Bonded November 23, 2006

I READ our Saturday Special article on local preferences of James Bond actors, and found it very interesting. Most Filipinos believe Sean Connery was the best Bond ever. Even those who weren't around in the 1960s when Connery burst on the scene and changed the concept of cinematic hero forever.

I'm not entirely surprised. Some years ago, I told my daughter about a review I read about "First Knight." The reviewer said it subverted suspension of disbelief that any woman would fall for Richard Gere (Lancelot) when she already had Sean Connery (King Arthur). Gray beard and all, the reviewer said, Connery still came across as sexier than Gere. I thought that was the funniest thing in the world. My daughter did not.

That was what most of those who picked Connery over the other Bond actors said. He was sexy. He was sophisticated and urbane. He had charm and elegance.

Another did say he always thought Connery was the Bond, until Daniel Craig came along. He had just seen "Casino Royale," and he could say for certain Craig was the real deal.

I agree -- to a point. I've seen "Casino Royale," too, and can say Craig lives every bit up to the hype. The hype says he's the best Bond since Connery, one guaranteed to pump new life into a dying franchise. He is, and will. Paradoxically, he's the perfect Bond for the new millennium because he's the one that hews closest to Ian Fleming's old Cold War vision of the character. He isn't one very cool Bond, he is one very icy Bond -- though not beyond melting. Certainly he isn't a Bond who says "Shocking" after he has electrified the bad guy. His witticisms have darker hues.

It's an inspired twist, but I myself would still pick Connery as the quintessential Bond for several reasons.

True enough, he wasn't faithful to Fleming's vision of the character. I read some of the Bond books in high school and can say with reasonable recall that the comic-strip version, which appeared regularly in one of the martial law newspapers, was by far the more faithful reproduction.

Fleming himself is known to have personally picked Connery to play Bond. He was convinced Connery was perfect for the part. But the movie Bond, which took on monstrous iconic, or iconoclastic, proportions, was not Fleming's vision, he was Terence Young's vision. Young was the first director of James Bond, and hands-down the best ever. The real cinematic Bond in fact was not Connery, it was Young.

Connery was a poor man's son who did hard manual work and competed in bodybuilding contests before he threw his lot into the movies. He was, by his own account, rough and unpolished, lacking the flair and sophistication needed to play the part. Young gave him that—by giving him the perfect example, who was himself. Connery merely needed to imitate him, and add his own physical attributes to the part. The original Bond was Young: dashing, urbane, well-traveled, patron of casinos, a spendthrift by most accounts, spending money as fast as he made them, a rogue charmer, a man-of-the-world, an out-and-out lover of life. Connery was his alter ego, albeit one that needed to be vigorously sculpted. Young merely fused the dark side of Ian Fleming's secret agent to his own personality, transposed them into Connery, and, voila, a living breathing person emerged. And he became as popular as Sherlock Holmes, although Holmes is (as far as I know) the only literary character that has a full biography.

But what a magnificent sculpture Connery turned out to be. Which brings me to why I believe Connery remains the best Bond ever. It's not just his acting or presence -- Craig is better in the first and at par in the second -- it is all the iconic elements that he brought to the role. Bond is also the product of his time, a creature of his time. The younger generation will probably not be able to appreciate the revolution his character wrought on the movies.

There's one scene in the very first Bond movie, "Dr. No," that says it all. That scene has Bond waiting patiently for a creep of a doctor who tried to dispatch him to the next life with a tarantula. The doctor enters, pumps his bed full of bullets, and discovers he is not in it. After a brief conversation, Bond shoots him, silencer and all (every other secret agent would tote that henceforth), in cold blood. That scene took a while to pass the censors. No movie hero had ever shot a villain that way before. The producers argued their cause-- it was completely ethical to do that in light of the provocation—and eventually won it.

Without that watershed, the opening of "Casino Royale" would not be possible. But I'll say no more about it, lest I spoil the pleasure of those who haven't seen it yet.

That scene alone would spawn an entire tribe of cinematic heroes-antiheroes, which would culminate in the brilliantly dementedly inspired Man-With-No-Name gunslinger character of Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. Today, of course, with Lucy Liu lopping off the head of a Yakuza boss in an underworld board meeting in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill 1," that would be par for the course, replete with cult witticism.

A whole procession of actors has come along to play Bond, of whom Craig is easily the best after Connery. But Connery can never be knocked off the pantheon of the gods. When he said for the first time at the casino in "Dr. No," "My name is Bond (pause, to light a cigarette), James Bond," he didn't just mouth a line, he staked a claim. No other actor may say that without feeling like a poacher.

James Bond himself might as have said, "My name is Sean," pause for whatever, "Sean Connery." But as an afterthought, he might also have said, "My name is Craig," pause for a wry smile, "Daniel Craig."

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