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Comments
Once again Brady, this is a bit of projection on your part, since the worked up guy is probably the one who accused his opponent of having a stick up his ass. You will find that sort of remark generally used by people who have no arguments left to make. But to be fair, you did try to make one earlier, and since I take a good deal of terrier-like enjoyment in pursuing and tearing apart a weak argument I must thank you for the enjoyment you've given me.
I find your insincerity most touching. By all means, please go ahead with your project to retroactively classify Fleming's heroines as femme fatales via freshly half-baked definitions that will convince no one but yourself. The ensuing verbiage will be more likely to cure my insomnia than cause an aneurysm.
I think you've long since parted company wth 'terrifically anal' and have turned that particular dial up to 11 several posts ago.
Why does there need to be a 'general pattern' of femmes fatales (note the correct pluralisation; given you seem to be struggling with the meaning of a simple question in English perhaps we might at least improve your French?), that's just something you've made up and have decided to foist on the rest of us as fact despite still not understanding the question which states explicitly that there need not be any literary reference.
I think you have mistunderstood the whole thread. It's asking us our opinion of what we think of as scenes that evoke the spirit of Fleming (something, incidentally, you're perfectly happy to sign off on in the opera scene as per below) but aren't linked to anything in the books so looking for evidence either exact or general is a fairly pointless exercise as that is not what the OP asked.
And how would you know what he wouldn't write? Seems you've got a personal hotline to Ian's coffin.
Priceless.
So a vague notion of elegance (once again hardly empirical, more in the eye of the beholder - to chav vermin an Iceland party platter is the height of elegance) is more than sufficient evidence for you to give it your stamp of Flemingesque approval but the fact Fleming wrote about Vesper (fit and a traitor, but more troubled than evil) and Rosa and Irma (downright evil but rough as arseholes) so it's not inconceivable at some point he could've melded 'fit and evil' into one character is insufficient?
Once again your grasp of 'logic and reason' is tenuous. It makes no difference in the slightest how 'effective' a scene is. The bungy jump in GE or the parkour scene in CR are effective but are they Flemingesque? I guess you'll have to tell me as you have access to the magic portal into Fleming's head that is closed to the rest of us.
I'll have a go...
One thing that pops up a lot in the films, from the 60s to now, and that has a Fleming feeling to me, is whenever Bond and a girl are sitting down to eat, or just sitting down period (though eating would obviously be the most common reason for the characters doing so). I'm thinking of moments like Bond and Domino sitting to eat in TB (right as they meet and before they dance following the poker game), the deleted scene of DAF with Bond and Plenty, Bond and Vesper's first meeting and dining experience after the poker game, Bond and Madeleine's discussion on the train in SP, etc.
These moments are usually there to get the characters acquainted, to build Bond's chemistry with the women and to make their dynamic known to the audience, while also telling us a lot about the girl and Bond in some way while they play off each other. The result is very organic character building, when at its best.
Fleming notably did this sort of trick in Casino Royale a lot, staging Bond and Vesper's examinations of each other around dining that revealed different aspects of each other's personalities through the meal. It's in the dining scenes that we learn about Vesper's work, her view on Bond and some of her past history and interests, and it's also where Bond shares his stories of being a 00, how he got his number and many more below the surface things. On top of this, what Bond and Vesper decide to order tells us more of their tastes, and especially shows how detailed Bond is when it comes to his fine eating.
One of my favorite Fleming chapters is itself framed around a dining scenario, and it's the chapter in Diamonds Are Forever where Bond and Tiffany first get to interviewing each other and feeling out who they are following their quiet meeting at Tiffany's apartment. I think it gets about setting up their rather strong chemistry and introducing the mysterious Tiffany to us quite well. Later on in the novel as Fleming carries the action to the cruise liner, another dinner scene continues to peel behind the layers of the characters as Tiffany opens up about herself even more and Bond answers questions regarding love and marriage that show a softer side to him. As with Casino, these quieter moments between the action and more tense developments in the plot are used to halt us with the characters so that we can learn more about them and how they are getting on with each other.
The films use this framing technique in much the same way, probably the best example I can think of being the CR dining scene between Bond and Vesper on the train and then later after the game has been won. The first scene tells us a lot about who Vesper is and who Bond is as they madly cross-examine one another, but it also makes their chemistry explosive, setting up all their later interactions until they warm to one another. The later dining scene is the payoff to their relationship that has formed over the duration of the movie, as Bond is able to peel behind Vesper's heart to find the meaning of the necklace and Bond in the same token shares his thoughts on his job and the coldness that comes with it. Their interactions contrast then, first as frivolous banter and then later as more meaningful dialogues about life, choice and purpose, as Vesper sees a greater life for Bond after caring for him as the film has gone on.
The other examples I mentioned do interesting things too, if not as monumentally, because the dining situations are played somewhat lighter and aren't as tied to important plot developments. The talks Bond and Domino share imply a lot of strange things between the girl and Largo, but also introduce us to the innocence of Domino and the caring side Bond develops for her. In DAF the dining scene with Plenty (that really should've remained in the movie) sets an atmosphere while also showing a less conniving side to the woman, who is a gold digger but a sweet one nonetheless. That Plenty and the woman know each other by name tells us Plenty scopes out rich men a lot, a nice little moment of comedy to move the plot along as the girl asks Bond if he's ready to head to his room.
The dining conversation with Bond and Madeleine in SP is probably the closest of them all to what Casino's dining discussions do, as the purpose of the scene is to have Bond and a woman pondering questions of life for a brief moment, as Madeleine almost verbatim repeats Vesper's speech about choice to Bond and Bond quietly makes his thoughts on purpose and free will/choice known since all those years had passed. I also like that, just as Fleming chose to end the dining scene with Bond and Vesper with urgency as Bond smells a trap (which the film follows suit with), SP's dining scene also has an abrupt end as Hinx comes crashing through to interrupt the conversation, carrying the action forward again after that speed bump.
@Torgeirtrap, some of them are interesting, for sure. Not sure why they were left out, at least the Plenty and Bond dining scene, as I think it fits into the story nicely. I guess the thought was that using a dining scene for just a few little remarks between Bond and Plenty wasted too much time, and instead the roulette scene ends with the pair sharing the same ending dialogue to get Bond up to his room where the action can continue. It's probably a better paced narrative that way, to be honest, but at least the deleted content is available to see.
(Still waiting on that alternate ending for QoS, all these years later ;) )
I am not speaking for a dead man. His work does,loud and clear. It's just you and some others that don't hear it.
Yeah, that scene was quite good. The scene where Plenty returns to Bond's room after being thrown in the pool, too.
Remind me; what was the alternative ending to QoS, again?
Ooh, interesting! Has never been released, I take it?
Thanks! That one was new to me! :-)
With the White story over, and the Craig era coming to an end, hopefully the next few years will see that footage released. I get why it hasn't been shared to this point, I guess, as White was still waiting in the wings to come back for SP (it would be weird to see a character back that was supposed to die two films earlier), but now that it's over what's the harm? It appears that everything that was going to be the ending was shot, so it must be somewhere. The only question being if the footage was edited into an ending, or if the choice not to have it in the film was made before it was ever seriously edited for inclusion.
Oh I never knew about this! How fun. I bet QoS had loads of unused stuff to be honest.
In the spirit of the Monty Python Special Edition DVD there is the unshot footage for Quantum of Solace.
The Haiti boat chase was planned to extend outside the harbor area but canceled is one example.
Another is filming in the mountains at Cusco, Peru. It would be interesting to know the context for what was planned.
Sanchez feels like a true Fleming villain. The way Bond goes undercover to get close to him feels very Flemingesque.
Bond on the stonecrusher conveyor belt, the way he kills Sanchez `Don't you want to know why?', covered in blood and suit in tatters.
To me LTK is the one Bond film when the writers came up with something that could have been written by Fleming. Every other attempt has been pretty dire, particularly since Babs took over the reigns.
Agreed, that's why LTK is one of my favourite Bond movies.
Probably because Fleming did write it in TMWTGG!
:)
Yes I think it was intentionally based on TMWTGG too, despite what Wilson claims about it being from some Japanese western, or whatever film it was. I'm guessing Maibaum (who was fluent in adapting Fleming), knew exactly what he was doing when writing the script, even down to the two villains sharing the same initials.
Obviously other than CR, LTK feels like the last time a Bond film truly went down the Fleming route.
The torture scene that follows feels very Fleming too, but that is because it was based on the Amis Colonel Sun scene, which as a book felt fairly close to Fleming.
It was then unforgivably let down by Bond's miraculous speedy recovery, which took the film straight back into Brosnan parody territory.