Now pay attention, 007. Two-times James Bond director Sir Sam Mendes, as he now titled, has been very much in the UK media and film news in recent weeks. First of all, details were announced of his ambitious four-film biographical story of the Beatles, the hugely successful British pop group of the 1960s: Sir Sam intends to direct each of the four films as a stand-alone biographical account of the life of each of the individual members of the Beatles.
Mendes was also in the news because of the premiere on BBC-2 of his first documentary, What They Found, which used powerful and heart-breaking real-life footage bravely taken by two British soldiers at the time of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, one of the Holocaust’s death camps. Sir Sam’s welcome move into documentary-making is a creative first in his career, which thus far has been devoted to stage and film fiction work. His first Bond movie, Skyfall (2012), was also part of ITV’s recent Bond season in April.
Given the current interest in Sir Sam’s work, the JBIFC takes the opportunity to look back on the creative evolution of his first James Bond movie which, for many fans, remains a big favourite and more than proved that it was possible to create a James Bond movie which contained both the usual classic entertainment but also carried genuine ‘actorly’ gravitas.
Although he was something of a surprise choice to direct a 007 film (his selection owed much to the lobbying of Daniel Craig), Mendes proved to be an inspired choice, and delivered a movie which managed to tap into everything we love about the Bond films, and more, and also broke all 007’s box-office records. The movie, of course, was the result of much thought and planning on the part of Mendes, and major clues to this tended to come through in interviews he gave at the time. Two interviews illustrate this well.
Sky High
Back in 2012, the director of the new 007 movie was interviewed for a special James Bond edition of the BBC’s arts programme The Culture Show on Wednesday, October 24, 2012. The Bond special was devoted to a face-to-face interview with the new Bond director and provided a detailed profile of his career up to that point, both in the theatre and in films. The interview was conducted by the BBC’s film critic Mark Kermode.
The programme opened with various comments about Mendes from the actors involved in Skyfall, including Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes and Judi Dench. Fiennes praised the ‘lucidity’ and ‘perception’ of Mendes as a director, while Dench said ‘you feel that he is completely in control’.
Significantly, when it came to his approach to creating 007 on the big screen, Mendes revealed that he saw his first James Bond movie when he went with his Dad to see Live and Let Die (1973), and he said the ‘voodoo stuff’ really scared him, while the boat chase ‘thrilled’ him. Discussing his own particular approach to directing a Bond movie, Mendes said he felt that some of the Bond movies, such as Moonraker, had become more like ‘travelogues’ in their approach, losing sight of the story and Bond as the central character. He said he felt that Daniel Craig in Casino Royale had helped make James Bond the centre of the story again, and this was the approach he [Mendes] had also sought for Skyfall. On Daniel Craig, Mendes said he believed that Craig was the ‘hardest working actor’ he had ever met.
The programme also discussed the other movies directed by Mendes, including his first movie American Beauty, which picked up numerous top awards and high praise. He said he was also ‘very proud’ of Road to Perdition, where he also (of course) first encountered Daniel Craig (he was struck with Daniel’s ‘blue eyes’ in particular). Returning back to Skyfall towards the end of the interview and the creative process that lay behind the film, Mendes said his deliberate approach to the new Bond movie was to combine the ‘modern’ and contemporary with a strong nod to the past, with the last third of the movie especially being a nod to the previous 50 years of 007 (hence the return of the iconic Aston Martin in Skyfall).
Key Scenes: From a View with some Skill
In another interview given by Mendes just a few days later, there were further major clues as to how key scenes in Skyfall had evolved. In an interview for the ‘Culture’ magazine of the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper (October 28, 2012), director Mendes spoke about a key scene in Skyfall and also about why he was happy to return 007 back to his roots.
Interviewed for the newspaper in a hotel in East London by Jonathan Dean, the Skyfall director spoke at length about the pivotal scene where Bond meets the villain Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) for the first time, which occurs about 70 minutes into the movie. Mendes also spoke about other aspects of the Bond universe. The particular scene in question takes place in the movie on an island in the South China Sea, a place called ‘Dead City’ in the script. The inspiration for the island was apparently the real-life island of Hashima, where a coal-mining community once thrived until the mine became uneconomical to run. For the movie, however, Dead City was created at Pinewood Studios, as there was too much asbestos dust to actually film scenes safely on Hashima itself.
Mendes said that the (now famous) speech made by Silva about killing rats was actually inspired by a story told to Mendes by the late cinematographer Conrad Hall, who had worked with Mendes on his movie Road to Perdition. Mendes said: ‘It always struck me as a brilliant metaphor for something’ – Bond and Silva (a former spy) are the last rats alive.
Mendes also told the Sunday Times interviewer that, in the first draft of the script, Silva was introduced to Bond as 007 came to, having been knocked out, but Mendes didn’t think that was ‘theatrical’ enough. Mendes wanted something different; it was ‘a conscious decision to build up expectation’, and he added: ‘I said, you spend an hour waiting, you’ve got to give the man an entrance’. A whole room was also built to fit the length of the speech by Silva and the one-take shot. In fact, the speech delivered by Silva was designed to build the tension and then release it a little bit.
Mendes reflected: ‘One of the things I’m most proud of is that, in the midst of a Bond movie, with all the weight of audience expectation of action, we’re able to hold a seven-minute dialogue sequence. I think any movie has to breathe in and breathe out… it’s all about rhythm. It’s about having the courage to stop’. Mendes also explained that Silva’s speech was about ‘our fears in contemporary life’.
Turning to his general approach to helming a Bond movie and the appeal of the character, Mendes said the James Bond movies were still being made because Bond ‘represents something slightly more than what he first appears. I hope that’s articulated in the film. I wanted to give it that old style, but allow some of the humour back in, some of the wit of Fleming and the earlier pictures’. On the production and filming aspects of Skyfall, Mendes also said: ‘We ended up shooting much more of it in England than we ever thought we would, and it felt like a truly homegrown film’. He continued: ‘It felt, in a sense, like we were bringing Bond back to his roots, both as a character and a franchise’.
After the rather low-key critical reception to Quantum of Solace, Mendes and Daniel Craig had been determined to throw everything into Skyfall and ensure that it was a movie to remember. They more than succeeded. Mendes, of course, went on to direct another James Bond film, Spectre, but many felt that his second 007 movie did not quite match the sheer creative drive that lay at the core of Skyfall. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Sir Sam’s highly imaginative contributions to the 007 franchise will continue to be debated by Bond fans for years to come.
The role of a director, of course, has been crucial to the creative process behind making the 25 Bond movies such a cinematic success, so it will be interesting to see who is awarded this vital job on Bond 26 under the new Amazon regime. As ever, we will provide the news as it breaks. You know the name, and you know the number.
