CR on British Film Forever
John Drake
On assignmentPosts: 2,564MI6 Agent
UK viewers will be able to see Daniel Craig talking about CR and James Bond in a programme called British Film Forever. It airs on Saturday 28th July at 9.05pm. It's a 7 part series celebrating British film. The first episode is concentrating on the thriller so Bond should feature quite prominently.
Comments
The main point made was that Bond's glamorous globetrotting made a startling contrast with the kitchen sink/low key violence British films which preceded him.
Harry Palmer got short shrift. A shame as there some perceptive comments about The Ipcress File and it would have been good to see them cover the beguiling Billion Dollar Brain. Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and the superb Kate Hardie had some interesting things to say about the films they appeared in.
I didn't think much of the way the programme makers dealt with Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa. Describing that as a film with a happy ending is a bit silly. If anything it's a case of learn to make do with what you have, rather than yearn after a romantic fantasy. That's a tough-minded, pragmatic world view, not a sugar-coated cop-out as the programme-makers seemed to imply.
Still, it was well worth watching and I'll be tuning in next week. I think comedy is next.
The British directer Alex Cox gave the show a slagging in The Guardian. Here's an excerpt where he mentions CR.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2149012,00.html
In this Film Council/BBC vision of the world, everything is multi-culturally marvellous. Asian girls play football. Thatcher's excesses have been put right. And Casino Royale is a British film.
Only it isn't. The James Bond franchise belongs to a US studio, MGM. Some British actors and technicians may get paid to work on the pictures, but the profits are repatriated to Los Angeles. The American Bond marque involves the biggest "movie-based gaming franchise" in history, and highly lucrative product placement (usually of German cars). The franchise also serves an outright propaganda purpose, as one of the US producers interviewed in British Film Forever, makes clear: "It's a more serious world. We expect our heroes to fight their battles with less frivolity."
I like Cox and agree with him about this programme and his comments on the Film/Council and BBC, but he's talking out of his a*** about CR being political propaganda for American foriegn policy.
However it skimmed over the 80's, mentioning Hellraiser in passing, but ignoring The Company of Wolves and Paperhouse, two of the best UK horror/fantasy films ever made. Then it spends ten minutes on Terry Gilliam's Brazil, which is an American studio movie and has no place here. I think this series is a real missed opportunity.