Just read LALD for the first time...
Firemass
AlaskaPosts: 1,910MI6 Agent
The LALD film actually followed the novel much closer than I was expecting. Many aspects of the novel were actually improved in the film version such as the characters of Baron Samedi, Solitaire, TeeHee, as well as deeper exploration of the voodoo themes.
Now I better understand the source material for the keel-haul scene in FYEO and the warehouse scenes in LTK.
Mr. Big's desk-mounted gun was put to great use in the film TSWLM.
I heard this novel was a "bit dated" aka racist, and it certainly exceeded my expectations in that regard. Makes me wonder about Fleming purists, because large portions of LALD make me embarrassed to be a Bond fan.
If that wasn't bad enough, Fleming also lets his Ageism show and really rags on elderly people. Just about every main character (Solitaire, Bond, Felix) takes their turn with some scathing words about old folks.
Solitaire: "It's a terrifying sight, all these old people with their spectacles and hearing-aids and clicking false-teeth."
"Sounds pretty grim," said Bond.
"Solitaire: You'll probably want to settle down there for life and be an "Oldster" too.
"God forbid," said Bond fervently.
Felix: "Wait till you go to Aunt Mily's Place and see them all in droves mumbling over their corn-beef hash and cheeseburgers, trying to keep alice till ninety. It'll frighten the life out of you."
A few other things that bothered me:
1. Bond chickening out in bed with Solitaire cuz his widdle finger hurts. Quit making excuses! (Note- See Roger Moore at the end of Octopussy)
2. Felix wanders off alone to the warehouse at night and sure enough winds up in trouble. DUH STUPID.
3. Solitaire gets kidnapped at the hotel and Bond/Leiter still continue to stay there as if it was safe. DUH MR. BIG KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE
4. Who gives Bond permission to blow up Mr. Big with limpet mines? Seems unusually harsh penalty for smuggling gold coins.
5. I always feel bad for the fish that get killed.
Overall I'd rate it a 4/10 and the film a 6/10.
Now I better understand the source material for the keel-haul scene in FYEO and the warehouse scenes in LTK.
Mr. Big's desk-mounted gun was put to great use in the film TSWLM.
I heard this novel was a "bit dated" aka racist, and it certainly exceeded my expectations in that regard. Makes me wonder about Fleming purists, because large portions of LALD make me embarrassed to be a Bond fan.
If that wasn't bad enough, Fleming also lets his Ageism show and really rags on elderly people. Just about every main character (Solitaire, Bond, Felix) takes their turn with some scathing words about old folks.
Solitaire: "It's a terrifying sight, all these old people with their spectacles and hearing-aids and clicking false-teeth."
"Sounds pretty grim," said Bond.
"Solitaire: You'll probably want to settle down there for life and be an "Oldster" too.
"God forbid," said Bond fervently.
Felix: "Wait till you go to Aunt Mily's Place and see them all in droves mumbling over their corn-beef hash and cheeseburgers, trying to keep alice till ninety. It'll frighten the life out of you."
A few other things that bothered me:
1. Bond chickening out in bed with Solitaire cuz his widdle finger hurts. Quit making excuses! (Note- See Roger Moore at the end of Octopussy)
2. Felix wanders off alone to the warehouse at night and sure enough winds up in trouble. DUH STUPID.
3. Solitaire gets kidnapped at the hotel and Bond/Leiter still continue to stay there as if it was safe. DUH MR. BIG KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE
4. Who gives Bond permission to blow up Mr. Big with limpet mines? Seems unusually harsh penalty for smuggling gold coins.
5. I always feel bad for the fish that get killed.
Overall I'd rate it a 4/10 and the film a 6/10.
My current 10 favorite:
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
Comments
See here: http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/40883/ian-fleming-casual-racism/ for more re racism.
A product of its time. Brilliant story with some great characters. -{ With some
Of the Best of Fleming's fantastic descriptive passages. The midnight swim to
And Under Mr Big's yacht is really atmospheric. -{
Like having to wait for the valves to warm up before using the
Space scanning radar.
( yes, I do listen to some odd programmes
Whoa there! True, Solitaire is one of Fleming's most one-dimensional heroines, and Jane Seymour gives her more life. And the film also improves on the book when it comes to making Teehee and Whisper into memorable henchmen. But beyond that the film improves on nothing else. The film version of Mr. Big is a pale shadow of the original--neither physically imposing nor given to the intellectual speeches on accidie and race Fleming gave him. He's just a generic Bond villain. The film also throws out the wonderful buried treasure plot and replaces it with humdrum heroin. Its plot is just an excuse for some chase scenes, and the best action scene in the book isn't even included. It's replaced by a low-budget villain's layer and the most cartoonish villain's death in any Bond movie. Give me sharks and bombs any day! Lastly, film Felix is as bland and forgettable as most film Felixes. The book not only emphasizes his friendship with Bond but also gives Bond motivation to go after Mr. Big, after Felix gets fed to the sharks.
Most sensible purists find many of those passages embarrassing. But lots of racial attitudes in the 50s were cringe-making by today's standards. And for what it's worth, Fleming tries on several occasion to be complimentary toward "the negro races" and show his character's affinity for black culture. Those compliments now seem patronizing, but at least he tried. LALD is a racist work, but its racial attitudes are more patronizing than hateful.
He just rags on the sort of old people who retire to Florida and live in ridiculous-looking colonies. Anyone who's been to Florida knows they're pretty easy targets. Bond isn't otherwise negative toward old people.
The same person who gave Mr. Big permission to work for the Smersh and feed Felix to the sharks.
HE does have a Licence to kill , Whom he chooses when he chooses, as the Dr No Trailer said.
Guy had Four first editions of TB, YOLT,OHMSS & Golden Gun
Which he sold for £200, they weren't in the best condition.
To sell then on. The covers were in a bad state, the OHMSS was torn
In a few places. I have no idea of prices but I thought four for £200 was
Fairly reasonable.
Original dust jacket severely reduce its value ?
My Fleming collection cost £15.
Though Fleming was racist to a certain extent (and there's no justification for any degree of that in my book), I do believe his yearly visits to Jamaica and involvement with the locals including his house staff made him more sympathetic about ethnic groups outside his own. This understanding probably grew the longer he was there - when he wrote LALD he had only been there a few times. Growing up in his exclusive class in the pre-war empire and never getting to interact on a one to one basis outside his culture would have insulated him from any contact with other ethnic cultures and any prejudices were just reinforced -as they always are when one lives in a cultural bubble. So, when I read LALD I kept that in mind. If he had written that later on in life, I feel there would have been much less racism in the novel. A total absence of it? Probably not - it's hard to say. If the beginning of the modern civil rights movement began with Rosa Parks, that was in 1955. By the time of the Greensboro sit in of 1960, most with were watching the movement unfold on television. (Strange aside - did Fleming even own a tv? What did he watch if he did? I've never heard it commented on in all the literature about his life).
However, the movement did not get going in England until 1963 when the Bristol Omnibus Company announced full integration of its buses in the city of Bristol. In September of that year, they hired their first non-white bus conductor.
So, in the early post war years in England, we have a middle aged upper class Englishman insulated from ethnic cultures outside his own trying to write a piece of fiction that takes place not only inside another culture but in a foreign country that he had only visited a few times during the war. He did not have a lot of realistic foundations in his head to counter the prejudices he grew up with. Face it, in his lifetime and within his class most of his brethren had a low view of foreigners - no matter where they had colonized - India, Africa, West Indies, the Orient. Another reason none of the villains in his novels are English.
He tries to soften his attitudes through Felix. As a white American, he at least tries to display how much African Americans had contributed to the world by mentioning it through Felix's admiration for Harlem and it's culture. He also makes an awkard attempt at showing how Africans and those of African descent contributed to the world as they had produced "geniuses in all the professions - scientists, doctors, writers. It's about time they turned out a great criminal. After all, there are 250,000,000 of them in the world."
I don't think he was trying to infer that since a race of people had contributed so much advancement that it was time they started producing a Hitler. When I first read that I thought he was saying that any race that numbers in that many millions is eventually going to have a powerful bad guy - as would any race, like his own (Hitler - Stalin). Once again, he tried to diffuse the racism by making Mr. Big not pure black but having a French-Haitian background (making him non American and more of an international heavy and a Soviet agent). To that degree, I felt Fleming was showing that Mr. Big's race had no bearing on Bond's evaluation of him. If he was a Soviet spy, that's all that mattered. In fact, Big is an amazing imitation of the infamous ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who also fostered a personality cult around himself, and revived the traditions of vodoo, later on using them to consolidate his power as he claimed to be a houngan, or vodoo priest himself. In an effort to make himself even more imposing, Duvalier deliberately modeled his image on that of Baron Samedi. It's creepy that Fleming foreshadowed this, considering this did not happen until 1957.
As to Bond's view on seniors, I think that uncovers more about how Fleming was feeling about ageing himself as much as anything. He certainly did not want to end up like the Florida seniors he was observing. He would not have ever gone into old age quietly. In fact, I don't think he wanted to get any older.
Bond "chickening out" in bed with Solitaire? Well, I did break my finger once. I can personally tell you, for quite a few days after that, sexual thoughts were the furthest thing from my mind, even as a teenager.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Indeed, another brilliant post by CmdrAtticus but we've all come to expect nothing less from him.
I'm especially interested in the 'Papa' Doc Duvalier reference as I'm writing something on the various influences exerting themselves on Tom Mankiewicz's Live and Let Die (1973) and Duvalier features as part of it. It is indeed creepy that Fleming dreamed up a figure such as Duvalier three years before he became president of Haiti when one would think it was the other way around and that Fleming was influenced by Duvalier who said he was the reincarnation of the Prince of Darkness himself, Baron Samedi and many people beloved him. What is certain is that Tom Mankiewicz was referencing Duvalier with his Dr Kananga villain. Interestingly, his son 'Baby Doc' Duvalier only died a few days ago aged 63, having fled Haiti in 1986, though he returned there some time later.
As long as it's not the Upper Class Twit of The Year Award...
I think that people who are unfamiliar with Fleming's bio don't realized how well informed he was about all the nefarious things going on globally. Being head of those foreign correspondents for Kemsley and no doubt still having contacts within the old boy London intel world from his war years gave him a lot of dirt on what was going on and who was being naughty and who was funding who everywhere. It's another reason his plots and villains resonate so much even now - he was basing these characters - no matter where they were from - on real nasties. LALD was no exception.
Ian Fleming was quite prescient about a number of things. To quote the late Christopher Hitchens, "By some latent intuition, Fleming was able to peer beyond the Cold War limitations of mere spy fiction and to anticipate the emerging milieu of the Colombian cartels, Osama Bin Laden and indeed the Russian Mafia.”
Not to get too far off topic, but Eric Schlosser's book Command and Control about the U.S. nuclear arms program describes the mad scramble for a nuclear bomb that had been lost in the sea off of Spain in 1966. He specifically mentions how much the search for the weapon echoed elements of TB.
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Agent In Training
About his books, the stories may be improbable but not Impossible. -{
In Wales back in 1974. ( Berwyn Mountain UFO incident)
People reported a big really big explosion, bright lights etc. Then
They tell of army helicopters and loads of soldiers searching the hills
For days with no explanation as to the cause apart from a meteor etc, the
Usual men in black stuff.
Now I don't believe it was a crashed UFO, rather I think it was a crashed
American bomber, with the troops and helicopters removing the nuclear
Bombs or missiles ?
I did get to thinking, if it wasn't an accident but a hijacking attempt, then
It would have been Thunderball.
Imagination.
I'm with you TP. There's a lot they don't tell us (the govt, not the sheep: the sheep will tell all after a few free drinks). Sometimes because the authorities don't want the public to panic, sometimes not to give other people ideas, sometimes so as not to admit how lax security is. A Thunderball-type of event ticks all those boxes and could well be something that a government would keep secret, so who knows.