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The Professor Dent appreciation thread
I think it is needed. Isn't he a great character and such an underrated villain? A rare breed: a banal, part-time, amateur villain. Ready to go against a professional killer out of fear of Dr. No. Anyway, let's start the appreciation now.
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Especially when that second bullet hit him.
Such a great scene that was shocking by the standards of the day, I remember my Dad telling me when that scene was happening to be aware of some real life violence on it's way, and later that it was quite controversial with the censors. I still love to see him get that second shot in his death throes, realistic, cold blooded stuff of legend.
I love that scene, as evidenced by my avatar.
Lets all watch it again, shall we?
Interesting question: Was Dent determined to bite off more than he could chew, by moonlighting as an amateur killer, rather than being just a corrupt professor, or did No bully him to act beyond his competence?
If the latter, then No either considered him expendable or No was both ruthless and reckless.
Dent was a movie invention though. Fleming would have taken time to properly explain Dent's status and competencies in the No hierarchy.
Reading this thread and the amateur tag does indeed remind one of Dominic Greene - a sign that Bond villainy has really come full-circle as of late.
I don't think Greene is an amateur: his society is merely a cover and he is more a schemer than an eco-friendly businessman. You could say however that Elliot Carver and even Goldfinger were amateur criminals, albeit very gifted. Dent was a real amateur. A talented one, one that was used to great effect by Dr. No, but an amateur nevertheless: he is geologist first, spy second.
I think he was bullied by Dr. No, although very intelligently so: Dent takes direct action against Bond only at last resort, because he NEEDS to kill Bond, or else he has to face No's punishment. First he puts the tarantula in Bond's room, then it is the three blind mice that go against him. Things only go very wrong for Dent when he tries to shoot Bond himself. Still, I think he must have thought it was a better fate than going back to Crab Key to admit failure. As for his motivations to be at Dr No's service in the first place, we don't know them, but we can speculate...
Also, I was reminded I need to go see my dentist.
Well, what I meant was that Greene was an amateur in terms of his fighting technique - see him let loose with the axe which he ends up putting through his own foot in his climactic fight with Bond! He did not expect to get him hands dirty - that's what...erm...Elvis was meant for.
Interesting observation. There is certainly something of Wormold from Our Man in Havana and Pendel from The Tailor of Panama about Dent.
You get the sense that heres a fundamentally ordinary bloke who thought he could just cream a little off on the side, not millions, just enough to retire early.
Probably he started just doing minor tasks like reporting back to Dr No the tittle tattle at the Queens Club and before he knew it he was out of his depth trying to kill a double-O agent. It might make a nice little spin off in the vein of the two titles above to have a Professor Dent prequel that starts with him eking out a meagre living lecturing at the University of the West Indies when a Chigroe agent makes contact and ends with him organising the murder of Strangways.
'The Kingston Professor' is rather derivative but all I can come up with off the top of my head. Maybe just 'Strangways' is better and the focus is on him? But as a story I prefer the idea of following Dent as he gets ever more out of his depth being trapped between Dr No and Strangways.
I'm sorry have I missed something here? Did Anthony Dawson have particularly bad teeth?
Dentine is the soft part of the tooth, but I expect you are pulling our legs with that comment just to see who would bite.
I think your hypothesis is probably the right one: Dent was doing it for the money, at first probably not thinking of the consequences. I watched a documentary about British mole during the Cold War, and they betrayed their country for the equivalent of a pay rise. I think this is what happened to Dent: his professor's salary was too low for his taste, he decided to give service to this mysterious Chinese man, then all of a sudden he discovered he was part of a spy network. And out of fear and also greed he decided to carry on. When the movie starts, he seems mainly motivated by cowardice. To the point of murder.
According to this thread he seems to be a memorable (and fascinating) character to many.
Dent is an average man with a mostly average job whom one could very easily meet and not think twice about. He just happens to work on the side for a crime syndicate. Really, that's how most villains in the real world are. They're quite like us, only committed toward a different goal.
The only problem is that "different goal" is evil.
I would agree with what you say except that Dent's goal was evil. In fact there aren't many Bond villains whose goal is 'evil'. Usually it's money or the acquisition of power.
In fact the only Bond villains I would say were motivated by 'evil' were Stromberg (kill everyone in the world), Drax (kill everyone in the world and become God sending down the perfect specimens to populate the earth) and Silva (kill an old woman - although there is the moral debate over whether revenge is a justification or not as she did shaft him with the Chinese).
Bin Laden's goal was evil but Dent is hardly in his league. I'm pretty sure Dent didn't give a toss about toppling, he just cared for the cheques Dr No paid into his account.
That scene is just incredible.
I've honestly never loved "you've had your six" scene quite as much as most, but it's still one of Bond's most defining moments. The character (and actor) at his best.
And yet, it didn't originate in the writing of Fleming, which in itself is probably significant of something or other. Critics in the Kremlin and the Vatican united to heap much bile on this particular Dent killing scene in cold blood. It was fairly controversial at the time, to say the least, but it was of course not a part of the original 1958 novel as Professor Dent was a creation of the scriptwriters.
Well, apart from the two people he had to kill in cold blood in order to become a Double-O agent with a licence to kill in the line of duty which he did during the war - this is recounted in Casino Royale (1953) at one point. You really need to read the Bond novels, by the way.
I know, I know. I want Casino Royale to be my first one, but I haven't seen it anywhere. I found Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever, and You Only Live Twice in a bookstore, but I didn't get them out of fidelity to CR.
You can probably get them as a set quite cheap on Amazon. Well worth a read and re-read!
The other highlight for me is when he picks up the tarantula cage, getting his instructions from Dr. No. Awesome set, lighting, photo, everything works so well here.
The look of fear on Dent s face, and Dr No s creepy voice. There would be echoes of this in the next film with the unseen Blofeld. Dr No is really a sort of proto Blofeld here.
Played of course by one Anthony Dawson esq.