Getting away with things in the Bond Novels you can't do in the Films?

Silhouette Man

By way of a prelude to this thread I'm of course fully aware that books and films are two very different mediums of storytelling, but nonetheless this is a question that has cropped up in my mind for a long time when considering the James Bond films more in-depth as I am apt to do frequently.

I'm thinking here of the scenes in the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels (and of course the many continuation Bond novels afterwards by various authors) that are fine enough in a novel on the written page. In a book, the dear reader can use their fevered imagination as much as he or she pleases in order to bring the author's words to life in the form of a personalised visual image. However, on film such a scene would cause problems with the censors (the Honey Rider crab scene in Dr. No for instance which was greatly toned down in the film version) or for reasons of good taste, overly long scenes of dialogue, for political and moral reasons etc.

Another thought is why these scenes or even types of villains are fine in books - e.g. having neo-Nazis a s villains in John Gardner's Icebreaker (1983) and SeaFire (1994) but would not ever really be countenanced an official Bond film by Eon. Of course other spy films based on books have featured neo-Nazis (one thinks of The Quiller Memorandum (1966) based on the novel by Adam Hall), so why do neo-Nazis never feature in a Bond film? Probably for the same reason the New IRA, ISIS or Al-Queada will not either - it dates the film, is too overtly political/current affairs-like for the Eon Bond film series. The graphic I posted above illustrates the dangers of making a Bond film which involves, say, Islamic extremist villainy better than I could ever encapsulate it in words!

Anyway, this fine line between what is acceptable in an official Bond novel and an official Bond film is of great interest to me (and hopefully others here, too). So what are the basic differences between the nature of the Bond novels and the Bond films that preclude certain scenes,characters, themes, dialogue, villains, villain organisations etc.? Basically, why is it fine in one of the main two strands of the Bond character construct but not in the other strand? This is the crux of what I want to discuss in this thread.

Take it away, Sam...

caractacus potts

(I think) Fleming wrote exactly whatever amused him and didn't care if anybody was offended, he certainly seems like the type who delights in being outrageous
the filmmakers however are motivated by wanting to sell as many ticket as possible, anywhere in the world ...blaming SMERSH for everything might have limited ticket sales in large potential markets, so they have always played it very safe

Silhouette Man wrote:

...the Honey Rider crab scene in Dr. No for instance which was greatly toned down in the film version...

Revelator quoted an interesting letter written by Fleming in another thread on the topic of these crabs(https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/46064/what-are-you-currently-reading/page/13/ post 309), I quote the relevant part:

fleming wrote:

Queequeg asks what happened to the crabs in the film Dr. No. Alas, they went the way of the giant squid, despite urgent representations from me and from one of the producers. The black crabs had not started 'running' in Jamaica last February when the Jamaican scenes were being shot, but on my return to London in March I received an excited invitation to visit Pinewood and inspect a consignment of spider crabs obtained from Guernsey. A large tank was unveiled. All the crabs were dead. I asked if they had been preserved in sea water and was told that, since none was available, they had been put in fresh water with plenty of salt added! After that the crab faction gave up.
(letter to the Spectator, Oct. 26 1962)

the crabs were left out of the film for practical reasons, much like the seaside castle in YOLT
too bad, because the way the scene plays out in the film makes Honey look like a much more passive, useless character than the Honeychile Rider Fleming wrote ... in the book she knows more about these crabs than Dr No does, saves herself and escapes and meets Bond in the hallways during the general panic ... in the film she's the stereotypical damsel in distress
a problem I have in most cases with the adaptations, Fleming wrote some very interesting female characters, the films mostly replaced them with vaguely written fashion model types

Chriscoop

Have books ever been censored? As far as im aware a 10 year old could quite happily walk into whsmiths and buy any novel he likes, irrelevant of the content. Certainly it's probably the case that you have to have prior knowledge and understanding of the words an author uses to be able to visualise what's being written where as a movie leaves nothing to the imagination. The rather startling experience Pussy Galore has in trigger mortis would never make it into a bond film and to read you have to understand the words used to describe her " womanhood"

CoolHandBond

Chriscoop wrote:

Have books ever been censored? As far as im aware a 10 year old could quite happily walk into whsmiths and buy any novel he likes, irrelevant of the content. Certainly it's probably the case that you have to have prior knowledge and understanding of the words an author uses to be able to visualise what's being written where as a movie leaves nothing to the imagination. The rather startling experience Pussy Galore has in trigger mortis would never make it into a bond film and to read you have to understand the words used to describe her " womanhood"

Enid Blyton books are heavily censored today from their original printings - Famous Five and Five Find-Outers series especially so. Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the UK until 1960 so a ban of 32 years. There are many more instances also.

Chriscoop

CoolHandBond wrote:

Chriscoop wrote:

Have books ever been censored? As far as im aware a 10 year old could quite happily walk into whsmiths and buy any novel he likes, irrelevant of the content. Certainly it's probably the case that you have to have prior knowledge and understanding of the words an author uses to be able to visualise what's being written where as a movie leaves nothing to the imagination. The rather startling experience Pussy Galore has in trigger mortis would never make it into a bond film and to read you have to understand the words used to describe her " womanhood"

Enid Blyton books are heavily censored today from their original printings - Famous Five and Five Find-Outers series especially so. Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the UK until 1960 so a ban of 32 years. There are many more instances also.

I meant more in line with age related certification like films, I know some books are censored for content but has there ever been a restriction at point of sale, for example I once saw two young lads perhaps 10- 12 years old leafing through rhe pages of 50 shades in a supermarket , also what stops a 10 year old from reading Millers tropic of cancer or tropic of Capricorn? Both of which would be heavily censored and watered down as even an 18 certificate film.
With regard to Bond most of the books would be considered an adults read, in a lot of the movies sometimes an adult has to search for the nuances on screen to find the darkness in some scenes.

CoolHandBond

I can't remember books having an age restriction on them though whether certain bookshops would have sold Lady Chatterley's Lover to a minor back in 1960 would be interesting to know.

I used to buy Harold Robbins' books as a schoolboy teenager with no problems

Thunderpussy

I got in to the Bond books at around 12 or 13 years old. Full of adventures and interesting characters, they were brilliant ! -{
They also had a few "naughty " bits , like the stripper on the big band in TMWTGG ..... Which was also of great interest to
Me.
On censorship, I always remember reading one of the New Avengers, TV series tie in books, K is for Kill. In it there is a scene
Where a Russian soldier, while having sex, kills the lady. .......... He then continues until he's finished ! This was the first time
I'd ever come across necrophilia ( if you'll forgive the term ) .

CoolHandBond

I remember the New Avengers tv tie-in series well - they sold very well in my shop but I don't remember reading this one - sounds like I should have

I started my first Bond book, GF, when I was about 10 or 11 and couldn't understand why it was different from the film ) though I could see certain parallels like having a saw instead of a laser. Some of the Bond paperbacks used to have a quote on the back cover about the "sweet tang of rape" which is unbelievable really.

Thunderpussy

I always remember the quote on the back of my own paperback of TSWLM ...... " Not for Prudes "

CoolHandBond

So perfectly acceptable for us, TP )

caractacus potts

of course books get censored
Live and Let Die was censored when it was published in the States, to remove some of the racist language
many books have gotten banned over the years, some of the best books ever written were banned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
used to be Boston was so keen on banning books the phrase "banned in Boston" was considered a sales-booster
many books were specifically banned in high school English classes, even if they were generally available.

the only thing to stop a child from reading 50 Shades in the bookstore is the discretion of the employee, Usually more than their job's worth to even bother. Same with films, the employee selling tickets is barely more than a child, making minimum wage. I remember being upset I couldn't see Animal House or Life of Brian, til I actually went to the theatre and bluffed my way in. Never worried about the R ratings again, then I realised if I could bluff my way into a movie theatre, there was this other place called the liquor store I should try!


on the flip side some of Fleming's books were retitled in the States to make them sound more titillating than they really were: the pulp fiction/cheap paperback market of the 1950s emphasised sordidity, lots of ladies getting their blouses torn on those vintage paperback covers, whether such events happened in the story or not

you mention that "sweet tang of rape" quote, CoolHand, that was the PAN editions of the late70s that had those quotes, I think that one is from Casino Royale isn't it, very first book? (http://www.collecting-fleming.com/images/books/_watermarked/casino-royale-pan-still-back.jpg) (within the context of the book, Fleming meant Vesper was so tightly wound intimacy felt like invasion, but the quote loses that context). Each late70s PAN book book had one sentence representing Bond himself, the chief villain, and the "girl", and the sentence representing the "girl" was always very sexy. the covers themselves were not sexy at all (they were the messy desk editions), but if you turned it round and read those quotes you'd get a cheap thrill

superado

I think what the books "got away with" could readily be adapted on screen when EON deems it okay to receive an R-rating or higher...which I doubt we'll see anytime soon as long as all parties involved are interested in continued box office success.

The gratuitous sexism and racism in the books, as well as the violence that includes descriptive gore, would easily feel at home in a Quentin Tarantino movie (who surprisingly has been sparse with nudity). On the other hand, portraying sex and nudity to the "artful" standards of say, Bernardo Bertolucci, would easily cover for the most memorable titillations of the books like Donovan Grant's nude masseuse as well as the detailed descriptions of Bond's roving hand over Tatiana's breasts and nether regions in FRWL, Bond's bubble car tryst with Patricia Fearing in TB and Bond's first meeting with a nude Honeychile Ryder in DN.

Maybe decades from now after every other conceivable angle and iteration of the cinematic Bond license has been done, EON may decide to do new adaptations of the books faithful to the period which includes keeping all the controversial elements intact. A plus would be Fleming's heirs finally granting rights to the literary contents of TSWLM, which would allow us to see Bond fall victim to an unbridled sexual libertine that was Vivienne Michel in steamy sequences of hot cathartic motel sex.

Revelator

Even recently there have been scenes in Fleming that were toned down for cinema audiences. In the 2006 Casino Royale humor was added to the torture scene, whereas Fleming's version was dead serious. And that film have the gumption to end directly after the line "The bitch is dead now." Instead Vesper posthumously gives Bond a clue to catch a villain and look cool saying "Bond, James Bond."

Grindelwald

Life of Brian was banned in Norway due to religion ) 8-)

Norway censors were not thrilled with martial arts/horror films either.

Silhouette Man

I suppose the other thing that I wanted to highlight in the OP of this thread (not sure that I did well enough) was why it is OK for there to be villains like neo-Nazis (or say, Islamists) in the Bond novels, as opposed to the Bond films.

Is it that the novels are read much less (especially the continuations of course) than the Bond films are seen, or what?

This is what actually fascinates me most of all about this topic. -{

Chriscoop

I think it's audience appeal? And trying not to alienate any potential film markets, also I suppose books are deemed a higher grade of art.
The films have made villains of the Russians and the North Koreans and bond is not well liked in those countries as far as I'm aware.