A Study of Adaptation - For Your Eyes Only

Fleming's eighth entry in the James Bond series is an unusual case. Published in 1960, it's a collection of short stories rather than a novel. As such, I'll be looking at the five stories in turn. You might want to put the kettle on and grab a comfortable seat.

The first story is From a View to a Kill, in which Bond is investigating the robbery and murder of a dispatch rider who was travelling from the Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE) in Versailles to the MI6 Station F in Saint-Germain.

A View to a Kill is the title of the fourteenth entry in the film franchise, released in 1985. However, it does not utilise anything from the short story other than part of the title and a Paris setting. That said, Bond does fantasise about a woman named Solange, who later appeared in the film version of Casino Royale.

Next we have the so-called feature presentation, For Your Eyes Only. In this one, Bond is sent to Vermont to assassinate Herr von Hammerstein, a former Gestapo officer who escaped to Cuba and served as a counterintelligence officer in Fulgencio Batista's regime (Batista had been overthrown at the beginning of 1959, so presumably this story had been written before then). Von Hammerstein's accomplice, Major Gonzales, had attempted to buy a Jamaican estate from Colonel Timothy Havelock and murdered him and his wife when he refused. As the Havelocks are old friends of M, the head of MI6 offers an assassination mission to Bond. However, he soon encounters the Havelocks' daughter Judy on her own revenge mission.

For Your Eyes only would become the twelfth Bond film, released in 1981, and does utilise elements from the short story at the beginning. In the film, Sir Timothy Havelock is a marine archaeologist hired by the Secret Service to search for a missing spy ship in the Ionian Sea. He and his Greek wife are killed by Hector Gonzales, a Cuban hitman. Bond is sent to question Gonzales in Madrid, but is captured. He escapes when Havelock's daughter Melina shoots Gonzales with a crossbow as he dives into a pool (she kills von Hammerstein in the short story this way, albeit with a bow and arrow). Von Hammerstein has been removed from the film, but Bond later identifies Emile Leopold Locque as the man who paid Gonzales and searches for him in Cortina. As this was adapted from a short story, they had to make some of these changes to better suit a larger story. This includes incorporating another short story from this collection.

The third story, Quantum of Solace, is supposed to be a pastiche of the works of W. Somerset Maugham. Bond is attending a function at Government House in Nassau, after completing a mission in the Bahamas. He is then related a story by the governor about the gradually declining marriage of a civil servant named Phillip Masters and a flight attendant named Rhoda Llewellyn. Quantum of Solace was the 22nd film, released in 2009, but like A View to a Kill, it doesn't use anything from the source material other than the title.

Risico follows Bond as he travels to Italy to take down a drug smuggling ring. He meets a CIA informant named Kristatos, who points him in the direction of a smuggler named Enrico Colombo. Bond is eventually captured by Colombo, who is in a long-standing feud with Kristatos, learning that Kristatos is behind the scheme and was using him to silence Colombo.

The events of Risico were also utilised in the film adaptation For Your Eyes Only, but the setting is changed to Greece. This includes Colombo's raid on Kristatos' warehouse in Albania, which gets blown up. In the short story, Kristatos tries to escape afterwards, but is shot by Bond while driving away. In the film, this is changed to Locque, so Kristatos can be dealt with in the third act. The film version of For Your Eyes Only also borrows from Live and Let Die, using a scene in which Bond is dragged across a reef to serve as shark bait.

Finally, we have The Hildebrand Rarity. Bond is having some down-time in the Seychelles after a mission, when his local contact, Fidele Barbey, invites him on a local expedition with Milton Krest, an uncouth American millionaire. Krest takes them aboard his luxury yacht, the Wavekrest, on the pretence of searching for an exotic fish for the Smithsonian, the eponymous Hildebrand Rarity.

Like Risico, The Hildebrand Rarity did not get its own adaptation, but some elements were utilised in Licence to Kill, released in 1989. The character of Milton Krest appears as a high-raking member of the drug cartel headed by Franz Sanchez, and his marine research vessel, the Wavekrest, serves as a front for his operations. The film also has Sanchez beating his mistress with a stingray tail, similar to how Krest treats his wife in the short story. Krest's demise is different in the film; he's framed for embezzlement by Bond, and is killed using a decompression chamber which causes his head to explode. In the book, he's choked to death on the rare fish he'd sought, and Bond dumps him overboard to make it look like an accident. Again, because this was a short story, I guess there was a need to expand things. Especially because the film wasn't a direct adaptation.

Phew, that took a while.

"Once Upon a Time" with Kate Forsyth

Yes, I did mention this tweet

I'm taking a short interlude from my regular project on this blog to discuss a talk I attended today by author Kate Forsyth, who writes re-tellings and adaptations of fairy tales for adult audiences. Her most notable work is Bitter Greens, an adaptation of Rapunzel with three separate narratives:

• A historical bio-fiction about Charlotte-Rose de la Force, a story-teller and courtier who wrote Persinette upon which Rapunzel is partly based.
• A "pure adaptation" of Rapunzel, following Margherita as she is imprisoned in a tower by a witch
• An expansion of the story following the witch, Selena Leonelli, as she aims to preserve her life by any means necessary

I first read Bitter Greens as part of my university course. As previously mentioned on this blog, I did an elective module in English Literature on Adaptation, and the second term looked at adaptations of fairy tales, with Bitter Greens being one of the set texts. 

In her talk, Forsyth discussed how the protagonists of fairy tales are a metaphor for the human spirit, with the rest of the content representing the trials and tribulations we face every day. With this in mind, we see how these fairy tales endure through re-tellings. Anybody can project themselves onto the protagonist of a fairy tale, and use the obstacles faced to represent their own struggles. The discussion was absolutely fascinating, and I suppose I unconsciously applied this myself when I first read the book.

As the post image shows, I once tweeted about the first part of the story, in which Charlotte-Rose de la Force is sent to a convent after a scandal, which includes the nuns taking away her writing implements. Now, before I went to university, I was working as an accountant. However, I'd been struggling to fit my writing around a five-day working week. I became depressed and resentful, feeling like my job was getting in the way of what I wanted to do. I suppose this is why that particular chapter resonated with me. Anyway, I tweeted about it and actually got a response from Forsyth. I mentioned it to my tutor and was asked to send over a screenshot of the tweet and her response.

Even now, that story still has an influence. For one of my later assignments, I had to write a historical flash fiction. So, I wrote about Julie d'Aubigny an opera singer who lived around the same time as Charlotte-Rose de la Force. Her most notorious story involved starting a fire in a convent to rescue a girl with whom she was romantically involved. Having read through Bitter Greens and the harsh life experienced there by Charlotte de la Force, Julie's wild adventure actually came across as heroic to me.

I do recommend Bitter Greens, and I hope to check out more of Kate Forsyth's work in the near-future. And one final thing which resonated with me was how she discussed wanting to write. I could really relate to this as well.

A Study of Adaptation - Goldfinger

There's a bit of a content warning for this one, and I'll refer you to the appropriated Looney Tunes disclaimer in my post on Live and Let Die. Anyway, Goldfinger is the seventh novel in series, published in 1959, and the third entry in the film series, released in 1964. Compared to the film, there are many elements in the novel which are utterly ridiculous.

The novel is split into three parts, based on Bond's meetings with the eponymous villain: "Happenstance", "Coincidence", and "Enemy Action".

In "Happenstance", Bond is on a layover in Miami when he meets Junius Du Pont, who had also taken part in the baccarat tournament in Casino Royale. Du Pont has been playing canasta with Auric Goldfinger, and asks Bond to investigate whether or not he has been cheating. Bond discovers Goldfinger's methods and seduces his accomplice, Jill Masterson.

In "Coincidence", Bond is assigned a mission on behalf of The Bank of England to determine if and how Goldfinger is illegally smuggling gold bullion. He plays golf with the magnate in Sandwich, and then follows him to Switzerland. He discovers Goldfinger's method of transporting gold, but is captured alongside Tilly Masterson when she attempts to avenge the murder of her sister.

In "Enemy Action", Bond narrowly avoids being cut in half with a circular saw by offering his and Tilly's services to Goldfinger. They're employed as secretaries and taken to New York for a meeting with several mob bosses: Mr Solo from the Sicilian Mafia; Jack Strap, the new leader of the Nevada-based Spangled Mob (from Diamonds Are Forever); and Pussy Galore, leader of an all-female gang of cat burglars known as The Cement Mixers. Goldfinger's plan is to rob the US bullion reserve at Fort Knox in Kentucky, and plans to blow open the vault using a nuclear bomb given to him by the Russians.

We'll look at a few minor changes. In the film, Bond is on official business from the start, getting a signal from London while in Miami to observe Goldfinger. Jill Masterson is killed in Bond's hotel room by being painted gold, dying from "skin suffocation". The novel uses this (inaccurate) cause of death as well, but it's only mentioned by Tilly. Meanwhile, Pussy Galore is now Goldfinger's personal pilot and has trained a flying circus of all-female pilots.

A lot of major changes were made in order to make them more plausible. For example, Bond avoids being cut in half by a laser by claiming his people know about Goldfinger's "Operation Grand Slam", prompting Goldfinger to spare him in order to ascertain how much he knows. This sounds a bit more plausible than offering to be a secretary.

In a similar regard, Goldfinger doesn't wish to rob Fort Knox in the film. Instead, his scheme is to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the vault given to him by the Chinese government (rather than the Russians). This atomic device would irradiate the US gold reserve, rendering it worthless and causing economic chaos in the West while simultaneously increasing the value of Goldfinger's own bullion. This makes more sense than trying to rob it, although that's discussed in the film. Plus it provides a climax which can take place inside the vault.

One of the other reasons for major changes is due to sanitisation. The filmmakers had to tone down a lot of very blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia in the books. For example, Goldfinger's Korean manservant Oddjob is depicted in the book as liking to eat cats, while Bond often refers to him as an "ape". Those aspects were removed in the film. Something tells me that Ian Fleming wasn't too fond of Korea. Yes there had been a war there six years earlier, but surely Fleming had left military intelligence at that point.

Meanwhile, the book establishes that both Tilly Masterson and Pussy Galore are lesbian. Tilly even believes that Pussy Galore will protect her during Operation Grand Slam, but ends up getting killed by Oddjob while trying to escape. Pussy Galore on the other hand, ends up with Bond afterwards. I've heard that there were strict laws regarding the depictions of homosexuality in pulp novels (mainly for the printing of smut, apparently), but I don't know if they were still in effect in 1959.

Anyway, Tilly is killed off earlier in the film, when Bond is captured in Switzerland. And Pussy Galore is depicted as just being aloof. Hollywood was still under the rules of The Hayes Code at this point, and homosexuality was one of the things it didn't allow. While these films were made in Britain, they were still being distributed by an American studio (and catering specifically to the American market), so they probably would have been subject to the code. I've heard the filmmakers actually had to fight to avoid changing Pussy Galore's name to Kitty Galore.

Overall, there was a lot of changes which had to be made for this one. I'll leave robbing the US federal reserve to Simon Gruber in Die Hard: With a Vengeance.

A Study of Adaptation - Dr No

After the cliffhanger ending of From Russia With Love, there was an audience demand to read more Bond, so Fleming didn't end the franchise. Dr No is the sixth novel, published in 1958, and the first film, released in 1962.

After recovering from his run-in with Rosa Klebb, Bond is sent on a rest cure to Jamaica. The MI6 station chief, Commander Strangways (whom he worked with in Live and Let Die), has disappeared with his secretary, and his house has burned down with all his records. Bond is sent to investigate the disappearance, learning that Strangways was looking into the deaths of two representatives of The National Audubon Society on the island of Crab Key. The island is home to a colony of roseate spoonbills, which are protected by the Society, and a guano mine owned and operated by the reclusive Dr Julius No. Bond travels to Crab Key with his old friend Quarrel, and later meets a shell diver named Honeychile Rider. They soon fall afoul of Dr No's strict security forces (including the fabled "dragon" of Crab Key).

In the film, Bond is still investigating the disappearance. This time, Felix Leiter of the CIA is also present; he and Strangways had been investigating the toppling of American missile tests and traced the mysterious signals to the Caribbean. This is revealed to be Dr No's secret operation in the novel, but never really comes to play. The film removes all references to the National Audubon Society to accommodate this. Like in most subsequent adaptations, Dr No is working for SPECTRE rather than the Russians.

The novel seems a lot more "cinematic" than the previous novels in the series, more akin to a classic pulp adventure, featuring an exotic locale and a "Fu Manchu"-style villain with an elaborate underground base. I guess that's a reason to make this the first film in the series. Of course, that still means they have to make other changes:

• In the film, Quarrel is initially distrustful of Bond, but makes friends when he realises that he and Felix are working the same case. This would have been necessary, as it was the first film. Quarrel had appeared previously in Live and Let Die, so already knew Bond. As such, when Live and Let Die was adapted to film, Bond is aided on San Monique by Quarrel Jr.
• Dr No's front operation is a bauxite mine rather than guano in the film. I suppose this is because the guanay cormorants which produce the guano aren't native to the Caribbean, preferring a Pacific coastal environment.
• One tense scene in the novel features an attempt on Bond's life by putting a centipede in his hotel room. In the film, this is replaced by a tarantula. Most likely because Sean Connery is afraid of spiders.
• Honey Ryder's introduction. We all know the iconic scene in the film where Ursula Andress gets out of the sea in her white bikini. In the novel, she was wearing a knife belt, and nothing else. Fair enough, they wouldn't want to show that level of nudity on a widely-released film. She's also described as having a broken nose in the novel. I guess Hollywood wasn't ready to put that onto film either.
• On the subject of Honey, she receives far less characterisation in the film. The novel establishes her as somewhat naive and childlike, which actually makes Bond reluctant to seduce her. The film tones this down, and doesn't let her demonstrate her knowledge of the fauna in the same way (I cited Honey as one of the negative aspects of the film for this).
• One example of a scene which didn't make it into the film was Dr No's planned fate for Honey. In the novel, she's pegged out to be eaten by crabs. However, she knew they weren't dangerous and let them pass over her before escaping. They did try and film this, but couldn't get the crabs to behave and scrapped it. Instead, they just leave her in a flooding room to be rescued by Bond.

To be fair, a lot of the changes had to be made in the film due to budgetary constraints. After all, it was the first film in the series, based on a book series which had a relatively niche audience. I mean, I saw the films before I read the books, and have the feeling that also applied to a lot of people in the sixties.

A Study of Adaptation - From Russia With Love

I've already mentioned during my original marathon that From Russia With Love is one of my favourite films in the franchise. The fifth novel, published in 1957, became the second film, released in 1963. Rumour has it that the film was made following a statement by President Kennedy that the novel was one of his favourites.

In the novel, Bond has been marked for death by SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence service. who also seek to discredit him and his organisation by implicating him in a sex scandal. Their plan is to send file clerk Corporal Tatiana Romanova to Istanbul, claiming that she seeks to defect after falling in love with a file photo of Bond. As an added incentive, she offers to bring with her a sought-after decoding machine known as the Spektor.

The first third of the book actually follows the conspirators: Colonel Tov Kronsteen, a chess grand master and chief planner; Colonel Rosa Klebb, the Head of Operations who overseas the mission; and Donovan Grant, a psychopathic murderer serving as the SMERSH executioner.

The film retains the general story, but this time the scheme is being devised by the criminal organisation, SPECTRE, in a bid to play the British and the Russians off against each other. Kronsteen and Klebb work for SPECTRE, but Klebb is still believed to be an officer in SMERSH, and uses this role when enlisting Romanova for the mission.

The film also utilises more action. Bond and Kerim Bey, the MI6 station chief in Istanbul, carry out a bombing of the Soviet consulate to steal the decoder. In the novel, Romanova simply removes the decoder and meets them on board the Orient Express.

In a similar regard, Bond and Romanova jump off the Orient Express after Zagreb, and get accosted by SPECTRE agents while en route to Venice. In the novel, they leave the train at Dijon. This change makes sense, as Bond states in the film that he is reluctant to take the decoder past the checkpoints.

There are also some examples of sanitisation in the film, regarding Klebb's sexuality and Kerim Bey's background. When Klebb recruits Romanova in the novel, she actually tries to seduce her, which prompts Romanova to make a quick exit. That doesn't happen in the film, but it does show Klebb making a pass at Romanova. Meanwhile, Kerim Bey's relationship with his mistress and how they met is not explored in the film. Reading the novel, I know why. I'm not going to mention it here, but let's just say that it detracts from Kerim Bay's status as a dependable and appealing ally.

However, one of the major changes is the ending:

• In the film, Klebb makes a last ditch effort to kill Bond and grab the decoder at his hotel in Venice, but she is killed by Romanova after a scuffle.
• In comparison, the novel ends on much more of a downer. Bond goes to apprehend Klebb in Paris, and hands her over to his old friend Mathis. However, Klebb manages to kick him with a poison-tipped shoe spike. The novel ends with Bond collapsing while struggling to breathe.

Fair enough, cinematic audiences want a happy ending. But there was also a reality subtext to the ending of the book. Fleming had received a fan letter from a gunsmith named Geoffrey Boothroyd, who criticised Fleming's use of a low-calibre Beretta as Bond's firearm of choice. Fleming included in the ending that the silencer on Bond's gun gets caught in his jacket, which results in him getting kicked. On top of that, Fleming was contemplating making this the last novel.

However, the film couldn't use this, as there was a growing market for Bond on the big screen. Furthermore, Bond was already using his trademark Walther PPK at this point. This is what Boothroyd recommended, and came into play when James Bond returned in Dr No.

A Study of Adaptation - Diamonds Are Forever

This is an example of an adaptation which tried to expand the source material. Diamonds Are Forever is the fourth Bond novel, published in 1956, which was adapted into the seventh film in 1971.

In the novel, Bond's mission is to infiltrate a diamond smuggling ring starting in Sierra Leone. After Special Branch picks up a country house burglar-turned smuggler named Peter Franks, Bond assumes the role of Franks to follow the trail to New York. With the help of fellow smuggler Tiffany Case and his old friend Felix Leiter, Bond learns that the operation is being run by The Spangled Mob, led by the brothers Jack and Seraffimo Spang out of Las Vegas.

In the film, Bond infiltrates the pipeline as it's apparently being closed down and the smugglers are turning up dead. He soon learns that the ring is being masterminded by SPECTRE and Blofeld, whom he'd believed to be dead. Blofeld is stockpiling the diamonds for their refractive properties to make an orbital laser weapon, which he uses to destroy American, Russian, and Chinese nuclear weapons and then offer to the highest bidder.

The novel version of Diamonds Are Forever is the first book in the series where the antagonists are not affiliated with the Soviet Union in any way. In the film, they use SPECTRE, mainly because world domination and super-weapon plots had become part of the formula since the adaptation of Goldfinger. Blofeld and SPECTRE hadn't appeared in the books at this point, but there is a part of the story which takes place in "Spectreville", and old western ghost town which Seraffimo Spang had converted into a private retreat.

Spang also travels in a private train, an element which appears in Goldeneye; Alec Trevelyan travels in an armoured train which had previously been used to transport missiles, which reflects the post-Cold War setting of that film.

A lot of changes had to be made in the film due to the order of the films being different to the order of the books. For example, the previous film had been On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which ended with the murder of Bond's wife by Blofeld. The pre-title sequence involves Bond hunting Blofeld down.

Another example of this kind of change happens with Felix Leiter. He'd been maimed by a shark in Live and Let Die, and is now working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. In the film series, he doesn't get maimed until the sixteenth film, License to Kill, so he's still working with the CIA. Even though the CIA is not meant to have jurisdiction on American soil.

There are some changes which make sense, and offer the opportunity for expansion. In the book, Bond smuggles the diamonds to the United States by hiding them in golf balls. I've heard that it's possible to open up a golf ball, but is highly dangerous and ill-advised. In the film, Bond has to intercept Peter Franks in Amsterdam after the smuggler escapes from custody. After killing him in a very creative fight scene, Bond uses the body to transport the diamonds. That seems to be more plausible than using golf balls.

The film does retain some imagery from the book, but uses them differently. One example involves characters being drowned in hot mud. In the novel, Bond's payout for delivering the diamond is obtained by betting on a rigged horse race. When Leiter bribes the jockey to get himself disqualified, Bond goes to a mud bath to make the payoff. It's here he encounters Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, the Spangled Mob's enforcers, who "discipline" the jockey with what's at hand.

Another example is a scorpion. The novel opens from the perspective of a scorpion, which is promptly crushed by the first smuggler in the pipeline, a dentist who pays miners to hide the diamonds in their mouths so he can extract them during a routine appointment. In the final chapter, Jack Spang kills the dentist by putting the scorpion in his mouth when he closes the pipeline. Spang himself is killed by Bond, who shoots down his helicopter with an anti-aircraft gun.

A similar scene happens at the beginning of the film (even opening with a shot of the scorpion). This time, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd meet the dentist, and Wint drops the scorpion down his back. They later meet a pilot due to collect the diamonds from the dentist, killing him with a bomb hidden in the package they hand over.

All in all, I think the film could have gotten away with killing Blofeld at the beginning and using conventional villains. It could have been an interesting break from the usual SPECTRE plots.