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Nudity in The Living Daylights
I saw The Living Daylights in the theater, on the day of the U.S. debut back in 1987. One thing that struck me was that it was the first Bond film that I had seen which featured nudity. When Bond goes to assassinate General Pushkin (at his mistress' hotel room), Pushkin signals his bodyguard with his watch. Bond rips off the clothes of his mistress, as a distraction to Pushkin's bodyguard. When I first saw this part in the theater, I surprised to see a a full on shot of the mistresses' bare breasts, but when the film came out on VHS, the scene was cut. When I got the film on laserdisc, it was edited similarly. On the DVD the scene is intact, but edited that you only see the face of the mistress, rather than the full shot. You do see a side shot of the bare breasted mistress, but it's obscured compared to the original way that I saw the film. I just recently watched The Living Daylights at MOMA, and was hoping to have my memory confirmed by their original 1987 print of the film, but I noticed that their copy was edited as well. The difference is, is that there was no reaction shot from the mistress, just the reaction shot from the bodyguard. The edit looked completely clumsy compared to the rest of the film. Does anyone know the scene that I'm referring to? And does anyone else remember the scene from the original premiere? I completely understand why the producers would edit the scene out, because it really doesn't fit in with the PG world of a Bond film, and maybe test screen audiences objected. I myself was shocked as a 15 year old, but nevertheless, I know for a fact I saw the scene in the film.
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Comments
I'm too young, I'm turning 19 this december, for having seen this movie in the cinema so I've only watched the edited version of it. I can't help you with this one.
On my LTD dvd there is no frontal breast shot, but neither does it look clumsy, in fact I always liked the way it is handled.
I saw the film in theatres, but I cannot remember any details of that particular scene.
You have a workprint of TLD? Awesome!
You can find the clip here:
Mod: Link removed as website contains adult content. Please think before including such links in future, thanks
Got it last year by accident...finally. I thought the existence of that gem was a myth too :D I´ll upload it as part of my Jubilee project in the next few weeks
But I'm in the UK, maybe they showed a different version over there in America?
=))
I'm not doubting you as I didn't see the film in cinemas, but why would there be a full frontal?
My son was aghast!
I still have the ticket stub from 2:25 pm showing on Friday, July 31st.
I also found this early clipping of a tiny review on The living Daylights that even says that film contains brief nudity.
Some other clippings...
What the hell is that '?' doing there.... it should say ''A BETTER BOND!!!!!!!!"
Also, in 1987 'brief nudity' meant butt shots... they let the 'side boob' thing slide. A frontal shot would have demanded an R! [-X
I saw TLD twice in the theatres in Canada and I can assure you that there was no front shot of the actress where you saw her breasts. However, I don't doubt that you believe that you saw one.
There was a great research study done many years back on the fallibility of memory. The reason that I recall it so well (yes, I understand the irony) is that I read it less than two weeks after having a conversation with a writer friend of mine about how many people mis-remember plot points or scenes in films - very frustrating for him because, as a screenwriter, he labours over getting the most minute deatails of a scene perfect. We were talking about this because my roommate insisted that a very popular film ended with the main character committing suicide by jumping off of a building in the end, when in fact the final shot is just him standing there looking down and distraught. Despite it being a very famous film he wouldn't believe the several people who told him how it really ended, including a film critic! We eventually rented the movie so he could see for himself and he was shocked that he remembered so clearly something that never happened.
So the study had hundreds of university students watch a film and then they had to answer questions about it afterwards. One of the questions referenced a scene that wasn't in the film, such as "When the main character shot the guard...". Even on the first go-round about 15% of people said they remembered him doing that, but not the details. A week later they asked similar questions but now about half of the people "remembered" the scene, and after a third round of questioning another week later around 85% of the people "remembered" the scene. So the idea is that when a false memory is suggested, given time to germinate, and then reinforced it's indistinguishable for most people from a real memory. Friends of mine who are lawyers and police officers have also commented on this phenomenon.
Now with films, I've seen people misremember many things and I've done it myself. The most common things? Anything sensationalistic because we build up the shock factor in our minds. So anything with brutal violence or surprising sexuality gets exaggerated in our own minds over time. I hope this isn't disappointing but it's a much more reasonable (and expected) explanation than you getting to see some rogue print of the film that no one else ever saw...
@MasterDahark
Feelings towards Timothy Dalton was pretty mixed I've got some more interesting clipping if you're interested.