out of it for a moment.
As good as the script is at writing in reasons for Columbo to learn more about the case through loose comments, the dialogue is often very on the nose. Katherine Justice as Joan Hudson literally says to Ray that she’s prettier and younger than his wife, though less intelligent. These are exactly the reasons you would expect for an older man to kill his wife. The audience doesn’t need to know, and more importantly, who talks like that? “Typical actress. Too many bit parts and too much ambition,” she says about herself. Her introduction suggests that Justice will make her character a valley girl, with her significant improvement coming as much of a surprise to us as it does to Ray. However, first impressions are still important and a solid enough delivery could merely point you in a different direction rather than letting your hopes down for a prominent character for a reasonable chunk of the runtime. Joan’s reaction to the murder virtually sets her up to be an audience surrogate. Like Joan, once the setup is out of the episode’s system, the pace keeps up well, not having to worry about covering itself anymore.
We watch murders on television, which comes from a fascination with them. Even if you don’t like action adventures where men die for sheer excess, fans of murder mysteries still take pleasure from murder in a way. Joan’s confrontation with getting in over her head is relatable from her looking away to tensing up, at least in the sense that we’ve all probably gotten caught up in something at some point, though hopefully more minor than this. You about forget she’s an accomplice to murder when she frantically calls Ray or earlier when walking into a women’s restroom with minor disarray on her face. More impressive is that her feelings are shining through the wig and sunglasses.
SPOILERS
A walking guitar score and an actual 50s-commercial style wink are used to imply that Ray and Carol had sex after making up, which seems completely pointless. The use of music to imply certain behaviors doesn’t come to any point, like if it were revealed at the climax that someone did something noteworthy that way. At the very least, this demonstrates that music can sometimes be intimidating for the purposes of the plot. The similarly unusual flute-based scoring of Ray approaching Carol to kill her is very unnerving, making sure we’re sufficiently on edge for the attack. Once the murder itself happens, there is a clear focus on the sound design. The phone ringing breaks Ray’s focus, making the murder less of a singular event and reminding us that this is part of the world, where now he’s transitioning himself to a plane of existence where he can never come back, one where he is a murderer. Despite showing some hesitation, he now has to push himself to get it over with, go headfirst into this new life.
The whirring noise, which sounds from a science fiction movie, is a lot ropier. Tipping over with the horns, this tells us the opposite of what the phone does, that we’re watching fiction. Accordingly, it’s nowhere near as impactful because it’s so played out. It doesn’t help how rendered it all feels, from Carol grabbing the curtain, to shots of Ray’s face that plainly were filmed at a different session, to Carol’s hand dropping on the piano. Each cut tells us that something has been dropped in, removing the sense of realism we could have had from lessening the number of takes and paying attention to the phone and the back of Ray’s head, like he’s not human enough to get a shot of him. Due to the brevity of the strangulation, you might think that we’re feeling how Ray perceives the act rather than how it is, which allows us to fill in all the gruesome details ourselves instead of having them spelled out. It’s probably hard to imagine what Ray would be thinking or showing on his face while doing the act, so why allow us to criticize by showing us?
A floating flute and then a keys score play over Ray setting up his place to look like a break-in had occurred, which shamefully does what it can to subtract from Barry’s excellent performance. It won’t let up or allow the scene to breathe on its own to the point of frustration. His treating this like spring cleaning logically fits with the story, while also showing how much of a bastard he is due to the relatively long takes of never caring about what he’s done. His execution is so stunning that you might miss that off the bat, Ray’s plan shows some faults that never come up, and probably were supposed to be ignored by the audience and Columbo. Ray probably got glass on his wife when he smashed the door, which would suggest to someone like the lieutenant that she had to have been killed beforehand. As they’re living in a penthouse, apparently the killer would have needed to scale a giant building to get to them. He also suggests that Joan put on his gloves, giving her only one, then continues to prepare the place with one on, still touching objects as before with one exposed hand. Funnily enough the most obvious “mistake” is that he left a cloth around the phone so Joan doesn’t leave fingerprints. A soundtrack and slow camera movement carry us from them leaving to the cloth, like that’s how he’ll get got, only for Ray to walk back in frame and grab it, a very fun twist that says this will be a lot harder for whatever detective comes around than it might seem.
Ray later insists to Columbo that if he killed his wife, then he’d never be caught. This confirms to Columbo that he did do it, who is now more determined than ever to egg him on more to find proof. It is noted that Ray won’t crack under Columbo’s pressure, but he never considered the obvious next step for Columbo, to approach the more erratic and emotional Joan. The “sly little elf”, as he’s called, says to Joan that she is the weak link in Ray’s plan. That’s the thing he cannot control. The closest he can do to “controlling” her is not to give anyone a reason to get on her trail. Another reasonable choice not taken is to legally punish Columbo.
The most baffling choice of the episode is having Columbo break into Ray’s apartment, which removes some of the mystique of the character. He’s supposed to be very good at the small details. Like Ray, he generally avoids careless mistakes, as that can get you busted. However, he’s committing a crime here. Columbo’s adding a massive liability which could bite him in the butt later. It would have been entirely reasonable for Ray to simply say that he doesn’t want this clear nutjob bothering him, but another, and thus hopefully less competent, detective should interview him instead. Beyond this, it reaches a point where Ray is annoyed and wants him to leave him alone, though he is still inviting to Columbo when he comes around. It’s explained that Ray wants to leave no doubts, but he doesn’t realize that that makes himself look guilty by constantly overselling his innocence, like stressing that the missing dress and gloves might have been stolen or that they weren’t on the list of missing items as how could he be expected to notice that, which is not how you would expect an innocent person to act. He isn’t even pretending to grieve. Although not mentioned, it’s still fun to think that the burglar’s apparent need to scale the building to get in was the reason he was suspected.
Some miscellaneous thoughts… It’s amusing to think that the police outlined Carol’s body before taking her to the hospital despite her still being alive and obviously in critical condition. Why did Ray want to see his wife so badly when he found out she was alive? Why have this tangent for her to then pass so quickly? The minor role of Flemming’s friend Burt is bizarrely an absolute jerk. He makes fun of a girl for not being good at Botticelli. He rudely pushes at Columbo for asking questions about Ray’s behavior, shutting him down so hard that if you didn’t know better, you might think Burt was the killer. If this episode were a more typical mystery where we don’t know until the end who did the crime, you can wonder how many would have pointed the finger at Burt off of this scene. He helps Ray get Columbo off his tail. Though not necessary, it would have been nice to see how he would act upon finding out about Ray’s guilt. He went with Ray to see his wife in the hospital and provided emotional support, so you think he would offer a unique perspective as his close friend.
There’s an admittedly cute scene where Ray wants Columbo to think he has no guest, and raises suspense for the audience by getting us to wonder if the detective will catch that he has two drinks out instead of one, despite supposedly being alone. This should show Ray that he is prone to mistakes enough that it’s no good idea to associate more than he has to, especially with the decent cover story of “This guy is simply really annoying.” His swagger posture when standing in front of the drinks implies his feeling of domination in the scenario, a lovely touch by the actor. As an aside, there was a missed opportunity for Columbo to mention that extra glass in the final scene, preferably as his last line, to tie his skills up in a bow a little more. Before one of the best scenes, a man confesses to the murder and unnaturally goes through the motions of describing his crime and having an outburst about how he’s just guilty, questioning the point of investigating him. This appears to be a case of the earlier bad dialogue, but it’s later revealed he was planted by Columbo and purposely being unconvincing to get information from Ray, which he does give.
Possibly the most famous scene of the story is when Ray describes Columbo. While striking, we spoil the broth a little for the villain. He knows Columbo is clever and observant; he even knows that Columbo suspects him and won’t leave him alone. Despite that he allows the blatant opportunity to be sized up and investigated. He’s showing that he has been trying to figure out the detective, which reveals that he has something to hide and doesn’t want anyone to realize what it is. His describing a “hypothetical” killer noticeably similar to himself and saying you can’t catch one like that is such a murderer thing to say, too. Ray, being a psychiatrist, ironically explains how he would know so much about him, but leads to the question of how he wouldn’t realize what he’s sacrificing for this moment. Seeing as Columbo said he wanted to be his patient, what if an excuse was found to at least get a consultation in a professional context? An example would be if Columbo asked if he could be diagnosed for the sake of finding a specialist for whatever issues he has, possibly offering to leave him alone for the service? This scene would also fit better a few seasons down the line. It could have been in the series finale. “Now that I’m old and they’ve pegged me, I’m done.”
Columbo is so cold talking to Joan. He seemingly lies to her by saying there’s no reason not to speak to him or do as he says, when, at least as of writing this, it’s generally understood that the police can try to trick you with word games to make you look bad. He also arguably attempts to force her to come with him for further questioning without probable cause. Infamously, he yells at her viciously, sickly saying she’ll be followed and hounded. Joan is later seen paranoid due to police watching her. This scene makes it very difficult to like Columbo, which based on his general foolery with Ray, is probably intended. He all but forces someone who constantly wants him to leave to keep talking to him, without any legal warrant or other document. Putting a scene of this nature in a movie not intended ever to have a follow-up is understandable, but as the first of a series we’re basically being told not to see the bright side of the protagonist and revealing a lot about how deep he’ll go almost immediately. Such a scene would play a lot better a few seasons in. As can be observed later in the Dirty Harry films, such behavior is only passable at all if it’s truly to thumb the right criminals and hopefully save more lives down the line. If everyone goes around thinking they’re Dirty Harry or Columbo, then we’re stuck with a bunch of self-centered, nasty cops. Columbo doesn’t even have much information on Joan, and wouldn’t have a recurring string of conversations with Ray that make him look bad, so it appears he’s taking a shot in the dark at Joan. You can say that Joan committed a serious crime and should be punished for that, but how could Columbo have known that with any certainty at the time?
Joan looking away from the camera as the plane leaves, and later when she’s looking away from Columbo marks the points where she appears to realize how in deep she’s gotten. The first is when she accepts what she’s done, and the latter when she accepts she can’t keep going deeper. A little later when she learns of Ray’s deception towards her, we see her facing the camera, no longer allowing herself to be hidden away. Looking at her as an audience surrogate, these are monumental scenes to show how she’s grown and how she might be better, though if we are truly supposed to click with her then assisting in a murder is way too far. Plenty of people have been tricked into accepting abusive relationships, but it’s hard to believe most would do this. These scenes also bookend Ray’s hold on Joan. Now that she’s breaking loose, he’s about to be taken down.
We later are told that Joan killed herself, which Columbo takes partial blame for. This is ultimately a trick, but it does leave a grotesque taste in the mouth as the detective’s behavior very well could have caused something of that sort. If not now, then maybe later with someone else? Columbo is such a calculating bastard that while he wouldn’t think it ethical to drive someone to suicide for the sake of a case, probably could if he wanted, which is a frightening amount of power for one man to have on his own. Intentional or not, he’d look such a monster you wouldn’t want to root for him. Regardless, the twist is great, but it would have hit harder if that had been the first time Ray “cracked”, though with his mean ego it’s only right he would have shown it before. The one time he let his guard down was when he was ruining himself. It’s the perfect karma that after worrying that his “gotcha” would be Joan cracking due to her emotional weaknesses, it was actually his own. Her plot point doesn’t go to the wayside, though. Her pre-established emotional spirit led her to desire to take Ray down being so strong she was willing to admit that she was an accomplice.
One of the finest details is that Ray said that people see what they expect to see. At the end, he doesn’t bother to check that the dead body is Joan’s, as that’s what he was anticipating, or maybe wanted as well? Ray suggests that if she hadn’t “killed herself”, he might have killed her eventually. Earlier, he wanted her to dress similarly to his wife, with emphasis on her wearing the exact gloves his wife wore with the outfit. She’s being put on a path to fill the role of his wife, maybe become his next one, which will lead to her ending up the same way Carol did. This is similarly implied when Ray hangs up on Joan suddenly, rather than giving a more tender goodbye. As an aside, did anyone else find it odd that the camera zoomed in on the girl pretending to be Joan, when the person dressed like her was no one we already knew? Seeing that the woman is a little older than Joan, for a second I thought it might be Carol, though that wouldn’t make much sense.
As a story about Ray, losing his mind and his grip, it’s only fair that the episode would end almost immediately after he realizes he’s toast. This whole time we’ve seen him feel smarter and better, so now that he knows he’s not, what more is there to say? The nearly dialogue-less sequence shows him looking at Joan with weakness in his eyes; it’s a mystery whether he’s surrendering his sense of control to her knowingly or feebly making a last-ditch effort to silently convince her not to spill the beans. When it’s all but said that he’s failed, he looks away disgracefully and tries to hold onto any glimpse of hope with his cigarette, which slowly dashes. I like to think that the second the screen cuts to black is when all confidence dies inside him, as in a tale about his need to be the best, it’s fitting that it would end on him realizing he isn’t.
OVERVIEW
Just one more thing, the idea of the “reverse murder mystery” is such a good idea, you wonder why it hadn’t really been done before. The dynamic between Falk and Barry is so sharp and tense that it alone is worth admission, even if the storyline and twists were not as gripping as they were.
Go figure, but the James Bond series proves no exception to being enslaved to the rule of what makes a strong mystery picture, a strong mystery. The premise promises to provide the goods. The core plot is simply that Sean Connery’s leading role wants to steal an item for British intelligence while some creepy-looking villains, one of whom looks like Buster Keaton on a bad day, attempt to outmaneuver him. After seeing him outmatch the titular Dr. No last film, this is an easy enough way to escalate the stakes. Instead of holding them back, we quickly see what is supposed to be the best of the best; Not-Keaton is a chess grandmaster, so he must be smart, and Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Klebb is the most devilish thing you could possibly dream of being, a short woman without God-given Anglo looks. Their plan seems to involve having very little involvement in Bond’s mission until the end, which conveniently would suit the needs of writers who don’t want to worry about actually giving them a role in the story.
The surprise of what will happen during the “gun barrel” opening of Dr. No, along with its relaxed attitude in introducing new story elements, implies that it is intended to stand on its own if it were to be the only installment in the series. Now, the gun barrel positions its memorable music at the forefront. The series’ other tropes are distilled to be easier to repeat. Our hero is touted as important and special, even by the overconfident villains, one of whom sings their own graces as if desperate to be disposed of to suggest the ability and viciousness of a different villain. Honey Ryder of before being tacked on is well and suitable for one story, but her merely showing up as she did would get comical. With a properly developed formula now, which includes the girl arriving near the beginning and being carried by Bond on his mission, we see a model of where numerous girls could go. The baddy Blofeld is notably never shown in the face, creating mystery for the role that would be unsatisfying if we never ended up learning more about him. With the swagger of being the general beginning of the series, we’re left wanting more in an admittedly cheap and easily accomplished way. However, other villains grunt about, appearing to kill someone dressed as Bond, establishing themselves in an instant instead of doing what Dr. No intended, establish himself over a film.
Who is the star of this vehicle? James bloody Bond of course! And don’t you forget it. The greatest celluloid money can buy treats us to scene after scene of him looking cool. Shirtless, abused, alone, in bed, he looks cool. Not only is he cool, but he’s in control. It’s not hard to see how he was not only a hero to the fictional world of the novels and films, but a hero to many men watching in the theaters. With the same aggression and need to control that many of the male audience members had, how wouldn’t they love Bond, particularly to be him? Similar to an abusive relationship, the script is in love with James Bond. It’s all very easy for the bloke. He gets to party and sleep with many women off the bat, as opposed to them being spread out across the film. Each individual encounter with trouble doesn’t appear to have an impact on him. There’s an increase in 007 cracking wise after someone dies or at least loses in their attempt to defeat him. More noteworthy for his scenes of joking around and sleeping around, the writer forgets to tell us why he gets to be a spy, few tough decisions that you and I couldn’t make, or battles that show his resilience. It’s though James himself is in a Total Recall-like simulation where he can live the fantasy of being a spy without needing to demonstrate actual skill that can’t be programmed in.
Contrarily, Connery is at his best when he has to exert himself, when the job isn’t so effortless. One sharp scene of this is when he clearly thinks he’s screwed, but unnaturally finds opportunities to prolong destruction by keeping the other person talking. As a whole, he fails to give Bond a needed arc. Certain key scenes, viz when a man is on his trail or the action spectacle is amping up seem the perfect opportunity for us to feel him, but the lead fluctuates between completely calm and peeved at the inconvenience. Those scenes of him nearing a loss appear to offer a taste of genuine intrigue for those who want it, and perhaps to satisfy the imperfection that viewers identifying with would have, without committing the faux pa of him harboring actual emotions. His girls can have silly spasms of crying and dread, but not a real British patriot.
For the sake of the movie not being a ten-minute short where either James or a villain ends up dead, numerous plot contrivances are needed to keep us going. Once he gets into the thick of the plot, an introductory scene for him involves his cab being followed. While he doesn’t sweat it, he apparently cannot avoid the trouble. There is a reason in-narrative he doesn’t die so soon, but wouldn’t someone so easy for the antagonists to find have long since been disposed of? Despite a scene where someone wears a mask of Connery’s face, the opportunity is not taken to have a body double leave the airport so people think it’s him. He also has trouble over him when he is in bed, not recognizing how blatant a trap it is. At least it has been established, both early in this film as well as last, that he can succumb to women and not think about anything else, but that isn’t addressed. In a brawl, he’s out in the open, as if he wants to get shot. Based on the characterization of the Bond girl Tatiana Romanova, aka Tania, who is aligned with the villainous organization SMERSH, the opportunity was ripe to explore this angle. “Will he realize before it’s too late that she’s out to get him? As you can see, he has a few blind spots.” Punctuation of her as two-faced, or at least a nasty side, would create immense dread for those who want him to win. No matter what James does, she is there and could do something.
Honey at least had enough personality to be an agent in her own life, doing things for herself. Tatiana is such a wet blanket with nothing to do, defining an archetype of Bond girls lacking any distinctive traits other than a general dimness and shockingly good looks, even if she has a more significant role in the escapade. Daniela Bianchi possesses such immense beauty that you can imagine her in a Dietrich-esque story about a woman whose charm drives men mad, but such a style only works very particularly. Despite being a Russian pawn in a plan to get Bond killed, there’s nothing behind the eye, no devilishness, playful or otherwise, that we see from Lois Maxwell’s Miss Moneypenny when she eavesdrops on a conversation or Eunice Gayson’s Sylvia Trench in her sassy double act with Connery. Sylvia goes so far as to feel akin to a female Bond, demanding what she wants. Her chemistry with Connery brings out a fine moment of him feeling more human when he has to keep her off him during a phone call. Her joking around, not taking the spy job seriously, answers the mystery of how a secret agent would exist in the real world; as anyone else would, having to contend with the wants of your girlfriend or other loved ones. Same as Bond, she is as dedicated as him at seeking out sex. Same as Tania, it almost seems a parody how little they have going on beyond that. After all, the opening credits are displayed over a woman’s partially naked body, which while a stylish visual, is more about depicting a woman as an object of fascination rather than more sensibly something that would tell us about the core storyline. Note that I don’t think Bianchi is necessarily to blame for her role. These movies are made for quick and dirty enjoyment, so why would that intended audience want a particularly complex woman instead of one who plays in the pocket of the viewer surrogate? Why would Bianchi be asked to give the role more soul?
The film gets so sexist that it’s hard to take it seriously when the title doesn’t refer to some escalation of political tension or threat on anyone’s life, but a note written from James to Moneypenny on a picture of a woman he will pick over her, From Russia With Love. It’s as if at the end of the day his magical penis and where it hibernates is all that matters and is on his minds, instead of the villains being so dangerous he can’t afford to concern himself with women. Notably, Klebb and Tania are both proven to be hiding information from others. The former lies about still working for SMERSH when she now works for Blofeld’s SPECTRE. Tania similarly is literally undercover. Many of the best scenes concern some moment related to false identity or false intentions. This should be seeping into the soil of the script constantly, though it does pop up on occasion. Moneypenny eavesdropping on M’s conversation, and M knowing what she’s doing, is one of the highlights. Despite being here for laughs, it’s realistic characterization that offers a relatable angle to the story. Instead of that behavior being black-and-white villainy, we see how universal sneakiness is, though everyone to some degree wants to be a spy and wants to cheat the game of life, at least minimally. No wonder Bond is comparatively so boring, not having anything to hide while removing tension from scenes by treating them as unserious. If he can wisecrack at what’s going on, shouldn’t we?
Beyond the obvious eye candy, there are many points of filler or a lost chance to be punchier. There was a missed opportunity to have Klebb’s first scene be her opening the door to let in Tania, instead of her appearing earlier. The creek of the door with her cold face tells us everything we need to know about her without dialogue. There, she would be much harder to forget, inadvertently planting her in the minds of the audience. Later, the Bond theme is used as the character walks around, as if going in an elevator is an action-packed spectacle. There are certain moments of obviously dubbed screams and overblown music, creating the feeling that no one behind the camera could stomach the possibility of us taking this story seriously.
The obvious way to make the most of a simple premise is to thrill or be a backdrop for character. A captivating theme is established early on when one villain, Kronsteen, says that the British take obvious traps as a challenge. The apparent road to narrative satisfaction from this is for the lead to get in over his head. The story seems to play into that at first, with Bond narrowly avoiding death despite generally not sweating it, but he never breaks from that attitude or general ability to at least get lucky. The lack of complexity Connery gives the character reads as him having no emotion for anything, instead of him hiding those feelings, as almost nothing comes through ever. Given that this era of novels and films can’t get enough of World War II and the Cold War, and the aforementioned villain is a Czech, his personal bias could easily play into a dynamic between him and our favorite Scottish Brit. Shortly before World War II, the relationship between the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom was strained by the Munich Agreement, but that didn’t stop them from working together to an extent during the upcoming war. He could be bitter about his people having to accept the UK or the control imposed upon his people. His status as a chess grandmaster could easily represent an attempt to outmaneuver opponents. An introductory scene of the film is of Kronsteen playing against a Canadian, allies of the Czechs. This could be a sign of a desire to best anyone in his way, even friends.
Despite the potential and setup, bizarrely Kronsteen is only around about six minutes in two scenes. Klebb doesn’t fare much better. They have a little focus at the front and back, but ultimately relent to another villain, Grant. There are four antagonists: those three and the intentionally mysterious Blofeld. We could easily have at least lost Kronsteen and given his scenes to Klebb, yet instead each person has such little presence that only Grant and briefly Klebb do more than talk. Lenya does give her role the chance to be afraid, which is a rare occurrence that shows how Bond is threatening rather than telling us. It’s nakedly clear that in a movie where someone is out to protect our hero for a certain amount of time, then eventually he has to outlast a few gunmen (who, check, all make careless errors), he isn’t facing an ingenious plan that throws him into a challenge. We’re getting a collection of action scenes that could easily be reordered and recut, with them rarely naturally leading into the next naturally. Infamously, the ending is basically several climaxes stacked on top of each other, some with characters that we haven’t seen before, and thus, there’s no added drama seeing what happens to them. Why not progressively give him less and less of a break, due to escalating action, married to some sort of political tension? That alone doesn’t mean much if he isn’t feeling it perceivably.
Such a lengthy sequence being set on the train implies a great weight to it, like it’s how the hero will ride his way to victory, or where most of the significant scenes will occur. I’ll spoil Twelve Angry Men by saying what’s important about that movie is in the jury room, not elsewhere. We unlovingly leave the Orient Express for a few other set pieces tacked onto the end, as if there was nowhere else for them to go. The train segment allowed us to both bask in its slower pace and claustrophobic atmosphere, which is merely interrupted, rather than closed out, for something bigger. The boat and helicopter action doesn’t textually or thematically follow from what happened on the train, as the thread of Grant and theme of a dark and tense space are dropped. The lead even hears an infamous exposition dump on the train. It doesn’t help or hurt Bond very much, but now the viewers know. The revelation that Klebb is now working for SPECTRE is filmed as a big moment, but due to her minimal screentime, what was SMERSH functionally other than a bit of backstory for her and Tania?
On its own, the helicopter chase is a highlight, a delightful flaunting of the increased budget. The landscape scenery takes you to a new world due to not coming off as a studio set. Bond looks small and in trouble, lost in a sea of greenery that exposes him brilliantly. His face implies that he’s worried for himself. The only issue is that this dynamic sequence is so out of step with the rest of the movie. The pilots after him haven’t appeared before and due to not generally showing much self-concern, Bond doesn’t feel pushed towards this location or danger. Imagine if the opening scene of fake Bond had been set here, making the locale extra scary? The plot points: from watching a Romani dance, to taking revenge on a man as a favor, to an extended train interlude, could all easily be from different adventures. It would be interesting to see someone edit the movie into a series of distinct episodes. 007 in Istanbul, 007 and the Search for the Lektor, 007 and the Murder on the Orient Express. After the train adventure, he could have just about done anything in any way, so why is he out in a field other than to up the runtime? Apparently, this scene was inspired by a similar one in North by Northwest. God forbid this script was written without the scene; then it was hastily pasted in because someone saw the Hitchcock film.
It makes sense why the pacing is so lacking, considering the number of action scenes. As an investigator, Bond should be following clues and picking up tidbits in new and inventive ways. Maybe he makes love to one woman for a bit of information, is attacked, then actually lets the guy live for the purpose of giving him more? A movie that prioritizes quality over quantity would risk apathy, so there are constant interruptions which only serve to show how the outing differentiates itself from many others in the genre, it loves VIOLENCE, GIRLS, and ECONOMICAL STORY STRUCTURE, some of those are sexier than others. An executive or producer must have been afraid that without either of those first two factors, we wouldn’t really have James Bond. We would just have a movie. The last quality is far more baffling, as who needs to see the lead walk out of an airport or inspect his hotel room? Those could have a purpose, but the structure is not going to build upon such superfluous scenarios. Unlike last film, the hotel snooping does not come back around. If someone wanted to quickly establish the lead as clever, there are a million ways that could be done. To name one, why not make him good at chess? Alternatively, he could solve a problem due to some understanding of how chess works, which would serve as a connection to the beginning. In a battle to eternally outsmart your enemies, a grandmaster would believably use their intellect as a tool, but then all an enemy would need is to know those certain tricks, control the center.
When confronted with Kronsteen’s supposedly perfect plan, Bond pushes his way to the finish line. While this could signal the general glory and upright character of the Anglos, consider how brutish he often is. Similarly to the previous film, he gets very rough and intimidating with women, lacking any apparent grace. His way of getting ahead is often brash and violent towards men. Some of this could come with the excuse of him trying to protect the world from villainous schemes, but this sentiment hollows when you realize that allies of our hero typically suffer, dying to give him a clue of trouble. The implication is thus that greatness comes from at least inadvertently using friends as human shields and allowing them to be in vulnerable positions. His use of jokes at those he has overpowered dehumanizes their struggles, as if he wants to avoid seeing them as people. Outside of the lead’s perspective, one ethnic character is defined by a recurring joke, rather than something that would give him a more natural presence or genuine humanity. Thus, showing no empathy is how you get ahead. Conversely, the villains don’t show empathy and end up equally as poor off. Almost using the logic of those villains, Bond has the power of violence, specifically more of it than them.
SPOILERS
The Romani attack scene is staged and scored parody-esque, with certain behaviors stagy and seemingly here for laughter. The music sometimes loops and clashes with the glory of Bond knocking a table with people on it over, or someone making a stern face before shooting off into nothingness. No deaths from the attack are referenced or mourned. Pedro Armendáriz’s Ali Kerim Bey is focused on celebrating James, as if too tough to cry for his killed friends when instead he could be glad a European white man is here to right the situation. Time is devoted to killing a man who caused the attack, with that relaxing the lead and Bey. The actors continue to downplay any emotions, not wanting to look weak, when this scene should be all about how they feel. Otherwise, what purpose does it serve? This should be cathartic for them.
At one point, Bey needs to witness his station attacked. Better yet, let’s start with him in a casual state before the attack. What will we have him do? He rejects the advances of a woman, but gives in after she pressures him. Like he’s doing her a favor, the deed is about to be done before the explosion prevents the film’s X rating. Bey makes odd racist jokes, which emphasize the new culture as exotic. The Romani’s customs are silly and theatrical, like we’re supposed to judge. He is in a few ways kindred to Bond, though with an increase in crassness, and a seeming reverence for him that Bond doesn’t have for anyone. Bey’s underground hideout, while attractive to the eyes, is overly stylized to heighten the sense of intrigue. It doesn’t feel as though Bond is exploring some new area, as it’s so clearly thrown in, so it means so little. The point of all of this appears to be to make the lead look more worldly and sophisticated by comparison. “As a good guy, Bey gets to have a taste of nice sets and girls, but he can’t have it as good as me.” He ultimately dies haphazardly for the story, little more than set decoration that can be ripped down when done. This same thing happened last movie, so you can’t even say his character arc was original.
As bad as the sexism was last time, this movie might have it beat. Whimsical music plays as Tania is shown new clothing, a strangely lighthearted beat in what is supposed to be a thriller. The intention was probably to find a point to develop the connection of the romantic leads, but why here, as if Tania is so distracted by the plot at hand as to be overcome by simple gestures of affection? It’s also fairly amusing that it comes off that James has “bought” her love. Earlier, a woman gave the mainstream movie-equivalent of a lap dance to Bond right before an attack. Grant and James order dinner for Tania. In a scene where James is on the move with a drugged and tired Tania, she says he should stay with her in the grass, and he threatens to leave her there if she doesn’t get going, having no sympathy for her. Her line further depicts her as idiotic and razor-focused on James, like she can’t comprehend anything else existing. Tania tells James she loves him. He replies “sure” and literally pushes her off him nonchalantly. Arguably, she gets a sort of revenge when James has a brief look of genuine sadness when he thinks Tania betrayed him, which is very cathartic when normally he has such disturbing domination over women.
Based on the lead’s hotshot attitude, it’s not hard to predict that Tania will be turned by his ways. That’s all well in good, but watching her play the role of being in love with him as forcefully as she is, there’s the uncomfortable notion that this will at least partially represent her actual desires. By the end, she’s just as glued to him as when she was “pretending”, proving she probably wasn’t ever pretending as soon as she showed interest in him shortly after they met, whiplashing us with the notion that the writer seemed to think that this is at all realistic. Tania has been forced into this life-on-the-line mission where she has to act as a spy and buddy up to a man she doesn’t know, a man who hits her, treats her comparable to an object, doesn’t stop her from having a drink he knows was drugged; and this is how she behaves? Taken as straightforward drama, this is more laughable than any of Connery’s jokes and as an “escapist male fantasy,” it’s hard to overlook this and just enjoy a story that has such a demeaning view of women. Similarly to Dr. No, the novel version of Tania is more complex, though admittedly not by much. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, Tania isn’t the only really spotty character.
Despite appearing a decent amount throughout, Grant has no spirit in these realms. Instead of showing him kill intimidating people, as if to show how capable he is, he attacks a man dressed as Bond in the opening scene in what is probably a training exercise. Even if it isn’t, what we’re left with is this character being portrayed as contained in ridiculous situations. Maybe after the next person he kills, confetti will come out of their mouth? After that, the victim will reveal an acceptance letter that they were supposed to be promoted to henchman in Goldfinger? Despite this, his mystique is minimized due to his constant appearances. We know exactly what he’s up to. Not only that, but coming on screen only to do nothing plays as diegetic proof of his uselessness.
Due to his charm and ability to impersonate, what if he were written as a parallel to the lead, getting in similar situations as him from the opposite perspective? At the big fight scene between them, we might root for Grant in a way due to sympathizing with him, or at least have a little doubt over who will win. An opposite road that would make him more intimidating is if we rarely saw him, but had some visual clues that he was there. One example is if Bond would occasionally find victims with choke marks around their necks or a device in his train cabin that proves he’s been bugged. A similar trick could be used for the characters of Klebb, Kronsteen, or Blofeld, though the latter doesn’t need to do any more than he does.
To say nothing else, Grant is forced by the pen to act a fool. Why talk about and prolong killing Bond instead of doing it? He said he’s exhausted his usefulness. If he somehow found it worthwhile to let him live a little, which Bond found an excuse to do, what if Grant severely injured him so he would be incapacitated? If there had been a reason for him to let Bond live and explain a bunch of plot information the audience might want to know, why not actually kill Tania? Leaving her unconscious and the exposition monologue are blatant functions to not end the movie, as it wouldn’t help audience catharsis to have the worker boy walk in to find Bond’s dead body before helping himself to another tip from his wallet. Tania wasn’t actually out cold, so theoretically she could have woken up and assisted in the fight scene. Grant could have also threatened to kill Tania at some point if he didn’t do as told, but he never does. The logic of Grant being a faker revealed through the wine he orders implies that there is a “true” way for an Englishman to be, and it’s suspicious for them not to fill certain standards, ironic for a series about a man who broke boundaries by constantly lovin’ and leavin’ different women.
Without context, the fight scene between Grant and Bond is finally when what we’re watching comes alive. The claustrophobic set and lack of music up the dread by removing the theatrical excesses of wide spaces and lots of color. The grunting, window-breaking, and stressed emotion on the actors’ faces enhance the spectacle. Despite that realism, there’s a contrast against the dreamy, dark blues, which give the sequence a distinct visual aesthetic that sets it apart from the numerous more “normal” fights that could believably have been added at the last second. This can be an example of how visual style can affect how material comes across, as the cutting and lighting especially make for a frenetic and jarring fight, which is how all of them should feel to the protagonist. Mainly due to the aforementioned difficulty the characters are facing, it’s hard not to wonder why something like this didn’t happen much earlier. Off of this alone you feel more of Bond in a way that is hard to explain and doesn’t require him to risk not looking cool or revealing too much about him. He looks the part of someone to support off of his ingenuity. However, because of how celebratory the film treats the character, as well as Grant’s lack of development, there’s no mystery that the long buildup and fight will end with Bond victorious and not worse for wear. Showing the second and truly gruesome side of his life still creates a distinction between this series and any other of the time, changeless if it’s fleetingly brief.
If you wince, you might catch some of the issues regardless… How could Bond have been so foolish to allow Grant the opportunity to overpower him? Obviously, he would have a secret gun and would want to get him in a position to get the upper hand. He’s supposed to be smarter than this. Grant in turn somehow doesn’t notice Bond trying to get his knife from his suitcase. The only real problem is that this scene shows how Grant could have been so much more, as parallels of each other, Bond killing Grant could signify some death of himself, possibly one he didn’t know he had. This would be especially striking if the ending were the same as the novel, where Bond’s life is very seriously threatened by the end, though we had watched a very hard-fought ego death through a literal one.
A scene near the end of the League of Doom talking about failing is particularly bizarre. James is suddenly treated as a God while Kronsteen is blankly denying that his plan didn’t work and that he’s about to be killed. As a grandmaster, you’d think he might have a philosophical attitude to losing, like it’s another game to play. At the very least, Kronsteen goes out not unlike any no-name that Bond laughed off over these two initial adventures, which should be undeserved for a supposed prominent villain. Near the beginning, Klebb threatening to kill Tania tells the audience it’s almost guaranteed she’ll betray her. Why wouldn’t she later take the opportunity to stop Klebb? A story with numerous double-identities shouldn’t spill the beans so blatantly so soon. Still, wisely the two-facedness and complicated game of Klebb bites her in the back. She finally had to trust Tania, thinking she understood her, but Tania was playing her game against her. Klebb is stopped easily, which comes off as a ridiculous parallel to Professor Dent, who had a similar defeat in Dr. No. The only difference now is that in a fight without weapons, you expect the 5’4 Klebb to lose to a man almost a full foot taller than her. Go figure, he won.
OVERVIEW
If you ever wondered if producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli or screenwriter Richard Maibaum sweated the needs of the plot, allow our audience surrogate apparently being charming enough to win a threesome with two girls that don’t know him or have many lines answer that for you. Looking at the pieces from a glance, the subversiveness that made the franchise famous appears to be in full swing, but forgetting to tell a good story is almost a death knell, though in fairness 007 has traditionally been able to avoid the gallows that sang for him. As poorly constructed as this film is, you can’t deny that it is popular.
For all its action set pieces and fragments of intrigue, From Russia With Love can’t get over its own need to undermine every character to make the hero look great, then the hero himself to erase almost every fault. The story of Western minds making themselves the victors, where any flaws are present but downplayed, is almost a good idea, if it were written in a way that allows their inherent nastiness to shine through. Bond seeming committed and in love with his girlfriend Sylvia only to then never mention her again and allow another girl to fall for him, who will be ditched at some point for another line of panties, is so cold that you have to marvel that this character was such an icon to so many people. See for the women. Yes, all of them.
The ritzy 1930s fashion for a film set in the 70s.
Brilliant parody, primarily when based on a serious work, must blend two things together… comedy and drama! To see an example of how this fails, one only needs to look to the infamous Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer outfits of the 2000s, which theoretically satisfies the Marxian itch of rapid fire jokes, but dreadfully lacks in any structure or thoughtfulness as to how those jokes relate to both their narrative, timeframe, and own cleverness. For not only very good parody, but a loose outline on how they could be structured, look to Young Frankenstein.
The opening titles set the tone while also subverting it, which in itself represents the essence of parody. The sequence alone is dramatic and would not be out of place in a straightforward horror, particularly a Frankenstein adaptation. As soon as the humor begins, it lies in that dramatic groundwork inherently and creates contrast between the two. Without the moody lighting and angles, like the slow introduction to the coffin, you wouldn’t be so constantly lulled back to remembering that this is based on a genuinely creepy work. As a bonus, if compared not to classic frights but to 40s-50s monster comedies, the edginess and sexual japes still accomplish distinction off the bat of trying to be as accurate as possible. A film like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein isn’t trying to identify so of a piece with the others before it. Now, there are slight continuity references to the past. We could literally be watching an installment canon to the original Universal Monsters series, as if everyone went mad taking that world as straight.
The great success is thus the many comic moments of characters acting with human misfortune, like getting upset or horny, but in a context where you would expect dead seriousness. Other than something like a courtroom drama, horror is a medium most suited to straight performances and characterizations. Unlike a courtroom drama, horror is frequently fantastical, which when mixed with thoughtful acting can make us feel as though we’re in the situation ourselves. By a similar principle, serious acting in comedy can force us to relate to the characters and their struggles. When Gene Wilder gives his Frederick Frankenstein a hot temper or is startled by revelations of his grandfather’s work, his behavior is initially not unlike what you might have seen from someone in real life, forgiving mild exaggeration. Like us, if conditioned in a world of any ridiculous thing, whether that be creatures from a laboratory, comic misunderstandings, or incompetent politicians, in order to be socially normal, Frederick would need to accept or even increasingly embrace that which he described as “cuckoo”.
A common struggle of comedies is that to adequately pace them, the laughs must come in consistently. If they step off rhythm at inopportune times, you’re reminded that this is a work of fiction that is serving a self-function, to merely move the plot. The movie often avoids such a trapping, like when we learn of Frankenstein’s arrival to Transylvania through humor. When Frederick meets Marty Feldman’s Igor and later Teri Garr’s Inga, while we’re laughing, a camaraderie is built between them. The first time we meet Inga, she’s literally rolling in hay, which after seeing the lead struggle to feel any sense of intimacy with his fiancée, is now getting a visual sign that a person “on his level” is around. Wilder’s often loud and unsteady portrayal could very well be how it is because it allows him to act and all but tell us how his character is feeling in a way that makes us laugh. The recurring remark about how Frankenstein’s name is pronounced and how he delivers his line on it marks his evolving level of emotionality around how its mispronunciation affects him. The last time this gag is used, it’s evident how much of a transformation he’s made. When Frederick says, “It [reanimating dead bodies] can work” in an over-the-top vocal, it satisfies ending most scenes on laughs, but it also continues the progressive insanity of the character established at his college, and builds to more of his behavior to come. These outbursts are necessary for understanding and relating to him.
As much goes for his clear sexual frustration, from his poor love life to genitalia references, which create a consistency of a man who needs something to fulfill him. While not much is done with this philosophically, this is a theme that pays off, like writer-director Mel Brooks wanted to paint in a touch of Freud for the presumed sake of giving raunch to those that would enjoy it. (“Mommy!”) Wilder allows this added depth to outline his scenes on occasion, notably when he gives someone love eyes before a ground-breaking narrative shift, like in two ways he is attempting to reach a “climax”. He later strangles Igor, who contorts like a chicken, as if he’s choking it. His making a person in the first place suggests a desire to be a father, if not through nookie than through science, what he knows. Several notes, like the ending, parallel his wins in general with the wins of his love life, though such a reading doesn’t always hold up. Notably, after apparently reaching sexual satisfaction, he almost immediately pursues more. Why would he, of all times now, be so antsy when this should be when he’s most relieved? The real lark of this tangent is to imply that the novel Frankenstein, also bad with women, was sexually frustrated, allowing both works to share space as a comedic angle of a story that should play straight on paper.
Riding the high established by the semi-realistic characters blended with the horror-laden shadows and clinical discussions of macabre scientific jargon that would prove thematic for what is to come, we get a lot of great jokes. Frederick embraces his fiancée only to get her hair in his mouth, Igor’s lack of clarity for the audience as to whether he is actually particular about his name’s pronunciation or wants to pick on Frederick with plausible deniability, Feldman’s gag with Frederick’s luggage, “What knockers”, “SEDAGIVE”, as well as the rest of the electric chemistry between Wilder, Feldman, and Garr in general but especially during the aforementioned scene, and Feldman’s earnest delivery without the inflections he had given his character when talking about his father. When boiled down, those and many more start with something spooky or expected from a horror, before surprise comedy. The last scene mentioned has the bonus of focusing on the face of Igor, who looks like a man born to be a lab assistant in a chiller thriller. Unexpectedly, he’s a generally charming and affable spirit.
By placing so much of the story in tone of the 30s classics and the following style of “hyper realism”, often a delicate tightrope is walked by screenwriters Brooks and Wilder to keep the humor in tone and in pace, which if managed makes for a masterpiece and if not, a yank from the good graces of the hypnotic draw of the movie. Here, Brooks cheats by sometimes fumbling, but plugging in enough laughs, sometimes cheap ones, that you don’t mind so much. Ironically, less careful parodies can get away with not following their own rulebook, as they aren’t trying to be letter-perfect, the director’s color takedown of Dracula being the optimal example.
A curious instance of when the nature of the film fails is a moment right after when Frederick and Inga navigate a bookshelf with a candle. After the candle has been played with and the scene has been squeezed of its comedic potential, you might notice Frederick then correctly resolves the conflict of the bookshelf by properly adjusting the candle before moving on. This resolution isn’t a comedic triumph or failure, and it isn’t one of the more serious scenes that maintain the spirit of the genre. It’s not even catharsis. It’s just something that has to happen so we can move on, which isn’t closing the feeling of the sequence, where anything that can be misunderstood and funny is. It’s a stray beat that is not of a place with a movie that has typically resolved scenes by letting you take in the gags or atmosphere before a well-timed cut or where the heroes can’t help but bungle just about anything that would either help them or not be comedic. Now, they are only going for the actual storyline. This cumber shows up throughout the rest of the runtime, out-of-character or out-of-style blips seemingly present because otherwise these absolutely bumbling characters couldn’t move along, which at least isn’t entirely true as with the candle scene as an example, with some minor restructuring the gag could have properly closed with the duo where they needed to be, the other side of the bookshelf.
When Frederick curses in front of his class or a door says to slip brains in through a slot, they break the illusion of normalcy. We might expect a professor to be indignant at getting his name wrong or a man to question how a name is pronounced, but something like the cursing tells you that this is a comedy of the 1970s. We haven’t earned that making sense. While this movie is about giving life to a mal-adapted cadaver, that is something we built to, not thrown in from the side. By contrast, the nosy and inquisitive student asking about and explaining to the audience Frederick’s grandfather is not talking like a real person either. As a story about Frederick Frankenstein and his erratic self-obsession, from a world of accepting the weird, it’s only cinematic excess, not unlike the scream queens of old, that dialogue like that would revolve around him, make him the main focus. It’s a clue for how this world appears to be merely waiting for the return of another mad Frankenstein.
As soon as Frederick dismisses the notion of ever becoming involved in his grandfather’s work, the audience knows something will sway him. This evolution starts well enough, with him almost immediately given a reason to go to his granddad’s castle. Frederick later questions that its library has only “general” books, instead of ones more peculiar. Hinted at here is his desire to know more about his old experiments that the lead dismissed at his lecture. Once he’s in bed screaming over his destiny, we’re being whacked on the head with this plot development instead of matching the tone of what’s come before, where you almost don’t realize the story is moving due to it oven-baked in the comedy and atmosphere. While understandable to a point, the stars are so adept at sitting around and talking that you can almost imagine an alternate version of events where the entire plot is them existing in this space of spooky conversation with no real narrative. Young Clerks. They’re usually so talented that they can make the most of pauses. When Frederick mentions Igor’s hump, only to receive in response, “What hump?”, there’s a relatively long pause with Frederick shuffling himself like he’s trying to think of something to say before blurting out “Let’s go.” With every little pause where you can focus on someone’s face, we’re subconsciously reminded that there is a story with people who have wants, not solely here to be laugh-dispensers. The “Some way to give you a little peace” line is another absolute favorite. Not only does Wilder turn in a wonderful facial expression, but the following slide transition employs a classic cinema convention to imply a gap of time, creating a specific implication of what happened during the gap.
A minor, though admittedly understandable, tragedy is the minimal role of Cloris Leachman as Frau Blücher. Nay, her underuse doesn’t appear forced or like a vendetta against Leachman. The story also doesn’t suffer as is. The problem is merely that you’re left wanting more due to how she embodies more than any other the blend of comedy, which through her persona is minimal and well-timed enough to fit in the pocket of the other characters (“Ovaltine?”), with horror. Her angular face is expressive of the morbid cinematography at every moment. Her treatment of the monster is silly due to the context of how everyone, including her, has been acting – mostly the comic misunderstanding role – and the expectation that a joke will imminently occur. She’s regardless genuinely dramatic and heartfelt at the same time, sneaking in through the back door sympathy for her and the monster, as well as worldbuilding otherwise. For her acting to be more tongue-in-cheek or in a film not embedded in humor would displace its balance and lean too far in one direction.
One of the finest scenes of the picture is when she responds to numerous of Frederick’s questions with a “Yes!” The sequence is a bit more overt in giving us plot information, though features an electric balance between Wilder and Leachman that, like the violin played, captures in a bottleneck the frightening mood. The exaggerated elements don’t feel quite real, but due to the progressive buildup of tension, are essentially telling us what we need to know about how dramatic everything is to them without making it explicit. The scene is so pacey that it is frankly a little disappointing that the one before wasn’t more carefully staged to slightly increase the tension, with a payoff that climaxes the action. As is, the monster in practice stumbles into the plot and we redirect to that, instead of it naturally emerging from the musically fierce back and forth. That’s understandable enough, as Leachman is so good it’s hard for what comes next to top her. While perhaps there was no room for more of her scenes, which due to the need for structure could very well be, her comparative absence nonetheless is a rare occurrence of wanting more from the laughs. Her apparent inspiration of Una O’Connor was never very prominent in these movies, so form limits Frau Blücher nay more than bending it by accident.
Peter Boyle is another highlight, chiefly due to the wonderful facial expressions he bestows the monster. Like Igor, he from the jump has comparatively normal reactions. Frankenstein is “normal” by the standards of those with long egos and short tempers, Inga is normal for women who accept life as it comes, but we see some of the best visual contrast when an over seven-foot stitched-up creature seems weirded out by the little things. Boyle is able to take on the monster for pure gut-punches, as well as the emotional beats, such as when he is drawn to the violin tune. The monster has a lot to do in the original book and Karloff films, so it once more is a missed opportunity that more scenes of him weren’t included. This is less forgivable than with other characters, as there are many efforts to satirize specific beats of the originals; yet, we don’t satirize the complexity of the beast, one of the most important? Especially as sometimes the film can falter when bridging disparate plot points together, Boyle’s face or presence can be dropped in basically anywhere it could help and a laugh is guaranteed; all the better if it’s a diegesis-moving scene stemming from Mary Shelley’s pen.
SPOILERS
Despite the movie including gags where they aren’t needed, such as in-between Frederick finding a body and getting it back to his lab, it occasionally misses obvious opportunities for jokes when they would help bridge a gap between segments. I was expecting the man hammering the cross into the ground to accidentally hit the hand of the person holding it in place. The sequence of them doing it is fairly long, so why not give it some payoff? When Igor drops the desired brain on the ground, he grabs a second. The scene closes with a dramatic music cue focused on the “abnormal” sign. This is very similar to 1931’s Frankenstein, where Igor’s equivalent does the same thing. Thus, for that episode, we’re not parodying the movie, merely detailing the exact development. Seeing as there was a third brain in the row that Igor took from, why didn’t he drop the second as well before then going for the third? What if he dropped a second or third brain on some others, making a huge mess? Something to be different.
The next scene breaks from the previous structure as well by being essentially serious, but this time it works wonderfully. Brooks’ directing skills are put to the test as Frederick is lifted up to the roof with his creature. Originally shot from a low angle, we feel the lead go to the next stage of his life as he approaches greatness. Wide shots and shadows are deliberately lingered on, allowing the darkness and lab equipment to take notice around him, his destiny and what is frightening about it not illustrated through words but visuals. As a “big” moment in the waiting for most of the previous runtime, it is only fitting that it would be so glorious. With the opening, which was a bedding for the comedy to play against, this scene draws a throughline through the actual character and story development, which has been present all the way. While effective as the culmination of so much, the seriousness is essentially a giant setup for the jokes to follow. Frankenstein feels on top of the world, but his unstable behavior comes to the surface when it seems he’s failed, which is played for laughs.
Later, once the monster is set free and rudely interrupts Leachman’s finest hour for Blücher, naysayed by Frankenstein and co, over just a few seconds the monster escapes in a moment possibly intended as dramatic, a second later Frankenstein says he’s gone and that he made a horrible mistake as he could kill someone. On the face of it, this exchange is really odd due to suddenly being so quick instead of taking its time, as if someone wanted to transition from the Leachman scene to the monster out on the town as soon as possible. Frankenstein talks about the monster as if he has completely vanished, when based on how recently he left the frame, the lead would still be able to see the monster. His worrying about him hurting people comes across as a possible attempt at character development or to create some tension for what is to come, but it doesn’t land as “serious setup” due to how rushed it all is, nothing able to breathe. Like a living version of the end of the candle interlude, the apparent point is to move on rather than following what might naturally have happened with the characters, namely the monster being dramatically allowed to leave against the wishes of a helpless Frederick.
If you were to look at this whole segment as a parody of when dramas have to force themselves along unnaturally, then it’s reasonably funny. Frankenstein is even going a little nutty again, as has been his trademark. However, the whole concatenation screams of a missed opportunity to be longer and funnier. Afterwards are two guffawable interludes of Frankenstein with a girl, then a blind man. If familiar with the source material, they are successes as simple parody, but as part of this story come off as kicking stones. In the book, once the creature escapes, he learns to read and saves the girl. In the 1931 film, this is where he kills her. Now, he isn’t doing anything. Considering the bawdiness of some jokes, imagine if he had learned to read off a porno mag? Perhaps one with a woman donning something similar to the “Bride of Frankenstein” hair? That would even be foreshadowing for the end. While he is shown, and possibly understands, that fire isn’t scary, that doesn’t stick. Next encounter he’s still as afraid as ever. The monster is recaptured and we’re at the same point as when he was originally locked up.
The weaselly Frankenstein for whatever reason decides that the way to help the monster is to show that he is loved, at the potential cost of his own life. Frankenstein is initially horrified despite the other not doing anything before shifting and getting up close to tell him that he’s handsome and good, though feared. While we never figured out what Frankenstein’s plan was with the creature after realizing how dangerous he was, but before he was set free, based on the ending it appears it was to “fix” his brain. Why would he want to sacrifice his own self-preservation when we’ve not before had a hint of that being in character or sensible? What makes him think that love would do anything? This would all make more sense if, let’s say, he saw the monster near a child and decided to distract him by convincing him to walk away from the child, but thus towards him. As is, he has him chained up in his castle. What more could he want? Sedate him, do your surgery, and roll credits. Worse yet is how the monster is treated. The 30s gave him such an excellent presence, making him both a threat and a complex character. Now, out of what could be pure randomness, he cares about his appearance in the same way as any insecure guy, and more damningly is easily convinced by Frankenstein obviously saying anything he can think of to calm him. Once created, he literally looked weirded out with the lead, yet now he is easily tricked so we can segue to the next big sequence.
As funny as the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” scene is, its placement immediately after tensions are diffused from literally every character makes the jump to sudden chaos bizarrely forced. Why have the fears of the townspeople dispelled only for them to be as riled up as ever? The abruptness is solid absurdity, but we could have had our cake and eaten it too by the cause of the issue being funny. A stage light breaking is something that would be at home in a drama about a monster agitated by fire. Seeing as during the scene with the little girl we learned the townsfolk are afraid of the monster, it would pace well for the blind man segment to be followed with maybe a failed recapturing by Frankenstein and co before being grabbed and locked up by the coppers. That all said, the Ritz scene would have a place elsewhere.
Another startling plot “jump” occurs after the monster escapes captivity. He returns to Frankenstein’s castle, kidnaps his wife, and has sex with her; seemingly so we can get to the gag of her being impressed by his endowment and them marrying. In the original novel, the monster is wronged by Frankenstein and smart enough to comprehend it. He hence decides to go after his bride (in a non-sexual way). Here, the monster never appears offended by his creator, or to have any other reason to want to cause trouble for either of them. While there’s no need to stay loyal to any iteration of this tale, why so sloppily insert this tangent in? Similarly, a character like the one-armed man and his game of darts, while not creating a plot hole, would lead you to question why they’re here if you weren’t aware of the source material. At least there he adds texture and more laughs. Sometimes there is an attempt to give explanations for certain decisions. When Igor drops a brain on the floor, that could be for the sake of being, but we learned that he is already startled through comic misunderstandings, so the eventual drop makes sense literally and tonally. Why explain certain choices but not others?
As great as Madeline Kahn can be, her character appears to only be here for just a few moments, which as a consequence means there needs to be some setup for her and a personality for her to play, but neither are integrated in a way that feels natural. When her “Elizabeth” is saying goodbye to Frederick in the beginning, they lay on thick how much they love each other, with it being not funny enough to distract from the point that we’re now spoiled that they won’t last together. In a film of subversions, why include a scene that so apparently will play against the point their relationship fails? Elizabeth not wanting to be touched similarly leaves no doubt that her heart isn’t with Frederick and someone eventually will “touch” her. Her dodging Frederick’s blown kiss still ends the scene on a highlight. Elizabeth following is absent for the rest of the runtime until the last twenty minutes, causing her reappearance to feel too sudden relative to her prominence in the end. Once back, much of her humor revolves around a stereotype of a woman being prudish, but truly wanting to be dominated. Seeing as this movie is a parody of outdated tropes, it makes sense that stereotypes are dusted off for display, but no tomatoes are thrown at this one. In fact, there’s an especially poorly aged scene of Elizabeth loosening up by getting raped by the monster. Rape in comedy is notoriously difficult to pull off, and often creates a dampened vibe for the uplifting scenes afterwards.
As a character, Elizabeth is all about her presentation and men, that part of her is played as straight as the cinematography. Considering that Frederick is generally sympathetic and “loses” in his interactions with her, there is a debatable but shameful implication that a mark of the monster’s growth from dumb to sophisticated is he learns to get a woman who irritates the men to domesticate or “put out”, like that’s what she is supposed to do. That would also make sense as it comedically adds to Frederick Frankenstein’s sexual struggles, where even someone close to him would “take” his girl. This also appears to parody a specific scene in the novel, where he takes his wife by killing her. One of the final jokes is of her annoying her husband by talking too much at a high pitch, like ball and chain marriages weren’t well and deeply run dry in comedy by the end of the 50s. At least it is genuinely funny when Elizabeth sings while being penetrated, which like a musical, expresses emotions through song. Or now that the monster is accepted by society, he’s living an exceptionally plain and old-fashioned existence while still being a seven-foot science experiment with visible stitches. However, both could remain without the worst of Elizabeth’s writing. Kahn is admirable in the effort, but she stands out as a weak link due to the material.
Yet another “jump” comes when after the scatterbrained Frederick didn’t show certainty in how to help his creation or if he even wanted to help him, once more risks his life for him due to finding out off-screen how to help him. His recent sexual escapade with Inga doesn’t color this in any way, namely if that gave him mental clarity. During the surgery itself, it’s specified that the timing of the procedure is vitally important. When it’s disturbed, no one is ultimately worse for wear, as if that line were a leftover from an earlier draft. Regardless, the climax is another brilliant strike of wit. The monster so eloquently resolving a conflict of brash minds with calm de-escalation is both logically sensible and worthy of a riot in the cinema due to how straight it’s played. As a minor complaint, the monster’s philosophizing stands in stark contrast to a movie that delved very little into philosophy. That, along with him saying he wanted to inspire fear in people due to his loneliness, doesn’t reflect this plot at all. He didn’t hurt anyone, not the blind man that accidentally injured him, the audience that yelled at him, or the little girl who did nothing. This does reflect the novel, which leads to the quandary of whether this adaptation was originally much closer to the novel before the cruelty and vengefulness at its heart was scrubbed too finely out? The idea of challenging the cynicism of the book with a kooky scientist half-heartedly proposing love as a solution or sex filling the role of death makes a lot more sense in a more accurate adaptation.
The conflict between the monster and the townspeople is also resolved a little too well. There’s an obvious companion to this dialogue that would emphasize his newfound humanity, be more expressive, and not be so short. It’s a sign of the future of the monster… the musical number! As the finale, it would be unexpected but thematically resonate for how to end a story about finding identity partially through music that it could kill for viewers and uptight critics like me. All you would need to do is remove the downbeat ending and possibly the monster’s poor pronunciation, though something like an uncharacteristically expressive voice like Jim Nabors’s could be much funnier.
The ending, where certain characters get married and apparently live a normal domestic life, is highly inaccurate to the book and famous film. It’s actually the complete opposite of the book, where Frankenstein was completely alone. Due to the number of scenes from Brooks’ effort that don’t make much sense on their own but do as a parody of those texts, it’s curious why he would want to be different; though removing that it’s perfectly strong for this film. We’re doing a throwback to the past and there’s been occasional references to sex in one way or another. What did those old movies do? The leads got married. What is the way to resolve the spiritual tension of sexually frustrated men? They apparently get to have women that are comfortable sleeping with them. Frankenstein progressively got nuttier and nuttier? Now in a comic fashion, he is literally part monster. The only way to make it better is to end the proper story on Frederick’s crazed eyes, with Inga’s singing with possible accompaniment of the final shot of Igor and the violin tune over the credits. Another “outrageous” idea is if other characters came back around and were at least funny, or at most married. Frankenstein’s students could pair up, the one-eyed man, the blind man, and the cop could do something. Frankenstein’s castle has six people, three men and three women. Why not give Igor to, well… you know.
OVERVIEW
While there are a few notably poor story development decisions, the worst you can say about Young Frankenstein is that it is a collection of quality gags. The famous 1931 version of the same story was seventy minutes, while by 1974 it’s one hundred and five. That extra runtime is essentially devoted to a collection of laughs, but regardless, laughs which distract from the scenes of really tightly structured parody. While emblematic of a story about loneliness and how that can ruin you being overhauled to be a story about the joy and misery of sex, these two main desires of the film are in conflict with each other, and as such you aren’t quite shocked into a trance of pure madness as might have been intended, but it’s hard to stomach the thought of much being cut out.
Also, c’mon, why no rule of three for the three-note sting of the castle? We literally ended the film with the castle anyway.
In my recent essay on James Bond’s first outing, Dr. No, there was a lengthy section where I suggested how I would fix the film. It didn’t fit with the ‘review’ nature of the write-up as a whole, so I pulled it out and made it its own article. The review is still considered a pre-requisite, so you know where my perspective is coming from and what certain elements are referencing. There are ample spoilers.
Not to be jaded by the expectations of modern day cinema where ample installments of a series can be picked up on DVD and rewatched, leading to the semi-serialized Daniel Craig era of James Bond, the series’ first effort Dr. No could still have easily been a blend of escapist lighthearted espionage, the good grace of quality storytelling, and a bit of darkness to keep the tone afloat and be in keeping with the source material. A positive and a negative for Sean Connery’s performance is that so much is left to the imagination. The movie doesn’t seem to have anything it wants to say about him, which does, in fact, tell us something. Such an element makes more sense if this is the beginning of an unfolding series, but not so much as a self-contained drama. Whether as part of a series or a one-off, the film could certainly be improved while keeping many of the same elements.
What if at the start, Bond is struggling from some girl trouble with Sylvia and maybe the events of a novel-accurate adaptation of Casino Royale? Because of his lifestyle and those other issues, like not feeling in control of himself and will eventually make a mistake, the character has a mild implied suicidal streak that gives way to him wanting more dangerous missions. In the original film, Bond is treated as mysterious for no apparent reason. After he is introduced, we make no bones about seeing him all the time and the unfolding narrative from his perspective, so why start off covering everyone except him? Now, the mysteriousness could signal his reclusiveness. He’d often be seen from the view of other characters, notably his girlfriend…
Based on the plot divergence given to Sylvia, it would only make sense that she would be a more prominent fixture in Bond’s life. Especially seeing as she looks a little bit like Honey, they could be the same person. Their added history would create more tension when Bond is trying to keep her safe. A similar role as theirs is filled by Moneypenny, being someone for Bond to flirt up. She could arguably be the same person as well. She’d be a secretary at MI6 because her father would be involved, the agent murdered in the beginning. If not to find Bond or find seashells, she’d be there for revenge or at least to try to get some confirmation of what happened. Seeing as Honey’s father was also killed by Dr. No, you could almost imagine these ideas used to be linked. She gives Bond lip for sleeping around with other women or keeping her away from this particular case when it’s so personal to her. Bond could get with the photographer girl to give him a higher “count” and romance her into giving up information.
For Dr. No, one idea is for him to only fail at killing James because he is exceptionally clever. Eventually, No stops certain assassination plans once Bond uses those experiences to learn about No or the overall case. It would take longer for the lead to find his hideout once on the island, with a lot of time hiding out and working out what to do. He only makes it in because some other agent previously died finding a particular entrance or Bond tricked an uninformed ally of No. The logic could be that if captured, it’s better for his men to know nothing rather than to pretend they know nothing. An alternative idea is for No to invite or kidnap Bond, so there’s no way anyone else could find out about the proceedings. A way of connecting both strands is for Dent to be promised some sort of reward from Dr. No if he kills Bond. When he ultimately dies, No decides to see if Bond can fill the role initially intended for Dent.
Once the hero and villain are face to face, No paints himself as merely misunderstood and not so bad, as well as appealing to James’ vulnerable side, thinking that certain issues were caused by MI6 and their rules, building off of the line of him saying Bond “appreciates what he’s done” and they’re not so different. Bond would already be self-critical to the point of seeing his weaknesses as a liability, or at least that’s what he would say. He would agree to join with the intention of destroying SPECTRE from the inside, only to spoil his plan by accident, resulting in him having to improvise.
Dr. No needs information, like what else MI6 will do to stop him or how to get a certain MacGuffin related to nuclear science, that Bond won’t give to explain why he doesn’t instantly kill the lead. There’s a threat that if our hero tries to escape or stop his plans, Honey/Sylvia/Moneypenny will be killed, who is demonstrated to be trapped as she is in the film. Bond notices certain characteristics about the room, revealing generally where it is before himself being tortured. There is a definite style and appeal to seeing him so battered and beaten near the end. Connery especially looks so cool when his collected character is so worn down because we now have a visual reference of what he will hopefully recover from. The story doesn’t earn such images due to how easy Bond has had it, even if the dank and vibrant filming style is nice to look at. What if we saw more of what caused that battered look, and now he seems a little scared of people he can hear catching him?
Bond takes a risk by convincing members suicidally obedient to Dr. No or generally unaware of what’s going on to help him, or at least gets the former to give their lives for what they incorrectly think is for their ultimate goal. He might even bribe certain people who are only there in the first place for money. Bond could find out someone is going to tell No what’s going on, so Bond kills them in a moment of moral grayness. If the “three blind men” were there, through their trickery they could almost prove a foil to Bond. Bond has others set his plan in motion and goes to fulfill his time-sensitive role, only for Dr. No to catch him. Both attempt to talk things out in order to get what they want, each showing some sign of weakness deliberately to appeal to the other, with the villain inadvertently suggesting his own overconfidence. When No concludes that there is no point in doing so and orders Bond be killed, Bond recalls him saying that his hands were replaced with metal ones because of a failed experiment. Bond manipulates No’s pride by saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing if he would make such a costly mistake and challenges him to a fight, saying that because of his apparent intelligence and strength, there is nothing to lose from his perspective.
During the duel, Bond is tired and thinks he will lose, but tries regardless and has to rely on something, like a ladder he earlier thought wouldn’t sustain him. No’s recklessness could cause the ladder to break, resulting in an injury. Bond escapes, and the whole building starts to go up in flames after he finishes his plan, still pushing people out of the way but in a less comedic way. Next is rescuing his girl and clothing, which includes the gun given by M. As he’s leaving, he spots Dr. No and points his gun at him, only for Bond to say he doesn’t need to kill him. He throws it to the fire or offers it to No, saying if he doesn’t want to burn to death, he can shoot himself. Once the leads are on a boat going home, Bond reflects how when Quarrel was initially hostile to him, he was right to be and should have remained so, as then he might be alive. His girl is happy that he is finally showing a little emotion and reminds him that at least she only survived because of him. Bond then lets out a smile, which could signal any number of things. His lack of emotionality as a whole would represent his general inability to comprehend the tragedy he was involved in.
As very subtle foreshadowing for later developments if this became a series, Sylvia Trench or Moneypenny, or both if they were merged, are disdainful of Bond initiating romance with them without him committing to or against them. If Bond is properly dating one or both of them, they would probably be mad he constantly cheats on them, or in my version of Dr. No, seemingly took an exceedingly high-risk gamble that could have resulted in them being killed. They might break up with Bond, citing how dangerous his lifestyle is and how often they are grouped into that danger. Moneypenny would then transfer elsewhere so she won’t have to see Bond, while still looking out for him when problems arise, because she doesn’t want him getting in too much trouble?
This section of the essay was originally right before the “Overview” section.
When it comes to long-running franchises’ early outings, it’s always a novelty worthy of a raised brow to see what hasn’t fallen into place. Dracula doesn’t have a score or quite the same “soul of wit”, The Terminator features ol’ Hercules as the villain, and Clerks holds off on toilet humor until the sequels and focuses on the search for meaning of someone with (a little) more than sex and comic books on their mind. Come to 1962 and James Bond kicks off like it knows it will be something to behold. Someone who knows the tropes would think, “Of course the film is in love with its own score, Bond can’t keep his hand off the ladies, and certain criminals have a slavish desperation to die at the hands of our patriotic British hero.” Someone treating this on its own, with no expectation of success or sequels, would be left wondering why the storyline sidelines itself for the sake of spectacle, often making any actual narrative feel irrelevant. Even the title is essentially a placeholder, referring to something that does not affect who Bond is or what he does. The meat of this story is about seeing how Bond will apply his personality and skills to the case, not the case itself. It could be argued a title like 007 would be more sensible than one named after a character with so little screen time. The only line against it is that then couldn’t every movie in the series be called that? That doesn’t invalidate the question, who is Dr. No? How does his disposition or goals touch on what we’re seeing? How does this personify beyond what plenty of villains want and do, to take a little power and kill a few people?
The sense of wasted potential permeates the story, from the simplistic use of side characters, plot points that lead at best off a cliff (literally), and crucially the depiction of the man himself. Even ignoring that the novel version of Bond is far more troubled than the cinema portrayal, his abilities and vices are skin-deep. Any real man, including an open polygamist, would struggle to balance flirting with or bedding four women over the course of a few days, not including the spider; let alone four women of the much more Conservative early 60s. Consider that the filmmakers had to push to get such a brazen depiction of sex onto the silver screen. Bond doesn’t sweat this dynamic he has with women, as if the intention is for him not to be realistic. It doesn’t need to be, but why not embrace that angle of the story? Include more humor or have it move the plot in some ways if it’s going to be here. Scenes like Bond trying to relax to a drink or “Bond girl” Honey Ryder, played by Ursula Andress, talking about her father’s apparent death seem like they want to tap into the emotions of the audience and the characters in a way foreign to all the shots of Bond acting like a head honcho, killing a man by putting his hand over his mouth for two seconds or projecting authority over women.
If you made a venn diagram of what the commonalities would be between a more serious take of the film vs a lighthearted one, while you wouldn’t have Honey mostly being a damsel or Bond hitting his way out of far too many situations, you could have him simply be stoic and brave while loosening up just enough to be a little vulnerable or a little silly. It in turn makes perfect sense that that is how Sean Connery plays him. When at his most defeated, Bond doesn’t allow such stress to show on his face or body language. It’s like he is dead focused on progressing the story. When he is on top, you can imagine he’s simply bored or questioning why someone would be foolish enough to challenge him. There are so many bit attempts by this or that mobster to kill him that they don’t affect him or the audience, like it’s at best filler or worse, a game to see how long it takes the audience to treat it as a drinking game. Bond might have been one or two more attempts away from openly laughing at these drones. “Hey buddy, how did you think this would go? You’ve seen this movie, right?” Some have read into these traits as him being jaded, but as is, Connery plays him as an audience avatar or like he’s unsure of how to interpret the blend of serious and stupid.
Regardless, in less critical ways, Bond does lose. We get a gloriously 60s scene where a man he’s interrogating is allowed a smoke break, ultimately creating a slight problem for our hero. He is told to replace his gun by his ball-busting boss M, who strings out a true novelty of Bond not seeming to have absolute control. Finally there are a few scenes, like the coffee one, where Bond could have been easily killed. He got in that particular scrape because of his hubris, too. He was simply lucky that no one wanted him dead, or a mistake was made, at the occasional moment he had to be vulnerable. These lead to an interesting question. How does the film square Bond as a jovial fantasy with his “failings”? The answer is it doesn’t. We move on like someone is embarrassed by them. The earliest mentioned scene is of Bond’s gun, where M quickly moves the discussion to Bond’s new gun. If Bond had been the one to move from the point, it might be more evident that he “lost” here, though he still argued for himself and was forced to bow to M. During the cigarette scene, Bond has a look of “I’m a bloody idiot” on his face. He never says anything for the remaining seconds of the scene, then in the next one, he cracks a joke with the “I’m hot stuff” attitude. The reason he didn’t initially say anything was possibly because anything he might have said would draw attention to his cockup and/or feel unnatural with what’s going on. It’s not like Bond can pretend the situation is not what it is.
One fascinating tidbit reveals some level of vulnerability where it would not be expected. After first flirting with secretary Moneypenny, then learning about his mission and gun replacement, Bond appears to want to flirt with her again, only for M to discourage this. Bond then accidentally begins to leave with a box he doesn’t need, returns it, then gives Moneypenny this awkward little smile and arm movement. It’s like he feels embarrassed and thus wants to leave. This simple gesture of accidentally taking a box after getting criticized by his boss at least momentarily zapped Bond of his cool. M’s voice coming in to confirm he knows they flirt suggests he’s this uncomfortable, constant presence. Bond might challenge him by flirting and whatever he gets up to outside of the building, but this voice that sees the worst in him will occasionally persist and leave the lead proverbially naked. Based on the nature of the scene, so easy to cut out, maybe this was just a flub from Connery? Regardless, it hints at a way of opening up the lead character without critically knocking him down or making him lame to the audience, as it’s so easy to overlook. Due to how uncomplicated he appears in the picture, this “flub” is nearly needed.
For the most part, Bond keeps the stiff upper lip as if he wants to look professional for the job. When he cracks jokes, they don’t blend very well with the more serious moments. It’s as if his job encourages him to push down a more comedic side, with a rare character moment when shown relaxing with a drink for a moment before bed hinting at the toll this takes on him. He lets loose in a way atypical for him, like he’s happy to indulge in a pleasure in a more relaxed situation when there’s no work. When engaging in his other favorite activity of bedding beautiful women, he seems to understand that work is still happening. It’s not hard to believe that Bond would think about what he has to do next while in the act, implied by when he has to leave for a mission immediately but first enjoys his girlfriend hurriedly. It’s funny to think that he uses this to help him pretend he’s still working in a way, with the bonus of it encouraging his current activity not to end up unfortunately short. Connery plays this work-life balance like James doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s thinking. That’s all well and good, but could you sometimes make an exception for the audience?
The intro consists of some delightful 60s cheese, restrained to just a few minutes instead of reaching 60s Casino Royale or O.K. Connery levels. It may as well be a trailer for the film to follow, summarizing the lighthearted take on pulpy brutality at the heart of the challenge of making Bond work. You can have an excellent use of music, with an offbeat electronic score creating discomfort, about foreshadowing the twist of Bond shooting the poor cameraman. The blood also pushes the morbidity even further, like that is supposed to be part of the novelty when sixty years on there’s a common trope in media of people getting shot without bleeding, as the censors don’t like it. If this is telling us anything, it’s that Bond is a cold-blooded killer, who in a way is shooting the audience itself, innocent people. However, the following story makes him unambiguously “the good guy.” Arguably he isn’t intended to be all that likable, though certainly is more than John Kitzmiller’s aggressive take on Quarrel, Bernard Lee’s hard-ass M, and of course the main villain brought to life by Joseph Wiseman in dated yellowface.
Dr. No is covered in broad strokes; we learn what he wants and some idea of how he feels, and little more. An opportunity was missed to intensify the irony of his nature or create some comparison with Bond, his organization MI6, or for the sake of this storyline, nuclear science and rocket tests. MI6 may very well engage in some level of nuclear tomfoolery, so what if something they were working on went astray, and we ultimately discovered an absolute genius of the craft must have manipulated their material somehow? That would add up, considering it seems that any attempts to hide Bond’s presence fail, as if Dr. No had a tracking chip on him. It’s easy to think he could infiltrate MI6 if he wanted, when he has so many of his people roaming around.
Bond could and should act a little bit differently when he’s about to kill someone, like he’s showing a side of himself he would never want to be seen by someone who will go on to live. The ideal choice for this is a sense of sadism, as if he enjoys what he’s doing. That would make sense, considering he makes such cavalier jokes about people getting killed trying to stop him. When Dr. No thought he would be good for SPECTRE, such proclivities could be what he was referring to, like some unconscious sign is coming to light. That character trait would have tremendous potential for a series that looks at the lead’s dark side closer. Demonstrating an understanding of the lead character that even the audience might not have alone would be far more menacing than his many muscleless attempts to kill Bond and his sinister hands, which are only disfigured because of his own error. It becomes comical how often the plot swerves off for a little tangent of someone wanting to nip Bond before returning to the same point it was at before. Bond himself doesn’t seem affected by it. Based on how often these elements go together, maybe almost getting killed just makes him horny to the point he has to get it out of his system?
Bond lets his guard down with women a bit more than men. He holds a dominating, masculine demeanor, but clearly is making an effort to be more charming than normal, as if trying to appeal to women who want to be with a masculine man. There are two main ways to interpret this. The better one is that the “true” him is softer. A feminine presence brings that from down deep naturally. Alternatively, he could be putting on a facade to warm them up enough to want to sleep with him, which would frankly probably not be the most misogynistic thing in the series. At one point, a woman he is with seems to be “spending time” with him so he sticks around long enough for a fix to appear. While she is indirectly trying to kill him and does consent to the deed, it certainly doesn’t hold up to modern standards for Bond to sleep with her when he understands the nature of what’s going on.
Many characters and plot points seem to just exist on the periphery, mainly to accentuate particular characteristics about Bond or being exciting. In the famous beginning with Eunice Gayson’s Sylvia Trench, the lead comes off as an almost mischievous but indeed charming figure, having a strong rapport with her. We initially see Trench from more or less Bond’s perspective, like she is an object of his affection. While that is true, she is no more a focus of his than any other woman. As far as we know, Sylvia is who James goes home to after a mission. It is curious that we wouldn’t check in on what she’s up to by the end. Seeing as she and Bond are playing baccarat, maybe they just finished up doing Casino Royale and now Bond needs a new girl. Don’t they know Live and Let Die is the next book?
SPOILERS
The silhouettes of people dancing almost seem designed to offset the violence beforehand, suggesting there will be less violent moments. Presumably, the audience would continue to be confused first by the focus on three blind men, who end up going in a different direction than you’d think solely from their depiction in the opening, another twist. The murders of an MI6 agent and his secretary after the lighter music, which was also after the gun barrel opening, do well to establish the offbeat tone. The opening doesn’t have a traditional theme for this film alone, so you could argue the closest we get is the instrumental dance music or “Three Blind Mice”. The Bond theme plays again as the lead simply walks around an airport. While a slightly villainous person is watching him, that person doesn’t ultimately affect him or the story as a whole. You can imagine the “Bond theme” was the Dr. No theme before getting appropriated by the series for fitting so well.
Certain scenes, like with the cabby, serve the function of telling us that Bond is both intelligent, able to figure out his connections, and strong, able to defeat him in combat easily. Then again, if the cabby decided to try offering one of the deadly smokes to Bond, instead of taking it himself, Bond might not have suspected anything until it was too late. The scene creates an added mystique around Dr. No and recontextualizes what came before. The cabby might have been told that he would be tortured to death if he doesn’t kill or capture Bond, so his futile desperation to fight him is so he doesn’t have to die. The creepy effect is dampened, as based on how Bond is at his most capable, you’d think he would have noticed the strange way he was handling the cigarette and taken it away from the man. He also seems to have a tough time with Quarrel and his friend Felix, who might have given James some trouble if they weren’t on his side. It’s funny seeing James, Felix, and Quarrel smile like friends just after they were all fighting for no reason. The purpose of this was probably to give Bond another fight scene, with no concern for how it makes the lead look, though it almost seems like a parody of how these dominant male personalities are portrayed, often taking excuses to exert themselves.
It seems Dr. No didn’t know Professor Dent was coming to see him, so why would he just have a spider on hand for Dent to use to try to get Bond? Does the spider sit in an essentially empty room all day, being wheeled out on occasion as a backup plan during assassination attempts? Once the spider reaches Bond, he is powerless to stop them if they did decide to bite, only getting lucky that they don’t. We know Dr. No knows where Bond is staying. Can’t someone hide in a closet and shoot him when he arrives? At least something like Bond’s love life or superfluous interactions with characters like Sylvia add to the tone of the film. This simply feels like someone needed the runtime a few minutes longer and one more death. The effect makes Dr. No look even more incompetent, unable to properly train his spider-assassins. The sound effect when the spider is (easily) dispatched is an infamous moment, almost making you wonder if the scene was bad on purpose, like we were supposed to be laughing.
As if to insult the God of pacing, in minimal time Bond is easily besting another painfully easy and simple attempt on his life. At this point, the real issue here comes out: Dr. No’s functional plan and purpose in the story is to keep trying to kill Bond in interchangeable ways, which is about the easiest way of creating drama and thrills. Considering the attractive way such scenes are filmed, you can about give them a pass as quick and dirty entertainment, though repeated to such a degree, it is a chore. It is ironic that soon after, we get an excellent scene of the same thing.
One of the rightfully most loved segments of the movie is Bond’s confrontation with Professor Dent. Bond shows why he gets to do what he does, having made deductions based on clues and having out-thought everyone involved while still getting more facts and sex. We get hints at his more ruthless edge without jokes or theatrical titillation, using the lack of music to make the scene so uncomfortable and reduce Dent to another body. While he isn’t mentioned again, that works here. It’s clear that Bond sees him as just another fool getting in over his head, so he treats him like that. He thought he was clever, but simply not paying attention to the number of bullets he fired proves that not everyone can be on James Bond’s level. He made himself a hazard, so it’s only business for James to use his license to kill, which subconsciously is more horrifying than if Dent had died in a way that gave him some honor or dignity. However, not every death can mean something.
We get a classic scene of male power fantasy blended with 60sisms when Bond kills a man by putting his hand over his mouth for about one second, we see Honey look shocked, dramatic music plays, and then the poor fellow is dead. Honey challenges the necessity of this, but Bond just says he had to for no apparent reason, and this doesn’t come up again. It’s hard not to laugh at the notion that this was not only supposed to convey a killing, but the necessity of it. If the woman on the screen won’t challenge this, the woman writing this review will. What was stopping them from continuing to hide under the water as they were doing? Why did he need to kill him? Seeing as he’s a tough man, often being very demanding by the final act, it seems we’re all supposed to accept his authority.
While it’s commonly known that a lot of media from this time is sexist, there is a broad trend for the franchises that have stood the test of time to have had better attitudes than their contemporaries. Especially for those coming in aware of I Love Lucy, The Carol Burnett Show, That Girl, or many others of the time, Dr. No is laughable. The photographer girl feels like a prop for the boys, being dominated and intimidated in a way that feels less respectful than a man would be. Throughout the whole scene she is squirming and erratic, while the male characters sit stoic and calm. When she attacks one, they laugh at her, like she’s not taken as a threat. A large group of dancing people surrounds the characters. It’s understandable why no outsider got involved, though the appearance of a scene where no one responds to a group of men holding a woman against her will, even if she had ill intentions, is still a bad look. Suppose it’s not all bad, as the men are sometimes hit or killed, possibly as they are viewed as something dangerous enough to have to be rid of.
Honey Ryder is slightly better than the stereotypical “Bond girl”, as she helps Bond avoid being bitten by mosquitoes and is in this situation in the first place because she is making money for herself by finding seashells to sell, thus helping herself financially without needing a man to help. This seems to be a case of what they say about broken clocks, as beyond this, her characterization is woefully underdeveloped. James demands that Honey leave the island. Without much word on how she feels, she decides to do so until she literally can’t. Is she threatened? Is she angry at having to leave? Is she aroused? The lack of any comments implies the mere power and radiant intellect of a good-looking British white man compels her. She later stands by Bond, saying she was frightened, like a woman needs a man by her to be calm. Even outside of her literal traits, her showing up so late in a story where a man romances a bunch of women implies she’s been injected haphazardly for the sake of having more romance.
Her being weak or needing comforting is acceptable on its own, but there should be a counterbalance of qualities that give her the complexity or at least willpower that some male characters get. For his lack of character, Dr. No still talks to Bond as an equal and gives ample backstory. Honey’s past is far more simplified and notably about a man! This treatment starkly contrasts with the book, where Honey, there called Honeychile Rider, has more history and agency discussed. In a moment similar to Bond knowing Dent used up all his bullets, Honeychile knows some crabs won’t hurt her because they dislike human flesh. She then saves James Bond, who might have died without her. The book isn’t perfect on this front, but it is telling that a story from the 1950s was more progressive than its adaptation from the 1960s.
Despite this being a film with serial yellowface and rampant sexism, the most unfortunate aspect is the treatment of Quarrel. Initially, he seemed like a mindful resource who held his own better than most against Bond. After this introduction, he falls completely in line with the lead, lacking much to make him an individual and not just James’ friend. He is killed off looking like a superstitious fool, only to never be mentioned again. On top of that, he trusted James to make the most intelligent decisions and was put in a position where he was vulnerable to the “dragon”. Based on how scared he is, you’d think he wouldn’t have ever let himself get so close to it, though maybe just like the audience, he couldn’t help laughing over how ridiculous it looked. People make fun of the film “adaptation” of Moonraker, but this proves that even from the beginning, the franchise was not afraid of goofy sci-fi nonsense. If you’re of the mind for that, it’s easy to appreciate the creativity of the design, despite it being so out of place in a story which probably wouldn’t think to send its protagonist to space. Quarrel being defeated by something so needlessly silly in appearance, especially when he thought it was a real dragon upon seeing it in person, treats the character with no respect. As he was aware of the dragon, his knowledge could have been used to defeat it, though the best method was probably to let the monster rampage the cutting room floor. Still, the best course of action would be for Bond to insist that Quarrel not go into the heart of the storm and return to safety with Felix, as this isn’t his fight. James Bond is a highly trained secret agent and Quarrel isn’t, so why should he go with him? The unfortunate implication is that a black person can simply be a tool for the success of a white one, and once they’ve served their usefulness, can be quickly killed off. If Quarrel had been around for the climax, he might have been a liability as an extra person Bond has to save. This trope didn’t start with this franchise, but the film again did a worse job compared to the novel, where at the very least Quarrel had more backstory and significance to 007.
James getting beaten and abused is framed like he’s really out of his depth and might be screwed. Bond isn’t just taken to see Dr. No; he is literally dragged. He isn’t just fed, he’s poisoned. He isn’t just imprisoned, but in order to escape he has to go through explosions and burning metal. None of it has the intended effect due to the inability to “pick a lane”. Either Bond’s threats have been quaint and easily overcome to the point of Bond making jokes or he is only making it out due to forced incompetence on someone else’s part. When he’s dragged, he could very well have walked, but the movie makes him drag to stress his apparent defeat. We could have shown him progressively become more exhausted, with something like a baton to the kneecap being the final blow. In turn, he would never truly regain his strength by the credits. Showing all this would be more effortful than the plot we see. How would these impact any given scene? As stated before, the main issue for the purposes of the movie is how weak Bond would come off. Sure, he comes off weak, but at least he looks reasonably cool. Being tired for a decent chunk of the runtime isn’t cool. When instantly he switches from being in charge, to threatened, to trying to outmaneuver the villains, to completely defeated, to enjoying a hot shower, the tone breaks the structure and believability. At least “Sorry, we ain’t got any flowers” is a pretty good line.
Once we meet Dr. No and learn a little about him, we get hit again with the plot convenience he so boldly embodies. Much of the film has been spent on Bond surviving assassination attempts and travelling through peril to find the villain. However, Dr. No has Bond given a warm and loving treatment once he’s there. There is an explanation for this, but it only goes to show that the point of the picture is so focused on fun spectacle that it can’t be bothered to explain any of the ropes used to hold it up. No only is doing what he does to threaten Bond or keep him down, but not so hard he can’t get back up. And if Dr. No wanted Bond to ally with him, why make his journey to him so hostile? Couldn’t he have had a bunch of big guys, like Jaws and Lurch, throw him in a helicopter or van and take him to him?
At the point Dr. No decides to have Bond killed, there is no reason he couldn’t have just had him shot instantly. If there happened to be no bullets in those guns, surely he could have his boys hold him down while someone brews another pot of sleepy coffee. This is another break from the immersion, where the only reason Bond doesn’t die is because he’s not supposed to. These blunders are a bit curious when, otherwise, moments like Bond trying to exert himself to save Honey in an impossible situation not working seem to show that these are the big guns, where his old tricks won’t work. He treats the situation like any other, where No’s accomplices were easily disposed of. His pleasant treatment and James’ conceit fog over the fact that Bond is in a hostile situation where there is no way he would win and now that reality is here to beat him. The film built up a pyramid of cards for Bond and made several efforts to explain why now it will finally be knocked over, only for it not to happen.
It is such a disappointment that Bond wouldn’t learn about SPECTRE by uncovering it on his own, maybe after a baddie tried to keep it from him, but instead by Dr. No just telling him, like he wants to help him out for the sequel. If he is supposed to be on Bond’s intellectual level, why not tell him something like this and have it not be true, basically attempting to ruse him? On top of that, the name stands for “Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion”. With a name like that, did they used to be called the “Legion of Doom”? What about the “Clan of Really Not Nice Bad Guys”?
When Bond eventually defeats Dr. No and his plan, it’s not through a battle of wits but by brute vigor. How convenient it is for him to reach an unguarded room with one person that Bond overpowers and steals the outfit of, then on his own destroys No’s project? No then goes and tries to kill Bond and easily loses. All his intrigue and secrecy, with apparently numerous people willing to kill themselves for him, and he gets in this skirmish himself? If he had to, just grab Bond by the throat and squeeze him with his metal hands? While it’s not clear from the fight what is supposed to be going on, he seems to try to go for the neck. Considering how strong his hands were shown to be, you’d think he would have had no problem winning the fight, but his hands seem to be no stronger than normal ones.
It seems there may have been a deleted scene where we see Honey be locked to the ground in the state she was when Bond finds her, as why else would she be there? As is, it’s like Bond needed to look good again, mainly because of the unfortunate implication of his showing so little regard to all the people around him running to safety for their lives. We don’t know much about them. For all we know, they were kept in the dark about Dr. No’s evil schemes and might be normal people employed to help him. What we do have is them acting like normal people, so it feels cruel for the hero not only to endanger them, but to thoughtlessly attack a few in his pursuit of Honey. Because of this, the rescue scene of Bond and Honey is humorous in the wrong ways as the story turns so hard into a “happy ending”. A more clever story could treat this as a commentary on British/American nationalism, where white people of those nationalities laugh and take pride in their victory, with no regard to their victims, who don’t appear to be white.
If you look at the climax without its many absurdities and implications, it about works as two-dimensional entertainment. If you treat Bond as a man on a mission, partially to ensure his and Honey’s safety, where no one else matters, then why not have him razor eyeing Honey, then using his agility to secure a boat? Connery certainly won’t go unnoticed for his fit and handsome appearance. Bond allowing his boat to roam adrift from Felix’, presumably resulting in the latter patiently waiting for him to finish so they can get back to shore, then such an ending works as a fantasy for the troubled 1962 man and not a man so addicted to his vice and suffering that he will potentially cause problems for everyone around him for his own jollies.
OVERVIEW
As a model for “What is a Bond picture supposed to have”, we ring a success. However, the ambitions go no greater than sex, assassination attempts, and male fantasy when those elements alone could be used more creatively. Bond might be written intentionally simplistic, so it’s easier for a male audience member to insert himself into Bond, become the sharp-witted gunslinger. Like most of us who aren’t secret agents, the scope of what one does might get stuck in the mud with “solve every problem with fighting and the right attitude.” When Bond wants something, he mostly just goes for it and it works out. He gets trapped in a room? He escapes. He wants to exert control? He easily does. He wants Honey to run away from danger? She doesn’t, but the two end up sharing a raft, so it’s not all so bad. We get quite a healthy handful of 60s cheese, from tone-stealing music to protagonists that exceptionally easily win fights to blatantly poor depictions of non-white males to Bond being given five-star hotel treatment by the cunning villain after having to gravel through dirt as an army tries to shoot him. Seeing as this film expertly subverts the middle note and the books are better about the last, those issues feel more frustrating than media that get entirely lost in the sauce of “Well, it was a different time.” That’s not to say this isn’t still very preferable to 60s Casino Royale or O.K. Connery. The plot and intrigue behind Dr. No is a lot more intriguing, even when reduced to “sex and violence”. Surprised there’s no rock and roll. We might have to wait until the 70s for that.
See for Bond’s clothes and hair being spotless after sleeping in the sand.
Despite the authorship of the lord of surreal and avant-garde cinema, David Lynch, Twin Peaks: Northwest Passage not only features a relatively conventional story, but it even invokes certain tropes often associated with the murder mystery genre it’s a part of. You don’t have to wait beyond the first scene for them. A shot of a bird on a tree brings to mind the wholesome small-town warmth that the fictional town of Twin Peaks seemingly wants to aspire to and that most viewers could recall from the movies. You can just feel the juxtaposition between the wholesome scenery and a dark underbelly about to come to life. That being said, the visual aesthetic invokes that warmth to an almost extreme degree.
The color scheme of the light blue background and soothing greens make a world more visually appealing than a lot of real life. The following shot of the powerplant maintains this whimsy, with the strong yellows feeling a little too cozy. The smoke does offer a hint of furtiveness, helping incrementally worsen the environment. The next scene is of machine-operated construction, which goes on a lot longer than the previous shots. This could suggest the heart of the town, running on the back of industry without basking in the glamour of woodland blues and greens. Afterward, we see train tracks, the supposedly old-school and traditional nature of the town which is broadly replaced by cars. Finally, there’s a shot of a sign reading “Welcome To Twin Peaks”, as if to summarize that all we’ve seen will somehow play into the narrative of this TV show. This is the skinny for those who need to know the most important bits. This is our taster before properly engaging in the world of Twin Peaks. If some of this sounds familiar, preserving wildlife or something going wrong in a small town are themes that can be seen in plenty of other movies, the latter in Lynch’s earlier film Blue Velvet. After the opening, we get a little taste of human interaction to lay out how this world usually is before very quickly giving us the dead body.
You would expect a murder mystery, especially taking the obvious trope of making the victim an attractive and well-liked teen girl, to go a mile a minute without giving much reason to even feel for the girl or information on who she was. Following establishment of a murder having happened, a handsome, snappy, but skilled protagonist turns up and gets on the case as soon as possible, particularly because we were in such a hurry to kill the girl in the first place. Instead, we get scenes of her family worrying about her and others recognizing and feeling sorry for them. Someone learning of or mourning her death goes on and on until you feel as worried and trapped in this painful situation as anyone else, not allowed to avoid seeing the dead girl as anything other than the quickly taken Laura Palmer. Fans of the admittedly handsome and snappy Agent Dale Cooper will have to wait until the thirty-six-minute mark. By contrast, Laura is shown at about the four-minute mark.
When Kyle MacLachlan does get to bring Dale to life, he sticks out like a sore thumb simply because he acts more like a normal protagonist for this type of story. He has a somewhat hot attitude and lack of affection for Laura or the town, which others and the audience have. He broadly just does his job without a lot of fanfare while managing a few jokes and commentary on his personal low opinion of the area. MacLachlan avoids designating him as a nasty person, bossing people around, or feeling like he is the main character. He plays in the middle ground of human behavior, seemingly being a lighting rod to take in other, more colorful roles. While he’s a bit snarky, it doesn’t come from a place of believing himself or actually being better than anyone else at their jobs. Such quirks serve to flesh him out. In contrast, a character like the title player of the show House always seems to be making an effort to look smarter and ruder than everyone else around him. In fact, to a fault Cooper doesn’t stand out. It’s easy to see how something could be done with this, where his lack of personality will be an acknowledged conflict, but more crumbs of that would make him not come off as so tossed in. Whether he knows it or not, he literally is the main character.
The strangest thing about the plot and especially the structure is how human it is, with tons and tons of people that show distinct quirks while not being too unbelievable, like David Lynch actually met a bunch of interesting people and decided to make a story about them, without some of the bells and whistles you might expect, like lots of action or very heavy drama. You get moments of both, especially the latter, but they take a back seat to what could be seen as a nibble on the feast of these character dynamics. Characters can’t do their jobs as they can’t stop crying or act out as a possible coping mechanism or silently unravel at the hint that their apparently perfect little town isn’t so perfect. You feel their hurt to the point you are hoping her death could just be undone, creating uncomfortable friction within oneself due to her originally having been narratively treated as a prop. It is thus perfectly clear, especially when considering the opening two minutes that the focus of this show will be on the world of Twin Peaks from an outsider’s perspective more so than the mystery itself. If Dale is an audience surrogate, that would go to explain his lack of depth.
The episode proves itself as a character piece simply by taking the many scenes of people either looking for Laura or doing other story setup and positioning them after we’ve seen her. There’s obviously no suspense in the question of whether Laura will be found okay, but there is in seeing if these people will learn of her death or what they’ll do in response to her death. Despite this, the story manages to outclass more conventional mystery outings by progressively peeling more and more layers off of Laura, fleshing her out in a way that in all fairness would require the lengthy runtime this series has. That all being said, Laura Palmer is still first seen dead, which would lead to the correct conclusion that even if she is shown alive in flashback or old video or photographs, she will never not be dead at the age of seventeen and will never not be defined by this fact. Her death is just about the opening impression.
Despite what we learn about her, by the end she still is a prop of the story. Before, she was one for when you thought this would be a more straightforward quick and dirty mystery and now she is a prop of discussion for the main characters. This could very well be a theme for the road. She was first seen wrapped in plastic, as if she now exists artificially. This also hints at environmental themes, such as if artificial products are suffocating people or drowning them, in which case Laura is a clue. The trope of a pretty white girl dying could turn into a criticism of the racism commonly associated with the trope. Oftentimes the reason you’re supposed to feel for the girls in the less methodical movies is because the filmmakers presume you’ll empathize with someone born like Laura in a way you wouldn’t with most other groups. Despite discussing how much he loved her, her boyfriend was cheating on her. Within the plot and out of it she is devalued and minimized for something that might be more exciting and new and alive.
As a TV pilot, the ending is excellent. Plenty of intriguing mysteries are left on the table. The very, very ending would certainly hook those who wanted more proper Lynch stylings with a sequence that seems absurdist in the way he does best while not alienating those grasped by the long scenes of characters grappling with their issues. The last shot basically tells you that there’s a lot more going on, and thus, you better not miss next week or the week after. However, this pilot aired as a movie in some places. It would certainly fail as such for the reasons it’s such great television. The climax and ending are only exciting because they escalate and then leave you to ponder them. While the movie version adds twenty more minutes, you don’t get a sense beforehand of how all this will resolve and what all of this means for the story. You would just get some admittedly interesting scenes of people talking if you just treated this like a movie. In fact, even as a TV pilot it’s understandable that some would feel bored by it.
The ending is reminiscent of something like the middle of Gone With the Wind, where you’re left on some scenes of everything changing for certain characters. However, in that movie you got around two more hours of story. Perhaps if the second and maybe third episodes were added into this pilot to make a movie between two and three hours, it would work better because you might get a better taste of what is even the point here. As is, it’s hard to say who will matter in what way, but who could possibly wait to find out?
SPOILERS
When Laura’s parents learn of her death, they are never told directly on camera; they deduce what happened just off of the sheriff wanting to talk to them “about Laura”. If one is to apply realism to the scene, why wouldn’t they assume the best until being directly told what happened? However, the way we see it, even with the intense screaming and crying of Laura’s mother especially, is just as effective. Your own mind is left to fill in the blanks of the situation, pushing you away from concerns about what might realistically happen. The performances being so bombastic can be appreciated as a signifier of the heaviness of their grief rather than criticized for being a little silly. Any hint of strangeness beforehand only serves to let the audience know that in this world, something like their emotions convey differently from how they might in “reality”.
Dale Cooper at one point meets a guy who seems over the top suspicious and creepy. Based on the heightened reality of the narrative, you could see this as a really aggressive red herring that will prove to be nothing or essentially a joke about how obvious they’re making the actual killer. The victims cry, the killer laughs. The latter interpretation is a lot less likely as giving the game away this early, even before the halfway point of this ninety-minute episode, would be really unsatisfying. And for what? Some doofus.
Dale, having very little understanding of the town he’s entering, describes especially disliking it. He’s jumping to conclusions about it, as how would he really know? Despite how many ways he is like the audience, other than the apparently infrequent murders and assaults, you at least have a strong community bond and beautiful scenery, which is more than you can say for most places as of writing this in 2025. The episode gives very little information behind Dale’s belief that the deaths of Laura and another girl, as well as the sexual abuse of a third, are all related. As such, this could be an examined flaw of his throughout the series: too quick to make deductions.
The heart of the series might prove to be the teenagers. The clue is to follow the intro and look for matching shot composition. In the scene where we learn Bobby cheats on Laura, we cut to a shot of a cop car driving while surrounded by the lush Washington scenery. While you see the background often, they are usually less vibrant and more in keeping with the somber tone of the main plot. There’s a similar shot later when one character wants another to pass on information that relates to the murder. We see one of them then drive off into the nature imagery. There’s another clear look at the woods when Dale is describing how nice the trees are. Shy motorcyclist James Hurley, played by James Marshall, looks over the grassland, lost in thought over the recent issue with Laura.
The motifs of the first two minutes tend to come back around with the teens and Dale, with the great trees following on from signs of their involvement or interest in Laura’s death, as opposed to being mere establishing shots. There are apparent connections with Dale often talking to them or trying to track them down, seemingly suspecting that one of them either did the deed or has info on who actually did it. There’s a less obvious one regarding environmentalism. Of every character shown, the teens will be most likely to have to deal with the poor treatment of the world if climate change exists in the world of Twin Peaks. They all seem so focused on Laura they might forget to appreciate the green land while they have it. Earlier a man at a business meeting in a room that looks styled after a cabin in structure and Earthy colors discussed how clean and wholesome the area is, making a note about how nice the air is. He’s telling us not only that we people are attracted to an artificial approximation of nature, holding in this rustic “cabin” despite real air and beautiful sights just outside; but he’s also telling us what the teens stand to lose.
OVERVIEW
Those who like classic Lynch might distinctly appreciate a single scene close to the end, which features a woman singing and may get you to think you accidentally put on a deleted scene of Blue Velvet in terms of the minimalism of the piece and the lighting. But for those that don’t…
Instead of depicting emotions through “dream logic” and nonsensical story developments, for better or for worse Northwest Passage covers those same emotions through a story that manages to be very relatable and familiar, but not in a way you would have seen before. The only consequence of this is that it takes a long time to cover just a small amount of plot, even if that makes the payoffs so much sweeter. When someone says at the end that about twenty-four hours have passed since Laura’s death, it really does feel like not only have you experienced a full day, but you’ve been put through the wringer and now your reward is a symbolic reminder that we’re only going to get further from the innocent and hopeful past. It is easy to believe why the entire Twin Peaks saga is about the length of forty-five hours. If you told the story of a tragic event and every person it affected and how their lives developed twenty-five years later, would you think that an afternoon viewing?
The protagonist of this picture immediately tells you what you’re in for, and perhaps why you shouldn’t be watching. Not through telling you directly what will happen in terms of the tone or spoilers, but by being a familiar flavor of annoying that perverts a lot of comedies from this era. You know he will get showcased in some fairly lame and overly polite humor, while some other character, usually a woman, makes you wish they had been the star instead by easily upstaging him. And my Atheist God, Wilbur Meeley has got to be one of the most annoying of the bunch, always shouting and trying so hard to force laughs. Too many of his jokes focus on him just being silly, like actor Joe Penner wasn’t given a script and instead had to improvise his own material on the spot. He’s also such a giant idiot that as you watch him get accused of crime after crime, it becomes more and more clear that he deserves to get locked up for how helpful he is to the baddies. Especially for helping the film be so bad. Wilbur is so frustrating that he about removes your base instincts of humanity and leaves you wondering how his wife, and thus us, are putting up with him. Left alone with him, time begins to slow as you wait and wait for something to actually happen, not having much else to focus on.
Pretty quickly we meet Wilbur’s wife, Carol, played by Lucille Ball. She brings a sassy elegance here that is easy to appreciate. There’s one scene at around the ten minute mark where Wilbur goes to see his wife. While he is shouting and filling the whole room with noise, Carol is merely speaking normally and thus is more articulate and able to grab laughs. It helps that she doesn’t make you want to rip your ears off. She of course gets all the best lines. “There’s only one enemy I’d like to storm.” “Yeah, who’s that?” “That’s the fellow that introduced your mother and father.” Another is “You are cruel, you have wounded me.” “What am I supposed to be, a first aid station?” Carol looks so delightfully cruel when delivering that too. She slaps someone in a Three Stooges-esque manner saying, “Nobody’s gonna call me a lug!” She has some good comedic chemistry with Fritz Feld as “Count Pierre Fountaine de Louis-Louis”, though as a whole he comes off as a racist caricature. Similarly to Wilbur, he’s a bit too outlandish for his own good, but is better at holding himself back. Still, probably the best line of the story comes from their interactions. “Oh, come out? Well, I wouldn’t think of it. I adore it in here, I love every little bar.”
There’s a few good gags outside her. There’s “If This Shade Is Drawn The Bank Is Being Robbed” one. In this story which seems to play in a “heightened reality”, this is both unexpected but also perfectly logical as to why it would exist and how it would progress the plot. It’s suggested that Wilbur’s captives have taken a liking to him, with this only being really apparent in one scene. That could have served a funny direction for the movie, where maybe they decide they don’t want him as their fall guy anymore due to appreciating him in a way his wife couldn’t. Like anyone that might give him a chance, he runs the risk of destroying the bond of brother and brother. Quickly they all seem sick of him. Still, as is it is a solid misdirect that makes sense in the context. It’s not explained, but it is easy to believe that they want him to be as calm and supportive as possible, instead of constantly trying to escape or tell someone what they’re up to. The talking horse, and how those around him act, is a genuinely fun surprise that feels completely divorced from everything else. It’s so out there that it walks (or should I say gallops) away as one of the best moments. In fact, if this movie had been a bit better constructed, then this scene would flop because it would stick out of a really solid story and more grounded jokes. Seeing as you’ve so far been almost tranced into boredom, this is a welcome change of pace. “Hey, listen, did you know your horse could talk?” “Don’t believe a word he tells you. He’s the darndest liar in town.”
Not all that glitters is gold. Wilbur mugs, jitters, and moves excitedly like no one’s business. Some of his other most obnoxious antics are when he repeatedly cuts someone off trying to talk to him like the prolonging of what they want is some great mystery for us, drinks car cleaner water, and generally is the only person here that feels completely unbelievable. Not to be accused of subtlety, some strangers say Wilbur looks like a bank robber, despite not dressing any differently to how he had before he got in this situation or like any other 30s gentleman. Wilbur then says he is one, I guess because he got too used to his predicament? One especially baffling joke he avoids involvement in is when Wilbur’s wife and boss give really incoherent descriptions of Wilbur, like how the boss originally thinks he’s a foot taller than him before realizing he’s actually shorter. This gag drags on like someone thinks it’s a funny highlight that needs to be a centerpiece or more likely the script needed padding. No one would ever be this clueless when describing someone they know so well, with Carol calling him “nondescript”. You can’t even mention how loud he is? She doesn’t know his age apparently, not even a ballpark for it. This could almost be a character trait for her, but instead it’s a throwaway that doesn’t play into what we have or will learn about her.
With the introduction of June Travis as Judy Daniels, the movie develops some intrigue. While a bit contrived, there’s some amusing comical misunderstandings between her and Wilbur’s plots. The only reason they have more than a scene together is because of some pretty unbuyable reasoning, but at least the story dares to dream here. This plot point also ultimately gets us to a point where Carol has some of her best material. There’s one scene of her around the end where it almost feels like she’s making fun of the movie. The whole story allowing Lucy to mock the proceedings would ignoring all else make the duller bits more entertaining. Imagine if she was trapped with Wilbur and his captives, and she kept insulting them and giving some excuse for why they can’t kill her. Maybe instead of them managing to steal the money early on, they don’t but she knows where it is, but won’t tell unless they let her and Wilbur live? She won’t share the news so she still has leverage, but they’re still held onto so they can supposedly spill the beans later. As is, you wonder why Wilbur wouldn’t just be killed for being so difficult.
Love her outfit!
SPOILERS
It’s really far-fetched that Wilbur would tell some random people how his job hides their money, which rightfully should have gotten him fired; as well as how he cut up his suit when stuck in a door instead of just opening said door; and he happened to stay in his trailer instead of sleeping in his house; yelled for the police in an enclosed space with criminals where he would be unlikely to be heard by them, but would obviously alarm the crooks staring at him, though the real issue is having to listen to him raise his voice; didn’t tell the police when one would come by and he’d have a chance of escaping; another incriminating decision was being convinced to take a wealthy woman from her home when he just as well could have minded his P’s and Q’s. That latter point is especially idiotic as he knows he’s with armed criminals. Wouldn’t he realize they aren’t up to helping this girl out? They almost kill her twice after they get her! Writing Wilbur as dumb is fine, but he is so extremely so that the believability of the story is utterly tarnished whenever the plot progresses because of him.
Wilbur may have been described as nondescript, but to give him some credit the movie does flesh him out somewhat. He has ambitions of travelling around with his wife. Like your conceptual American, he does dream big while apparently always wanting to do what’s right. A flaw he has that many do is not understanding his own limitations, like how dimwitted he is and that his wife is not interested in his tomfoolery. Still, he is arguably relieved from his lack of adventure by being selected at chance by the criminals. He was even selected because of a gift he just got, like the forces are coming together for him. While it often threatens to, his apparently pure heart doesn’t defeat him. He manages to call his wife and isn’t killed or maimed through the effort. In fact, he even saves someone through his own simplemindedness, though he is still shot at for it, where in the people who freed seem to remind him of the risks.
Beyond the obvious of almost getting killed, there are chances for Wilbur’s life to go in a different direction from what was expected. He could have been locked up; there was a hint that he would become chummy with the crooks, he might have joined them under different circumstances; and a favorite possibility has to do with Judy. Based on Wilbur seeming a lot closer to Judy than his actual wife, I was half expecting a little twist where he ends up with her and Carol ends up with Pierre. Admittedly, Carol and Pierre are a lot more antagonistic, but you could include a joke about how at least she could get some wealth from him, or even just something different from Wilbur? If the couple swap had occurred, it could ironically prove that this wholesome American heart Wilbur has would result in something less conventional you’d probably only see in comedy. Judy ultimately not marrying Pierre without having another direction to go in is a little too conventional, at least Americanly speaking…
Wilbur’s boss is definitely racist in how he treats Pierre, automatically accusing him of a crime for basically no reason. Considering how many characters, even Wilbur, are prejudiced against him, you can almost believe that if he hadn’t had some proof to vindicate himself, Pierre could have been held responsible to pay back the money he didn’t take. While Pierre doesn’t seem like a great guy, it’s shameful to think that him being a foreigner is supposed to be another reason to be glad he doesn’t end up with Judy, who isn’t portrayed with many flaws. The police and the rich are not challenged or treated as bad people, like we’re supposed to forget the damning moments that show how misjudging they are. Carol at a later point says that if caught, Wilbur would have been manipulated by the authorities into confessing. While Wilbur never questions them, the cops’ incompetence gives another reason why Wilbur would even want to do something different in life, he wouldn’t have to deal with them. Due to his ability to fix Judy’s car, find a telephone, and keep up his spirits, he seems fairly adept at making his way in a less conventional system, like he doesn’t even need his old structure. We unintentionally get a more subtle sign of Wilbur’s stupidity near the end when he says the police will save them, when said policemen have repeatedly been antagonistic to him and would have little ability to help them.
To give Wilbur a little credit, near the end he accidentally gives away the suitcase full of money to be sent to the cops instead of a second suitcase. While he is blamed for this, he gave the suitcase to one of the captives first, who was also dim-minded. Someone should have checked that it was the right suitcase, especially because you think they would recognize that the suitcases look the same, so there could be a mix-up. He narrowly avoids being directly murdered by the obviously angry crooks over this. Instead they separate the trailer from their car mid-chase from the cops, symbolically freeing him from their grasp as if he’s been spiritually exonerated from the actual crimes he committed, let go by those that grappled him in the first place. We also get a potential explanation why Wilbur hadn’t already been killed by them, as they could have gotten charged with murder.
The trailer almost seems to be magic, going down the winding road instead of off to the side, with none of the characters inside actually doing anything to affect the outcome, like it’s leading to a sort of destiny for Wilbur. It doesn’t feel real, with us in fact seeing so little of the actual trailer flying down the road that it feels impactless, like it’s heavily controlled and not in any genuine scrape. Let’s see the actual object get repeatedly a little too close to the cliff or get dinked up or interact with its environment. This sequence doesn’t gain momentum and thus just feels a waste of time, if not an irritant due to Penner taking up so much time trying to be funny. Wilbur flying through the window at the end is a nice touch though. Especially if Carol, Judy, and the poor warden escaped at some point, it could be a nice touch to have the trailer actually fly off the cliff. Throughout the whole film, I was rooting against Wilbur’s wellbeing (and Pierre too for trying to flirt up other women).
When all is said and done, Wilbur’s life is the same, though Carol now likes him more and he seems to be held in more esteem by others. What gets him back to this point is of all things, his singing. A radio show interviews him right before he was supposed to be killed. He then sings long enough that he hasn’t been whacked by the time rescue comes (though you’d think Carol and co would be too far away to reach him). His passion of being a singer really does save him, though it only saves him from those who gave him a chance to escape, securing his return to a normal life. The trailer going downhill at the end in turn literally takes him to a spiritual ground level. This could be seen as tragic as realistically due to his unchanged behavior he will probably irritate Carol again, none the wiser about anything, even the forces intended to keep him safe having done him little good. And yet, he is living a life like many, with dreams like many, notably different in his ungodly gaudiness. Seeing as the character is so insufferable, he arguably was always destined to repeat himself, not getting his life of adventure he had just tasted or a woman that seemed better for him. Considering how annoying he was, and even if he is all of us, what he got he deserved.
OVERVIEW
There’s some gags in this movie highly reminiscent of the Three Stooges, one performed by the baddies, which only goes to illustrate how underutilized they are. If this effort had been reworked into a through and through Three Stooges short, you could just have all the killer and none of the filler. In fact, Wilbur even portrays some Shempisms, a weaselly demeanor that can easily be taken advantage of. The real Shemp Howard probably would bring some much needed sprinkle of class to the role that would make him endearing. Imagine him trying and failing repeatedly to seem gentlemanly? Joe Penner has been compared to Pee-wee Herman. Some 80s edge infused in this story with a more colorful and expressive wife could make use of the core beats in a beefed up plotline that could pass as a sequel to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. You could imagine in that hypothetical film Pee-wee actually does befriend the robbers and they develop a real sense of comradery that could either result in a climactic moment where Pee-wee either warms their hearts enough that they give themselves up or at an unexpected moment turn on him for their own backs. The roles could more overtly represent some common sentiment, each baddy getting one, and Pee-wee tying it together and running off in whatever way you are supposed to be seeing and feeling in detail. As we have here, Penner doesn’t manage to lead us anywhere due to his quirks proving to be an impenetrable barrier that misdirects from a potential overt theme. Not able to do the job for us, you must instead Go Chase Yourself.
Oh yeah, it’s also pretty amusing that the last joke of the film is possibly a man enjoying kissing another man, though what exactly is going on there isn’t really clear.
Syd Barrett’s first two albums in many ways feel like opposites of each other. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is warm and colorful, vibrant with a sense of imagination that feels childlike, but not childish. By contrast, the instrumentation packs a mean and progressive punch that felt so beyond psychedelic music that it blew past prog rock and seemed to end up as its own thing. Those that fear musicians repeating themselves too much had nothing to worry about, as The Madcap Laughs was extremely sparse, with lyrics that pointed to an inner turmoil that is represented through cryptic lines about animals and a lightly defined sadness. Madcap’s follow-up by contrast can be seen as an ugly duckling. Despite the fact that some of Madcap’s material extends to Barrett’s early days, the work generally feels distinct from the Diamond’s other songs from that time. By contrast, Barrett does commit some repeating. One example are the sad romance songs. If you ever wanted to know what heartache felt like, you could turn to “Long Gone” just as well as the later “I Never Lied to You”. If you want nonsense lyrics that more so function on vibes, you could pick “No Man’s Land” or “Maisie”. If you want a head banger, you could pick most of Piper, “Gigolo Aunt”, and a few others from the third album, and really nothing from the second.
Despite these themes coming up again, they play more like a victory lap than a retread, the equivalent of a writer like Paul McCartney touching up on his earlier lovey-dovey songs at an older age. While “Long Gone” is richly poetic, like he was writing about an acid trip, “I Never Lied to You” has lyrics that play in more conventional territory, but with lighter Syd twists that make them uneasy. A line like, “but everything to you was never easy, so I went ahead around my world” starts with a very relatable feeling of a difficult partner that could be conveyed in the same way by other writers before turning into something that might alienate, but also feels just as common due to how many different meanings there are to take from it. “My world” could be his personal circle and thus he is re-exploring it to enjoy what he still has. “My world” could be the planet, he’s going out and seeing what is new and perhaps had before been just out of reach. You could say that if the relationship had been “easy” then he would have gone around the world with her, or possibly that “easiness” means her making him feel comfortable enough to commit to leaving her sooner.
“Maisie”’s more relaxed beat gives the impression of a man outside of reality, possibly just rambling about a girl and other things on his mind much the same way some homeless people act. And while the second Syd-led album was generally more focused on introspection and playing that properly backed the lyrics like they were poetry, this time we get more snazzy guitar solos and a mild bluesy streak that gives a great look of how Pink Floyd may have started out. The studio is now less of an “instrument” in its own right. “Baby Lemonade” and “Gigolo Aunt” start out with memorable and lowkey guitar solos, like Syd is warming up to start playing. This was apparently the first album of Barrett where he himself wasn’t too interested in leading a project, with him apparently being less expressive. This comes across in his much drier and pulled back vocal.
While this may not have been intended, the effect ties off the motif of sadness so prevalent before. This man that used to scream into the wind “Oh, where are you now?” has gotten to the point of resolving himself into a timid quietness, as if letting his own music consume him. This reading amplifies some songs more than others. “Love Song”’s lyrics on their own are less inventive than one could expect, but the drained singing teases something more haunting, perhaps someone who is sick of dating and wants something different? The keyboard plays a significant role on this one, with the lyrical surrender giving way to an excellent and classical-inspired solo, as if saying that ‘this one isn’t about the words’. It has a Floyd-feel to it. The instrument was mostly absent from the last album, so it makes a striking and welcome return here. Its bright moments offer a hint of warmth and positivity to the track, which unlike most of the songs here potentially changes the meaning beyond what is said and how it is sung. This offers some excellent group-interaction that Syd’s solo career so rarely indulges in.
“Dominoes” follows on thematically, with the singer more apparently tired and “wasting time on dominoes”. The vocal makes you believe this, without devolving to mumbling or a complete lack of expression. While subdued, the backing track critically doesn’t match the boredom expressed by Syd’s voice. Quite the opposite when a backwards guitar solo plays like the album wasn’t willing to completely turn against using a “studio trick”. Syd’s mellowness has been hinted at before in his catalog, but usually just for a song. This prolonged usage draws you into the record, as if in all but clear words you’re being told about how lonely he feels and how out of place he is. While changing this up to some degree after the first four songs was for the best, we get what could be called filler for two slots. “Rats” and “Maisie” suggest more ability to innovate with the mostly untraversed style of chunky guitar-drivers. Perhaps Syd didn’t want this, as he sounds frankly less interested when singing these?
In the past Syd’s written songs which were performed as wild novelty numbers, like “Double O Bo”. These sound like they were written like that, only for the producers to want them to be more in line with the other tracks, so they feel less expressive than they probably could be. Sadly it seems that the main man wasn’t trying hard to push this record in any given direction, as he probably could’ve given more life to them, like how he seems to be having so much fun singing the aforementioned song. Despite these tracks still being very good, they feel quite jarring coming after what they did, though the reasoning for that makes sense due to the end of side a being common places to put filler. Both could have been positioned in either a different spot on the record or on a hypothetical fourth album though. One idea of how to fix this is to resequence the songs so the similarly lowkey run of “Waving My Arms in the Air”, “I Never Lied to You”, and “Wined and Dined” come straight after, then are relieved with the Floyd-esque and grooving “Gigolo Aunt” before a few chunkies. However, I have a different idea that would be even better.
The first seven songs all having similar motifs of an unspoken sadness and a style almost predictive of dream pop has its pros, but also the con of feeling too samey. While powerful, like that or in the proper sequence it’s easy to find this album a depressing listen due to how Syd sounds. What could have made the record shine more is to include some instrumentals and a contribution or two by Richard Wright or Roger Waters, just like on Piper. For all his strengths, a rock solid band managed to prove that Barrett is not the type to do everything himself. Wright’s backing vocals and little keyboard flourishes were always so special on Pink Floyd songs, and thus he was missed on Madcap. It’s thus a treasure that he and David Gilmour are present, making this record a far closer approximation of Pink Floyd than last LP. Still, if their goal was to be 100% Floyd, they definitely failed at that. Some fans in turn dislike this record for the reason of it trying to be something it isn’t. However, Wright and to a lesser extent Gilmour just blend with Barrett so well that it seems like anything we have of them together is not only a gift, but will uplift what they’re a part of.
If Roger Waters and Nick Mason had come on board and completed the old team, the sonic landscape could feel ever so fuller. If an intended theme was for the singer to be consumed by the music due to lack of will, with the music representing one’s complex emotions and time sucking you in and going on without you, then that would only be more poignant with that classic bass and drums combo you recall from his hits and the similarly themed “Jugband Blues”. The two drummers on this album are certainly very good, especially when unhinged on moments like part of “Wolfpack”, but they were probably told that Barrett was the star of the show, and it’s easy to see what is lacking from that approach as opposed to one where Barrett jams these songs out in concert with Pink Floyd and then the resulting album is a more unified team effort. A fan favorite track from this record is “Gigolo Aunt”, probably because it gets closer than most to the Floyd sound by having an extended jam section, interplay between the members, and an unforgettable guitar. “Baby Lemonade” also essentially leads in with organ, reminding you of what has been missing from most music that’s not The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
To near this album to a Floyd one, “Rats”, “Maisie”, and maybe “Wolfpack” could be moved to a hypothetical fourth album with a proto-grunge focus and in their place could go the then-unreleased instrumentals “Lanky Part One” or “Rhamadam” if it was cut down. This same year the Floyd album Atom Heart Mother came out and the two contributions of Waters and Wright, “If” and “Summer ‘68” respectively, would be fine on this instead. “Summer ‘68” could be nice on a hypothetical last Syd Barrett album, whether this one, a fourth one, or something else, seeing as it has themes of nostalgia.
OVERVIEW
It’s easy to want what could have been, maybe every solo Syd song is released as Pink Floyd material with all the members? Now we can get things like more intricate guitar solos from David Gilmour and Richard Wright on backing vocals so Barrett doesn’t quite feel like he’s been kicked out onto a stage at the last moment. Maybe Syd is part of the team, which either as a whole turns towards the music everyone knows and loves or alternatively Barrett continues to hold onto the band, so whatever does happen is under his eye. In fact, this last record of his is a little like that. It’s easy to believe that the group would decide to broadly follow his lead and create some songs around this time with a breezy band tone and lack of a will to be mainstream hitters. If Barrett is the notable figure, eventually Roger Waters and David Gilmour would probably quit in order to do the more distinct music they became known for, like The Wall for an example, and Barrett continues on treating Pink Floyd as essentially a solo act?
One thing is for sure, what Barrett did give us is a wonderful if painfully brief musical catalog. He proved himself to be a fantastic and innovative mind that could tell compelling stories without even trying. Some stories of his dynamic with his previous mates act like he and his style vanished around 1968 and popped in to say hello in for Madcap and then literally at the Wish You Were Here sessions. Thus, whether intentional or not, Barrett feels like a missing piece of sorts. Not only has it been here this whole time, it’s almost a genuine Floyd album. It sounds like a potential direction that band honestly could have gone in, especially if Roger left for his own developing style and the other three creative heads decided to get to work to make sure the sound that made the band so loved from basically the beginning continued on for at least one more turn. What feels like an alternate universe LP has been pulled from that universe into ours and for that discovery I am eternally grateful for it and must confess that it is better than Syd’s previous solo album.
Today is the seventy-ninth anniversary of Syd Barrett’s birth and if he was here I would hope he’d enjoy it. Maybe he is, wherever he is.
Considering how Dylan dressed in the 60s, he was really doing the studios a favor by looking so cool then that you could accurately make an actor look atypically cool when playing him.
If you’re walking into this picture just looking for some fun anecdotes, you’ll probably get at least something out of it. As a committed fan of rock and folk music, I can now add to my bank of pointless information my newfound knowledge of Bob Dylan’s relationship with Joan Baez, the origins of the famous organ riff on “Like a Rolling Stone”, and the simple fact that Bob Dylan was a huge asshole. Maybe the latter fact was exaggerated, but so often these movies try to minimize the bad behavior of its lead, so it’s quite humorous if this one did the opposite. Note that even someone like Brian Wilson, known for not holding on to his ego, still wasn’t portrayed as a bad dude in his recent biopic (well, eleven years ago if this piece goes up in 2025) when there’s at least a little bit of dirt that could be worked in. Despite this, we are clearly getting a white washed version of Dylan’s formative years of 1961-1965 framed as favorable to him, at least when it comes to his songs.
It seems that over and over the other characters are just mesmerized by him whenever he sings. With a few exceptions I’ll get to later, it’s as if these people were told they should admire this guy because he’s one day going to invent music by giving the Beatles pot. So many scenes can be boiled down to some revelation going on related to our lead, such as him going electric or opening up about his own philosophy, and people look at him like they’re going to try to remember details of these encounters in a few years time when someone offers to pay them for an interview about their time brushing shoulders with Blind Boy Grunt. Someone even responds to him experimenting with having a backing band by saying it will probably piss off people, like such a development has to be made painfully apparent. We get it, you think he prophesizes with his pen.
Despite all this, I do get it. It’s not A Complete Unknown why these songs would be treated like this. They ain’t nothing, having a genuine sense of feeling and poeticism that has almost never been matched. Not to make this a review of the man’s music, but every song of his we hear in the film is utterly fantastic. Still, to consider similar critiques for 2019’s Yesterday, a mildly similar story about The Beatles’ music, simply showing the music isn’t enough to lift the entire narrative these pictures want to tell. Part of the success of both acts they’re based on is how they blend into the culture of the time. In the context of a movie far shorter than five years in length, the songs and the history around them feel like vignettes. Things like the Civil Rights movement seem to only exist to give material to Dylan, never taking much focus.
In one scene we bother to have Pete Seeger introduce a black musician on his show, only for him to be interrupted by a sudden appearance of Dylan. The musician seems perfectly fine with Dylan now being the focus, as if he thinks he deserves the screen time more. Later a performance at a folk festival with several black singers singing about hardship while hitting the ground with tools quickly becomes background music for the arrival of the lead character, as if the black history of music was invented and popularized so the great Bob Dylan can take influence from it or use it as a representation of him overcoming the adversity of fans bashing his new music.
Another big part of the music of The Beatles and Dylan is their look. The genuine folky himself had a very striking appearance that seems to shine in photographs and concerts. The admittedly unenviable task of getting someone to replicate that proved to be insurmountable. Timothée Chalamet seriously lacks some much needed charm that would go to show at least a little bit why people dealt with Bob Dylan so much. Sure, there’s his music, but that’s not something that Chalamet is even adding to the table. It’s not like he wrote those songs. Whether he is and isn’t singing, he comes off as way too try hard. Dylan is constantly characterized with a nearly unwavering don’t care attitude. Maybe that was true to the real guy, but here it seems so fake, which seems all down to the performance. There’s no twinkle in his eye or much of a sense of what he wants beyond what is directly being said. When he wants to go electric, he doesn’t feel conflicted about it. It’s like him and everyone else in this movie are already convinced that everything he does will be groundbreaking and brilliant, so the product is there’s no need to emotionally invest in that struggle as you know how it will turn out.
Dylan’s romantic life plays out slightly better for similar reasons. It’s not clear who he will end up with if anyone at all. Thankfully it’s not like there’s a moment where he just seems to find the perfect person and as headstrong as ever goes for it and has no real struggle. However, Chalamet doesn’t make his character seem like he even cares about the romances. He’s more than happy to just focus on his work or find someone else, so why should we care? What should be a pivotal moment related to a frayed relationship is instead referenced without passion in a line of dialogue like it’s equivalent to some odd record coming out. It feels like we’re missing a scene of the movie. Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is. It’s as if the filmmakers want to mirror the lightness of how this element started by having it end in a similarly light way.
Biopics usually falter when trying to cover a span of time, which typically catches more iconic moments, but makes it harder to sit with someone and let a series of concurrent events affect them and be seen. Asking Chalamet to do early Dylan is very different than asking him to do a later one, so it’s no surprise he feels so nondescript. A consequence is that Dylan’s love life is light on details, feeling rushed. What we get feels like cliff notes, as if this is an adaptation of a textbook. What about the other character appeals to the other? Even beyond this, events as a whole seem to just happen. If we weren’t being told that time has passed or that this or that record came out, you wouldn’t think it was going by so quickly. Where’s a time to breathe and appreciate Dylan deciding to take the plunge of filling a whole record with originals, his budding friendship with Johnny Cash, or his reverence for Woody Guthrie? We do spend comparatively more time in 1961 and it benefits from having more possibilities for a lost and undetermined soul than the brassy and confident ‘65 Dylan, not that the latter is inherently not going to work. More could probably be drawn from the ‘61 timeframe if it became a whole movie because there wouldn’t be the issues of time jumps and more of the content would be unknown to general audiences.
Speaking of iconic moments, there certainly are many. It’s understandable why you’d want to document Al Kooper’s really interesting involvement with Dylan in the movie, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the whole story other than that Bob has creative friends. We learn nothing about our protagonist through this and Kooper has almost no presence after his fifteen seconds of fame. A side character more deserving of being fleshed out is Pete Seeger, who seems overly chipper like he’s had one too many rainy-day women. He acts like he thinks Bob is the only person in the world, not having much else on his mind. He does change up a bit in the ending and is more developed for it, but that is too little too late for someone who could be fleshed out into an important ally for the lead or perspective on folk-purism, or anything other than just being an occasional current of whispers. Mainly due to the runtime, the film is stuck in an awkward marriage of wanting to tell a dramatic narrative and making sure there’s plenty to be recognized. You’re torn between either wanting this movie to be long enough to have all these characters more fleshed out and not wanting to have to slog through however that added length would be wasted.
While the women are generally performed better, they still suffer from being in ‘one mode’ who probably fail the Bechdel test like these filmmakers think we need a type of Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren to make a movie grow. It’s fair to not expect them to be absolutely Sweet Marie, but it’s like they’re falling short of some sort of dramatic conflict to complicate Bob’s life or even push him over the edge. You’d think that a highly acclaimed singer like Joan Baez would have more going on in her life than thinking about Bob Dylan in basically every scene. Regardless, her actress Monica Barbaro is frankly the secret weapon here. Her singing is very expressive and pretty. I honestly feel inclined to listen to Barbaro more because of this movie. While no one here is quite as sharp, all do very good jobs at singing except for Chalamet, who seems like he’s doing a literal translation of his role’s rough vocal style without really understanding the words. You can also kind of hear the “I’m trying to be cool” attitude which doesn’t belong on your “Song to Woody”s or “Subterranean Homesick Blues”s. Both appearance and singing-wise, it’s like he forgot this isn’t a Green Day biopic.
SPOILERS
Dylan’s infamous motorcycle crash is teased, leaving you imagining how soapy the eventual moment will be depicted, only to be subverted by not being shown. This was fairly clever, hinting that the man has so many iconic events in his life that they can’t all fit in one movie. Seeing as his motorcycling was portrayed as reckless, the picture is painted that he really just doesn’t care what anyone thinks, without it being stated explicitly here. The last scene of the movie is literally him riding away from a sickly Woody Guthrie, like he won’t stick around for old trends and will pursue his own future. Guthrie even looks on at him like the folk music he represents needs Dylan and not the other way around anymore. This less wholesome view of him benefits the film.
He will continue to go on and be a dangerous rebel, with his especially freewheeling early days not showing a sign of stopping by the final frame. Notably, this mirrors his musical development where even aggressively polite Pete Seeger considers a destructive act in order to stop him, both the character and the music are looked down on by old hat. The suggestion is that both elements are liked for these ways they’re different and scary. Crucially, their results are still different. Just off of the text of the film, there is no apparent benefit to the poor driving, though the music by contrast is brilliant. These two elements sadly never seem to come together. Dylan’s attitude does not appear to inform his songs and the content of them don’t color his attitude. It’s not like we’re learning much about what influenced him to write a song like “Blowin’ in the Wind”. He just did because bigotry and war. His nasty personality might be liked by some, but it’s not leading him anywhere other than off into the distance, where he is at the very end.
If you consider the actual history then this could be seen as another stroke of creative genius for the man. The motorcycle crash led him to innovate and change with the times, so it’s as if even seemingly unrelated events contribute to his art, like Dylan is some sort of musical miracle to humanity. While that could work, the problem with this is that it’s boring. Musically, he’s never questioned so the music just becomes nothingness. It’s there because you want to hear the songs. However, we’re not watching a concert film, we’re watching a drama. If you want to know who is right in this story, you know from early on that it’s Zimmerman’s tunes. Imagine if you were watching a murder mystery and the butler looks as guilty as can be throughout, with the movie constantly asking you who did it, only for it to be revealed that it was indeed the butler? Okay, you already told me that.
OVERVIEW
Bob Dylan is a fascinating and amazingly talented guy. You could probably write some of the greatest movies imaginable based on the expressiveness of some of his best songs. Why then must we see a representation of this in the form of tropes about men jumping to fighting for no good reason, wanting to pack up Dylan’s money and pick up his tent; folk music being treated as inherently inferior to rock like the lead lost all respect for his heroes; or him being treated as completely forgivable due to his brilliance, with his harmonica and cool boy persona seeming to protrude on someone else’s session in one scene or him taking over a tv show? Would his harmonic agitation really be accepted like you should be glad the Robert Zimmerman sniffed in your general direction? Plenty of musical biopics, like Bohemian Rhapsody or Elvis, are flopping critically due to these similar structural issues and copy-paste narratives. At least A Complete Unknown doesn’t span decades. When will the studios admit that the waters around them have grown? Especially when Dylan’s canon goes into the public domain, we may get a picture that gives a more careful showcase of Bob Dylan’s Blues.
The Filme Diary 