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Monday, December 7, 2009
BD impressions: Dr. No
2:01 PM / BD Impressions / 
15 Comments
Last night was my very first time watching the very first James Bond film, a title that has somehow managed to elude me all these years. Still, in a sense I'm glad I waited so long, because watching it for the first time on a pristine BD is undoubtedly a somewhat different experience to catching one of those grotty TV screenings on ITV. This one does take a while to get going, the first half being more appropriately titled "James Bond, PI" as he strolls leisurely around Jamaica, investigating the murder of a British agent. It seems to take an age for him to actually get to the island on which the eponymous Dr. No has his base, but there are some fine moments along the way, most notably Bond dealing with a crooked chauffeur and experiencing a tense nocturnal encounter with a deadly spider. My prior experience with the Bond films being rather limited, I suspect I'll find myself measuring all the Bond girls I subsequently encounter against Eva Green in Casino Royale, who made by far the strongest impression on me. Compared to Green's Vesper Lynd, Ursula Andress' Honey Ryder doesn't have a lot going for her beyond her ability to look fetching in a swimsuit. I also can't help thinking that director Terence Young and his writers couldn't quite work out what her role was (beyond that of "eye candy"). In particular, her hysterical reaction to Bond killing an armed guard is jarringly at odds with her calm, po-faced statement, not five minutes later, that she herself once killed a man in the most excruciating way ("It took him a whole week to die").
Still, a fine start to the venerable series. It may take its sweet time to get going, but once it does it really cooks, Bond's dinner encounter with the unflappably polite Dr. No being the high point by far.
Image quality: The Bond films, particularly the Connery titles, have a reputation for being among the best-looking titles of their vintage on BD, and having now watched Dr. No, I'm inclined to say that this reputation is entirely justified. I was stunned by the level of detail on display, any softness in certain shots surely being down to the original photography itself rather than any shortcomings of the 4K master or the encode. It's rather uncanny, actually, as the film doesn't look its age at all. For their restoration, Lowry Digital went back to the original camera negative wherever possible, meaning that everything except titles and opticals are derived from the highest possible quality source. As a result, fades between shots have had to be reconstructed, and I for one am actually glad of this, given that the sheer number of fades in this film would surely have resulted in continual jarring drops in quality throughout its 105 minute running time had they gone down the usual route and taken these transitions from a source a couple of generations down the line. The result is a remarkably consistent presentation with only a small handful of optical effects shots showing any noticeable degradation in definition.
If there is a problem with the presentation, it's that it suffers from a milder version of a similar problem associated with other Lowry restoration efforts like Disney's Bambi, whereby clumps of grain seem to attach themselves to objects on the screen and swim around. For instance, in the first few shots of the film, the grain particles around the three blind men create the impression of a fuzzy outline that follows them as they walk. These issues are fairly mild in comparison to something like Bambi, but they're present to varying degrees throughout the film and the result is that the presentation never looks 100% natural. 8/10
Dr. No
studio: 20th Century Fox/MGM; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 29.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 38.30 Mbit/sec
15 Comments
Death by bird crap? Wow, I'd love to see that filmed...
I certainly took into consideration the time at which the film was made, which is why I also wasn't in the least bit surprised by the less than flattering depictions of the black natives. In the case of Honey Ryder, though, I do think Young and co. were caught between wanting to portray a strong-willed, independent female lead while at the same time having her function as a traditional damsel. The result it that she doesn't quite feel real to me - she seems to change depending on the requirements of the scene.
I'm definitely looking forward to From Russia with Love - this weekend hopefully. And I'll be watching For Your Eyes Only anyway. I've no idea when On Her Majesty's Secret Service is coming out on BD, and in any event I already know how that film ends. (I think it came up in a list of most heartbreaking movie endings that I stumbled across a couple of years back.)
(Posted on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 11:05 AM)
Kram:
It looks superior to North by Northwest in my opinion. With Dr. No, you don't have any of that unpleasant waxiness that creeps into certain scenes on that BD. Obviously it's difficult to compare the two since, as you say, they're different in just about every way, but if asked to pick which of the two I think ended up with the better transfer, I'd go with Dr. No any day.
(Posted on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 8:56 PM)
Bobafett:
That's right, the original mono mixes are missing - not something I'm particularly happy about, but given how little I paid for this set I guess it's hard to complain.
Marcus:
As far as Bond girls go, I like the one played by Carey Lowell in Licence to Kill. Then again, I like most things about that film.
Kram/Kentai:
I suspect Capture 10 is an optical effects shot (or at least it shows similar degradation in image quality), and I actually included it to counterbalance the other 20 captures, all of which are frames from the original negative.
Dany:
I haven't seen enough of the Bond films (or read enough of the books - just Casino Royale at the moment, though I've rented an omnibus containing Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger from the library), so I'll have to get back to you on where I stand as regards your assessment once I've watched/read a little more widely. For the time being, though, I'll say that, of the pre-Casino Royale films I've seen, my favourite is Licence to Kill, which many describe as being among the truest interpretations of Fleming's character.
(Posted on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 1:35 PM)
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1. Marcus said:
Please note this was 1962, so Andress' reaction to the murder is pretty much what audiences were expectin a woman to do. Bondgirls never got tough untill Pussy Galore from Goldfinger and Fiona Vople from Thunderball.
To be fair to her, leaving a black spider in a man's hut and then witnessing a man being stabbed to death are two different things. Terence Young however is not to blame: The character is from Fleming's book and it's quite an accurate representation. The only difference is that in the book she did not even wear a bikini. :D
I agree that the pre-island material is the weakest part (though I still enjoy it)... are you aware of how the book goes? It's actually the only occasion where the Fleming novel is more outrageous than the movie. In the book, Bond goes to the island pretty quickly and all of that Mrs. Taro/Professor Dent (which as fun as it is, slows the story down) stuff is absent. Instead of locking him in a cell, Dr. No(working for Red China, not SPECTRE) puts Bond in an "endurance test" where he is forfed to crawl in small tubes filled with tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, etc... then the tubes are heated to boiling temperature untill Bond manages to crawl out and fall inside an artificial pool with... A GIANT SQUID!!! Since this was the first Bond movie and had a low budget, all of this was deleted... replaced with Bond's similar crawl through the air ducts.
Dr. No also planned to kill Honey Rider by tying her in the beach and having the crab migration slowly kill her. This was attempted in the movie, but the crabs all froze to death by accident once they arrived in the set.
Dr. No also dies in a different way: Bond drops a pile of bird crap on him and he suffocates to death. I did not make that up.
Can't wait to hear your stance on From Russia With Love, a sequel that outdoes the first entry in every single level. Bond by Northwest.
Are you going to skip FYEO before watching OHMSS, or will you watch it anyway?
(Posted on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 12:40 AM)