Bond at 50: The Connery Films (& Lazenby)

So I've finally gone back to watching all these James Bond DVDs. I had started with the Bonds I knew from when I was a kid: Dalton, Brosnan, and now Craig. Then decided to go back to the original incarnation.

Note that I've never read any of the books, so I only know Bond as a film icon.

While Dalton's Bond was the first I ever saw in the cinema, I actually knew Connery's Bond first because my mother is a big Sean Connery fan. (Mom's family is Scottish.) So I do remember seeing all these movies when they would show on Sunday afternoons on television. I never really understood what was going on in them, though. I knew Bond was the good guy, and that he would win because there were a lot of movies with him in it, so clearly he didn't ever die. And I think I would sit and watch a bit to try and see if I could understand why my parents liked these movies so much, but then I would eventually wander off because I couldn't understand it and it's boring to watch nonsense.

Fast forward to now, and it was sort of like having weird flashbacks whenever I'd see a scene that I remembered seeing as a kid. "Oh, wait, I remember this!" The films made a bit more sense, too, but only a bit. A lot of it is still really over the top, but that's something Bond has always been, in any form.

What surprised me is that I like Connery as Bond. Craig is still my favorite, but Connery is very cool. I like his attitude in these films. He's smooth when he needs to be and rough when the situation requires. And his dry humor is spot on.

And then there was that little insert of Lazenby. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is maybe one of my favorites as far as plot goes, and I think Lazenby does a fair job. But I don't like his chin. Is that weird? (I don't like Dalton's chin, either.) And it's so clear he's a model first and an actor second. There seems to be a lot of mugging and posing.

Anyway, I'm glad I revisited these. And now I'm two in with Roger Moore, so I'll update you as soon as I get through them all. But as a preview: I don't love Moore's Bond. But I can't decide if it's the scripts or the acting I'm having a problem with. We'll see how it goes.