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james bond
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The James Bond films are a cinematic phenomenon. They were born at a precise moment in British history, a period when a lot of social and cultural changes were taking place. The 1960’s witnessed sexual liberation and the transformation of the United Kingdom from sober and sophisticated to swinging symbol of fashion, music, youth and consumerism. And the Bond films portray all the changes that were taking place during the 1960’s. In this paper I will be analyzing the Bond musical theme and the music for the latest installment Die Another Day. James Bond was born early in the 1944, when Ian Fleming spent some weeks in Jamaica, where in his beach house he began a routine that was to continue until the end of his life time and which produced thirteen James Bond thrillers. Fleming started his first novel during the year 1952. He took the name of his main character from the author of a book called Bird of the West Indies by an ornithologist James Bond. It was in Casino Royale, not Dr, No, that James Bond made his first screen appearance. The first time Bond appeared on American television was on October 21st 1954. Casino Royale was the third episode in CBS’s Climax Mystery Theater. It was filmed mainly on a casino set built at the Television City in Hollywood; Casino Royale lacked all the adventure and dazzling locations associated with 007. Musically the TV series was not very impressive. From a musical standpoint, Bond wasn't born until 1962, at the opening of Dr. No, when Monty Norman's now-legendary James Bond Theme played under a series of moving, flashing, and colorful dots. The James Bond films are films of a unique and special kind. Genre movies are those commercial feature films which, through repletion and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations. They also encourage expectations and experiences similar to those of similar films we have already seen. The Bond films are genre films in that they exhibit a basic formula which remains remarkably consistent throughout the series. Audiences have become familiar with the stories, character types and narrative situations of the films. As one critic remarked at the opening of the Bond film, GoldenEye: ‘We want to like most movies we pay to see but we already know the Bond formula – it has already earned our good will – so our pleasure revolves around seeing how the film-maker executes their turn.’ It is evident, even within these brief schemata, that the Bond series marks the convergence of a number of different generic forms and traditions. The Bond films are unique in so far as there is no comparable group of films which can be located at precisely the same point of convergence between genres. The generic traditions which come together in Bond series encompass different national cinemas, which not only adds to their uniqueness but also goes some way towards explaining their world wide popularity. For all the similarities which Bond films share with other genres, the Bond films series is differentiated from other action movies through the character of James Bond himself. ‘There is no romantic anti- hero in existence at the moment,’ remarked GoldenEye director Martin Campbell in 1995. ‘They are all blue collar – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone. There are no sophisticated or British comparisons to Bond. The Bond film-makers have developed their know ideology based on the notion of what is and isn’t ‘Bondian.’ This ideology constitutes a set of expectations about what a Bond movie should be like, what it should contain.
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