Dr. No

Directed by Terence Young (1962)

The first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962, directed by Terence Young) created an explosion (no pun intended) of espionage movies in the mid to late 1960s, and created the ‘eurospy’ sub-genre. It introduced a sophisticated, combative yet seductive character, who travels to exotic and glamorous locations where, whilst overcoming villains, he is desired by glamorous women.

Consider the iconic scene, which still appears on posters today, of Ursula Andress emerging, bikini-clad, from the Jamaican sea. Whilst sexist to a modern audience, it presented a glamour that ordinary people aspired to, women and men, and anticipated increasingly liberal attitudes to sexual themes that were introduced by the ‘swinging sixties’. Dr. No also appealed to materialistic attitudes: cinema audiences were able to see international locations on screen at a time when international travel was only accessible to a wealthy minority –known then and for decades afterwards as the ‘jet set’ – which fascinated the audience. If you think of any film you have seen with ‘sexy’ interactions between a leading man and a strong woman, set in glamorous international locations – that film owes a debt to the visionary Dr. No

Furthermore, Bond’s ingenuity – his ability to utilise all items around him to his advantage in combat – further makes his character appeal to the audience. His collection of gadgets (Dr. No introduced audiences to Geiger counters and cyanide cigarettes), was a visionary anticipation of how technological advances, even in the form of hand-held devices, were beginning to empower our lives.

Another visionary element of Dr. No is that the chief villain possesses the combination of ruthlessness, power and technology that can threaten the entire world, not just his immediate environment. A month after Dr. No was released in cinemas, world peace was threatened by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the espionage genre adopted the idea that to intrigue an audience, the scale of threat from the leading antagonist must be huge in scope. Any film where the lead villain is described as an ‘evil genius’ owes a debt to the visionary Dr. No. Finally, Dr. No had the vision to see that audiences wanted the theme of using ingenuity and violence to defeat a threat, to be punctuated with humour. This provided not only comic relief but enhanced the attractiveness of the ‘unflappable‘ hero. The trope of intense action, followed by an amusing one-lin- er from the hero (consider subsequent film franchises such as Indiana Jones or Beverley Hills Cop) pays homage to Dr. No. Indeed, Dr. No not only spawned a series of 25 films (and counting), but other hugely popular film series, such as the Jason Bourne films, take more than just the hero’s initials from James Bond. They take a hero with great intelligence, supported by gadgetry but also his own ingenuity, who is ruthless yet morally grounded, disobedient yet fundamentally loyal to authority, combative and stunt-driven yet also witty, and constantly moving from one glamorous international location to the next. These films, and many others like them, all derive from the visionary Dr. No