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Yes, ridiculous and overused by haters. And throw in their similar claims about the producers, which found a resurgence with their recent award announcement.
Had the original plan to have a Cary Grant or David Niven play Bond for a one-off, Bond may have very well just been another part of those actors' illustrious careers. It's telling that Connery made the role his from the beginning.
Also, this is not a Brosnan bash, but this is where he was at a disadvantage because he had the preconceived perception, born to be Bond, that we got what we expected from him and a Bond role of the time and where Craig was able to take it somewhere else.
It’s not just his looks, natural charisma and the way he carried himself that cemented him as such, but it was his consistently brilliant delivery of both serious and humorous dialogue, especially in his first four films, that proved to be his greatest strength.
His exchanges with Dr. No, Grant and Goldfinger (and to a lesser extent, Largo) are shining examples of this and to this day have never been topped as far as I’m concerned.
He did benefit greatly from having expertly written dialogue delivered by such wonderful actors like Wiseman, Shaw and Fröbe/Collins but boy, did he rise to the challenge.
Onesies in 1964? It's a mad, mad, mad world. :)
I thought Connery introduced the onesie in Zardoz.
Nah that was the knee high boots and a nut sling.
I stand corrected.
100 % agree with you. And Connery just owns the cinema screen, not just as Bond, but look at him in The Hill, The Offence, The Man Who Would Be King, The Untouchables, The Hunt for the Red October, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade... all powerhouse performances. That's why he became a superstar. Roger, Brosnan, Craig have all been very popular Bonds, but for all of their successes (and Craig is, IMO, the best actor amongst them, along with Connery) none have reached that legendary superstar status.
Not to mention that if you stand up too quickly, you will stand uncomfortably as well as corrected. You'll be ready for an adjustment, a "correction" of another sort.
I'm so fond of that weird little film. Imagine as a tag line for a Bond film "The gun is good, the penis is bad."
Zardoz is obviously batsh*t insane and, one one level, thoroughly laughable. But on another level it's beautifully filmed, full of evocative concepts and imagery, and has more ideas than a dozen conventional films put together. I don't have hesitation in calling Zardoz a cult classic. And Connery is one of the few people on earth who could appear in such a film and not turn it into camp or silliness. Even when dressed like something out of a fashion show for maniacs, he still has gravity and projects masculine self-assurance.
I dig the entire film, and the ending, in particular, is so fine...oh, did I mention CHARLOTTE RAMPLING !!!???!!!
To be watched by me some day, another entry in an endless watchlist. Charlotte Rampling has been in some good movies. I've seen a few and I can think of several others I'd like to watch.
He's the most well-rounded and checks all the boxes. He has the looks and sex appeal. He has the humor and charm. And could almost pass as a killer.
He also had more opportunities than the other actors, 6 films, most of which were based on Fleming novels.
How is Connery's performance in NSNA bad? It's the best part of an otherwise patchy film. I'd take Connery in NSNA over any performance by Brosnan or by Craig in Spectre.
The supposed badness of Connery's performances in YOLT, DAF, and NSNA is wildly overstated. Even when coasting through the role Connery still had his charisma, screen presence, timing, and wit. None of the other Bond actors could summon that much in their worst outings.
Couple that with the now legendary stories of his rough upbringing, taking down 6 gangster thugs in a fight when he was a bouncer, etc. pro golfer, living in the Bahamas and Marbella, that he spent quality time with the man himself - Ian Fleming, he basically embodied everything that cinematic Bond needed on screen, without even trying to act it. He just was like that naturally.
There are not many actors that carry all these traits in real life, which is why Connery was a rare specimen. Most actors would need to depend on their talent as an actor to bring these traits to the screen. Connery didn't need to act out any of those traits, he already embodied all that in real life.
I think NSNA is one of his better performances, actually. But you're really doing the same thing as the person you're quoting: It's not uncommon to hear that nearly every aspect of an unloved movie is bad. If you're talking about acting performances, nothing about Brosnan's work generally, or certainly Craig's in Spectre, is lacking in terms of acting prowess when compared to any of Connery's performances.
There are plenty of questionable moments in Sean's time as Bond, probably more than in any of the other eras, save perhaps Lazenby. When he tells Domino about her brother, it's pretty janky, and is not generally recognized as a great moment. His driving acting in Dr No is laughable. His expression when he confronts Tatiana in FRWL is probably not quite what he was going for. Even his first "Bond, James Bond", while fantastic in isolation, is completely untethered from the rest of his performance over the following 5-6 films. He never has those tones or mannerisms again. The same could be said for his false ingratiating tone with Professor Dent, or his occasional random barking. (For some reason, Sean's Bond is at his most angry in Dr No when calling Pussfeller to his table) And in fact, most of his questionable stuff occurs when he's actually acting, as opposed to doing the heightened-version-of-yourself movie star thing.
There’s a general tendency to look back at things that were successful and consider it to be some kind of miracle that it happened at all. (Creationists do it with the whole universe!) “Sean Connery was so brilliantly panther-like! It’s a wonder the producers didn’t mistake him for an actual panther and cast someone else! The series would have gone nowhere!” Well, no, Bond could have done just fine with someone else, just like The Matrix and Lord of the Rings did fine with other people. And just like The Hunt for Red October and The Last Crusade would have done fine with other people. Hell, in another universe, people could be saying “Thank God they got Tom Selleck out of his CBS contract, because nobody could have possibly embodied Indiana Jones the way he did!”
We got a great Bond in Sean because the producers knew what to look for and because Terence Young helped make him great. It could have happened with another fella. If you put a suave guy in a nice suit and surround him with an inventive film like Goldfinger, it’s gonna work out. And if it didn't, we'd be talking about whatever phenomenon would have happened in its place.
I love Sean—Outland and Diamonds Are Forever are among my favorite films—but the most overstated stuff here is the wildly hyperbolic appraisal of his acting in the Bond series.
Really? Craig's performance in Spectre is stolid, and would be even if the film were more exciting. And Brosnan's acting is frequently stiff and mannered, adjectives I would never use about Connery.
Your "questionable moments" add up to some debatable nitpicks. (I am at a loss to see what was so "janky" about Connery telling Domino about her brother, and if I had ESP maybe I'd understand what expression Connery thought he was going for in FRWL.)
We got a great Bond in Sean because Connery was a movie star in the making and the series had the good fortune to cast him. Young helped him get suited to the upper-class accoutrements of the role, but the qualities that made Connery great were already present. Directors can refine actors and help them become stars but they can't create them out of whole cloth. So you should probably give Sean some credit for why we got a great Bond in him.
And I doubt it would have been as much of a success, just as I doubt that Terence Young's first choice for the role, Richard Johnson, would have set audiences on fire. An inescapable part of the immense success of the first Bond films was not just the audiences discovering Bond but also their discovering Connery and making him a movie star. American (and global) audiences liked him because of the rough-hewn qualities that Young sandpapered.
Hardly that simple. Did dropping the nicely suited Lazenby into an inventive film like OHMSS make everyone forget about Connery and sing Lazenby's praises?
I think Sean is janky in the sunglasses scene (among others) because he's wooden and emotionless, and not in some intentional "I'm a cold-blooded killer way", but more in a stiff, "George Lazenby" way. George actually did human and emotional stuff significantly better than Connery did (in Bond, anyway), and had more failings in the mundane expositional dialogue, where Connery offered a hell of a lot more charm. Incidentally, taking over from the guy who starred in a cultural phenomenon is not the same thing at all as being cast in something that becomes a cultural phenomenon, so I don't think your comparison at the end is a fair one. I do suspect Goldfinger would have been Goldfinger with a George.
But if you think Sean is oozing charisma in YOLT, or his driving acting only stands out as comical as a nitpick, that's absolutely fine. Or if his serious scene with Domino was somehow good acting, or at the very least balanced out by the apparently brilliant delivery of "I think he got the point", that's okay too. But I suspect that contemporary reviews focused more on Sean's sexiness, and less on his talent (which developed as he went on), and most of this gushing is retrospective second-hand nostalgia.
Unfortunately I don't know who Richard Johnson is, just as I wouldn't know who Sean Connery is had he not been cast as James Bond. Maybe we'd be in the "second-guessing Richard Johnson" thread, imagining if the Darby O'Gill guy had become Bond. Who knows.
I don't think Connery is stiff in that scene. He starts by breaking the news in a matter of fact, straightforward manner, and even puts on his sunglasses to try playing it cool. But what I've always remembered about that scene is the quiet passion--and hint of desperation--in his voice when he tells her "thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will die." There are shadings you've overlooked.
Lazenby was given "human and emotional stuff" in OHMSS beyond anything Connery had to work with in his own films. To say he played it better than Connery would make sense only if we had an alternate universe version of OHMSS starring Sean.
But if what counts is the film rather than the actor, then audiences and critics should have had no problem with Lazenby following Connery. Unfortunately for that thesis, Connery was not merely a guy "who starred in a cultural phenomenon." He helped make that phenomenon. That's why his return in DAF was such a big deal and was so rapturously received. Audiences bonded with the actor even when his films weren't what they used to be.
Yes, it's a nitpick. You're faulting Connery for turning the wheel too far in a winding chase scene where the background is rear-projected, which means he couldn't see the road he was frantically "driving" on and adjust his reactions. What actor would do well in such conditions? There's a reason why later Bond films avoided staging car chase scenes that way, by cutting down on "rear projection" and using different set-ups. After all, it's not as if Connery's career is full of bad "driving acting".
I've read a fair amount of contemporary reviews, and the critics, who were mostly male, didn't primarily focus about how sexy Sean was, though they praised his way with ladies. They mostly praised him for being suave and tough and well suited to the role. The fact that critics thought so is itself a testament to Connery's talent.
Well, Richard Johnson can be seen in plenty of shows and films, including the Bond knock-off Deadlier Than the Male and an excellent 1974 TV version of Antony and Cleopatra. He was a good actor but I don't think he would have clicked in the role of Bond the way Connery did. I will also venture that Connery could have become a star even without Bond, in the way that Michael Caine or Albert Finney became successes during the 60s.
One place we absolutely agree is that Sean was never given really any interesting character material at all. Not sure if that gap adds to the quality of everything, but yeah, there's not much going on with Sean's Bond, which was the point of my first long comment here a few days ago. But when the opportunity is there (e.g. the clip you linked to, or Kissy's death), I don't see anything George wouldn't have done at least as well. But to be clear, the vast majority of TB's dialogue is better coming from Sean than it would have been coming from George.
No, you're kind of making that up. We don't have some sample of James Bond franchises that started with or without Sean Connery. It's impossible to state to what degree Sean "made the phenomenon". His non-Bond stuff didn't set the world alight as far as I know. Like the Tom Selleck example, Indiana Jones is a great idea with or without Harrison Ford, and there's no actual reason whatsoever to assume that it couldn't have been done with another guy. A ground-breaking adaptation of Ian Fleming's wonderful series in the most innovative era of pop culture up to that time does not depend on one panther-like dude. And we have no idea what apparently capable actor Richard Johnson would have been like in Terence Young's Dr No.
Sean's return in DAF was a big deal because the original guy was back. People are excited to see Hayden Christensen back as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, but I don't know how much it speaks to Hayden's performance in Attack of the Clones. People were disgruntled about Matt Damon being replaced with Jeremy Renner in the Bourne movies, and happy to have Matt back. Not sure how much we can discern who the better performer is there. I think it's Jeremy--but of course I would! (Though again, Sean is obviously a better performer than George was)
A panther-like easy watchability. ;)
But of course, I agree totally. I do though find Roger to be the king of easy watchability.
The fact that Bond made Connery a movie star who enjoyed a career better than anyone else who's had the role is evidence in itself. Again, part of the success of the series was the public discovering Connery and making him a star. If a few of his non-Bond films weren't successes it's for the usual reason that the public was less prepared to see him play characters beside Bond, but he overcame this.
There's no reason to assume it would have been as successful either, unless you believe actors with strong personalities are interchangeable. Tom Selleck's Indiana Jones would have been significantly different from Harrison Ford's. Would the public have taken to the character as much? I doubt it--Ford was someone who make it big in movies, Selleck never really broke out of TV. Something similar for Richard Johnson as Bond. Good actor, but didn't have Connery's charisma or killer instinct. It's like arguing that Casablanca would have been just fine if someone else played Rick instead of Bogart.
Connery was part of the key group of people--John Barry, Ken Adam, Ian Fleming, Terence Young, Broccoli and Saltzman--that established the Bond films. Remove any of them from the equation and the success of the series becomes less sure. And Connery was the public face of the series. I don't think it would have been possible for the films to have become a phenomenon unless the actor in them was someone the public genuinely embraced. The public made Connery a star.
Sean's return in DAF was also a significantly bigger deal and the primary selling point of DAF. Critics and audiences were far more enthusiastic about it because they had taken to him. It's wasn't just "the original guy is back." It was "the original guy everyone loved" is back, which could hardly be said about Christensen.
But obviously Sean Connery was tremendously popular as James Bond. Nobody's saying otherwise. But "remove [Connery, Barry, etc] from the equation and the success of the series becomes less sure"...it's just conjecture. It could have been more or less or equally successful. The course of history has not forged its way to create the perfect versions of everything: just the versions we've come to know. Obviously. Sorry to be so philosophical!
Five other dudes played Bond, to varying degrees of commercial and critical success, and the two most popular movies among hardcore fans seem to be Casino Royale and OHMSS, two non-Sean vehicles. And most of the Bond movies, really, had they been released in 1962, would have been very entertaining movies completely unlike anything anyone had seen before, and at a vital time in pop culture. There are a million ways this all could have unfolded.
But to me this is all interesting because when people gush about Sean's acting in Bond films, I really have no idea what they're talking about...! He was a cool, sexy, tough dude, and I love him, but when the character has no emotional interest to anything or anyone, and the films don't even explore that lack of emotional connections, I don't even know how much meaningful acting could be coming into play....
But we're talking about entire careers. Selleck was a big TV star that, for all his efforts, wasn't accepted as a film star. Connery was, and though his biggest successes came in the 80s, he was still a star in the late 60s and 70s, when he made some of his best films. As a movie star he enjoyed a richer career than any of the other Bonds because the public made him a star with Bond, a bigger star than anyone else who played the character.
I'm not sure what would have made the series "more" successful, whereas it's clear that removing any of the major players could have resulted in less effective and less popular films.
Adjusting for inflation, Connery's films enjoyed greater commercial (and almost certainly greater critical) success than any Bond until Craig. Hardcore fans like OHMSS and CR because they're the "special" entries in the series. But what about the general public? And most hardcore fans, if pressed to name their favorite Bond, are still most likely to name Connery.
Not really, when one considers films like North By Northwest. Even Fritz Lang's Spione (1928) has recognizably Bondian elements.
That's a really impoverished conception of "meaningful acting." Are you under the impression that Connery was just being himself when playing Bond? As Sidney Lumet said about Connery, "the thing that was apparent to me--and to most directors--was how much talent and ability it takes to play that kind of character, [who's] based on charm and magnetism. It's the movie equivalent of high comedy, and he did it brilliantly.''
To so skillfully project a fantasy character like Bond on screen is very much meaningful acting, since Connery was obviously not Bond in real life. The lack of emotional connection was part of what audiences liked in the first cycle of Bond films, and to appear "cool, sexy, [and] tough" (and let's not forget witty) on screen required acting.
One of my favourite scenes of the Connery era is in FRWL, and he's standing by the train telling one of Kerim Bay's sons that his father is dead. If I remember right, he flicks his cigarette down after he's told him, and sternly lays out his demands for the continuation of the mission. That coldness comes across in the Fleming books a lot, yet we don't see it too much on screen.
I think I like that kind of stuff in Bond films, considerably more than having a Bond with a sentimental emotional interest in things. I don't think our current movie Bond with his resolved pre-death smile and cuddly toy is a sissy, but I don't think he's the Bond Fleming imagined.
Connery's first four movies are the best representations of Fleming's world, and in those days it didn't really matter that screen Bond's heart was an emotional wasteland, people weren't looking for obvious played-out emotion back then.
These days, everything is all about displays of emotion. I think Connery's Bond has simply gone out of fashion.