Dr. No was actually the sixth of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, which he proficiently kicked out at the pace of roughly one per year starting with 1953’s Casino Royale until his death in 1964. Thus, by the time Dr. No reached the screen and became an international hit, James Bond was already an iconic pop-culture hero (Fleming’s novels were supposedly John Kennedy’s favorite bedside reading). In fact, Bond had already appeared on-screen--the small screen, that is--in a largely forgotten 1954 TV episode of the CBS live anthology series Climax! based on Casino Royale, which turned Bond into an American named “Jimmy.”

As embodied by Sean Connery, who already had a semi-successful movie career by the time he first donned the tuxedo of Her Majesty’s favorite secret agent, Bond is a cynical, yet still mythical hero. He is first introduced in Dr. No at a high-stakes poker table, his full on-screen revelation slyly delayed until he can utter his immortal introductory words: “Bond, James Bond.” From the moment the words exited Connery’s lips, a cigarette casually dangling from the corner of his mouth, he owned the role. It is of little surprise that every actor who has stepped into Bond’s shoes since then has inevitably been compared to Connery. It is not just that he originated the role on-screen, but rather that he so completely embodied it.

The narrative in Dr. No is quite straightforward, especially when compared to the increasingly convoluted narratives that would come to define the series. Bond is sent to the island of Jamaica to investigate why another British agent was murdered, and in the process uncovers the secret lair of Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), a half-Chinese, half-German international criminal hellbent on (what else?) taking over the world. There are a few twists here and there, but much of the story unfolds as a mystery interspersed with moments of suspense. In the film’s best moment, Bond wakes up to find a tarantula crawling up his arm; the way in which director Terence Young (who would go on to direct Connery as Bond twice more in From Russia With Love and Thunderball) squeezes every bit of suspense out of cutting back and forth between Connery’s increasing sweaty face and the creeping spider is worthy of the best of Hitchcock. The film contains only a few outright action scenes, including a fiery finale that was added late in the game at the behest of U.S. distributor United Artists, who knew that U.S. viewers would want something a little more explosive.

As the first official James Bond film, Dr. No established a number of iconic elements that would appear again and again throughout the series. Although slightly different in its presentation, the opening shot of Bond walking across the screen from the vantage point of a gun barrel and then unexpectedly turning and firing at the audience opens the film, although Monty Norman’s unforgettable theme music is slightly delayed and juxtaposed with an oddly jaunty bit of music that precedes it. Dr. No also establishes the idea of a showy opening credits sequence, albeit in slightly more primitive fashion and with a tendency to switch music unexpectedly, as if someone were fiddling with a radio dial.

The traits of Bond himself are all there, including his tendency to throw out ironic quips (just a few here, but still unmistakable), his flirtatious relationship with Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), his humorously tense relationship with his boss M (Bernard Lee), and his propensity for gambling, fine couture, vodka martinis, and bedding multiple women before the final reels. The appearance of Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder emerging from the Caribbean in a white bikini and a hunting knife established the fundamental traits of the “Bond girl”: a mix of outlandish sexuality and fiery independence that nevertheless still requires Bond to rescue her in the end. The fact that the film is named after the villain suggests the increasingly important nature of a showy bad guy, especially one with some kind of physical quirk (for Dr. No, it is his metal hands) and a ridiculously complex lair.

Still, Dr. No is hardly a perfect template for things to come, and in that respect it stands apart from the films that followed in its wake. The character of Q, the master of gadgets and gizmos, was yet to be introduced, and as a result Bond has to reply primarily on his wits to survive (at one point he and several others resort to using hollow reeds as breathing tubes to escape detection in a river). The globe-trotting nature of the Bond cannon is also truncated, as it gives us a steamy, exotic locale in Jamaica, but keeps all the action situated there. It wouldn’t be until 1964’s Goldfinger, the third entry in the series, that all the pieces would come together to form what became known over the ensuing decades as a “Bond film.” But, even without everything firmly in place, Dr. No is a fascinating and intriguing spy yarn, one that illustrates without a doubt that more is not always more.

Copyright ©2006 James Kendrick

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