50 Years of James Bond
Screening Schedule: October 5–31, 2012
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters @ MoMA-NYC
Friday, October 5
8:00 Dr. No
1962. Great Britain. Directed by Terence Young.
With Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman
In Connery’s debut as 007, an MI6 agent goes missing at the hands of the villainous Dr. No, and Bond is dispatched to the Caribbean with a trickedout attaché case courtesy of the gadget wiz Q. Bond’s meeting with the enigmatic Honey Ryder as she emerges from the surf in a bikini would set the stage for the 21 films to follow. 109 min.
Saturday, October 6
2:00 From Russia with Love
1963. Great Britain. Directed by Terence Young.
With Sean Connery, Lotte Lenya, Daniela Bianchi.
When SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion) plots to kill Bond, the lure is the sensuous Tatiana Romanova, a Russian cipher clerk working in Istanbul. Romanova, previously recruited by butch SPECTRE
agent Rosa Klebb, tells Bond she needs him to help her defect to England and bring along a top-secret decoding machine. 114 min.
5:00 Goldfinger
1964. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Gert Frobe.
Armed with a bar of gold bullion, MI6 sets out a trap to capture the nefarious Auric Goldfinger. The mission leads Bond to Pussy Galore and Jill Masterson, the tragic golden girl. The iconic title sequence with the golden-bikini-clad model was designed by Robert Brownjohn, with Shirley Bassey singing the title song. 110 min.
7:30 Thunderball
1965. Great Britain. Directed by Terence Young.
With Sean Connery, Anthony Dawson, Lois Maxwell.
Once again SPECTRE plots to blackmail Britain and the USA, this time by highjacking two nuclear bombs and threatening to detonate them over a major city. Behind this
dastardly plan is Emilio Largo, still nursing his bruised ego after Bond beat him at baccarat.
Fiona Volpe, Paula Caplan, and Domino Derval are among the vixens who attempt to seduce and/or murder Bond. 133 min.
Sunday, October 7
2:30 You Only Live Twic
1967. Great Britain. Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Screenplay by Roald Dahl
With Sean Connery, Donald Pleasance, Mie Hama
According to James Chapman’s License to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, You Only Live Twice was released two months after the Bond spoof Casino Royale with the tag-line “Sean Connery IS James Bond.”
007 is declared dead in an attempt to bamboozle SPECTRE and its mastermind, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. A plotline about a missing U.S. space capsule reflects a growing
fascination with the space race. 116 min.
5:30 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
1969. Great Britain. Directed by Peter Hunt.
With George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas.
Following the Ian Fleming novel more closely than the previous Bond films, OHMSS represented a significant shift in Bond cinema. First, Connery, after a dispute with the producers, was replaced by Australian model/actor George Lazenby. Second, Bond actually marries and remains faithful to Tracy, the daughter of a crime king. The film ends on an uncharacteristically melancholy note with Tracy’s death. 135 min.
Monday, October 8
4:30 Diamonds Are Forever
1971. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Lana Wood.
Connery returns as Bond! In Las Vegas to uncover a diamond smuggling ring, Bond encounters his nemesis, Blofeld, who masterminded the murder of Bond’s wife. Never alone for long, Bond finds comfort in the arms of Tiffany Case and the aptly named Plenty O’Toole. 120 min.
Goodbye Sean Connery, hello Roger Moore
8:00 Live and Let Die
1973. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Seymour.
Roger Moore’s debut as 007 gave a much-anticipated boost to the franchise. Moore had substantial spy cred thanks to TV’s The Saint, and enough physical difference from
Connery to make the role his own.
Dispatched to Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood to investigate the death of an MI6 agent, Bond runs afoul of Dr. Kanaga, the evil ruler of a Caribbean island who intends to flood the United States with heroin. 121 min.
Wednesday, October 10
4:30 The Man with the Golden Gun
1974. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Christopher Lee.
The title refers to the weapon of choice of Scaramanga (Lee), an enigmatic assassin
who uses only a single bullet. While no one in MI6 has seen a picture of Scaramanga, they do know one thing: he has a third nipple!
The film features an overload of quirky secondary characters, such as Nick Nack, Hai Fat, Sheriff J.W. Pepper, and Mary Goodnight. 125 min.
8:00 The Spy Who Loved Me
1977. Great Britain. Directed by Lewis Gilbert
With Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Richard Kiel.
MI6 and the KGB form a rare alliance, dispatching their best agents, 007 and Anya Amasova, to find out what happened to missing British and Russian atomic submarines.
Über-villain Stromberg, who lives on an offshore structure called Atlantis, employs a giant henchman named Jaws with a mouthful of steel. Look out for the Lotus Esprit auto that Q has modified to become a submarine! 126 min.
Thursday, October 11
4:30 Moonraker
1979. Great Britain. Directed by Lewis Gilbert
With Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale
In 1977 NASA tested the Space Shuttle Enterprise. The Bond franchise tends to mirror
contemporaneous political, social, and cultural events, and Moonraker revolves around the disappearance of a U.S. space shuttle. Bond’s love interest, Holly Goodhead, is the top rocket scientist at Drax Industries, where the shuttle was designed by the evil billionaire Hugo Drax. Even a bad guy finds love in Moonraker; Jaws returns as one of Drax’s assassins but when he falls in love with Dolly, he joins 007 in saving the world. 126 min.
8:00 For Your Eyes Only
1981. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen
With Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol.
At stake in this mission is possession of the ATAC (Automated Targeting Attack Communicator) device, which the British Royal Navy needs to keep tabs on its nuclear submarine fleet. ATAC falls into the hands of shipping tycoon Kristatos, who is in collusion with the KGB. With Kristatos’s impregnable lair high atop a remote rock face, Bond, who is of course an expert mountain climber, leads a band of allies to reclaim the apparatus. 127 min.
Friday, October 12
4:00 Octopussy
1983. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Louis Jourdan
Octopussy, world-class smuggler and leader of the all-girl cult of the Octopus, proves a formidable—and very alluring—foe for Bond. Octopussy joined forces with 007 when she realizes her employer, Prince Kamal Khan, is an unprincipled gangster. Even in the world of repugnant villains, one must have principles. 131 min.
7:00 A View to a Kill
1985. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones.
Bond is sent to Siberia to recover a top-secret microchip that was surgically implanted into agent 003. But how did 003 wind up in Russia? Enter the requisite baddies:
industrialist Max Zorin and his lady friend May Day, both products of Nazi genetic experimentation. When Zorin threatens to detonate an explosion that will cause a colossal California earthquake, 007 and his gal pal, geologist Stacy Sutton, come to the rescue. 131 min.
Goodbye Roger Moore, hello Timothy Dalton.
Saturday, October 13
1:15 The Living Daylights
1987. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Timothy Dalton, Joe Don Baker, Jeroen Krabbe.
With the 40-year-old Timothy Dalton aboard as the new James Bond, the narrative turned more action-oriented than it had been with the older Roger Moore. Also, the producers wanted to return to the more emotionally conflicted Bond of the Ian Fleming novels. Bond is dispatched to Berlin to kill a KGB sniper before he can assassinate a British agent. Bond has a clear shot, but when he realizes the sniper is a young woman cellist he hesitates and only wounds her. Has 007 lost his nerve? 130 min.
4:30 Licence to Kill
1989. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Timothy Dalton, Carey Lowell, Talisa Soto.
Bond and CIA agent Felix Leiter successfully capture South American drug trafficker Franz Sanchez. Sanchez escapes from prison and extracts revenge on his captors by feeding Leiter to sharks and murdering his wife. Bond wants to find Sanchez, but M refuses his request and Bond’s license to kill is revoked by MI6.
Singer Wayne Newton has a cameo role as a cheesy televangelist who uses coded messages in his broadcasts to relay drug prices to Sanchez. 133 min.
Goodbye Timothy Dalton, hello Pierce Brosnan.
8:00 GoldenEye
1995. Great Britain. Directed by Martin Campbell.
With Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, Sean Bean.
After a six-year hiatus, the Bond franchise returned with a new 007, more sophisticated technology, and a view to mirror the excesses of contemporary action movies.
In what was, at the time, the most expensive Bond film, product placement became a prominent factor in narrative development; Bond drove a BMW, wore an Omega watch, and drank Perrier water. Also, M is now a woman, played by the elegantly unyielding Dench. 130 min.
Sunday, October 14
5:30 Tomorrow Never Dies
1997. Great Britain. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode.
With Pierce Brosnan, Teri Hatcher, Jonathan Pryce.
British media mogul Elliot Carver has a juicy international incident fall into
his lap on the day he launches his 24-hour news network. Coincidence? Gadget
guru Q is in rare form: before turning over the keys to a customized BMW 750iL,
he asks 007 to return the car without any damage.
This was the first Bond film produced by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.
119 min.
Monday, October 15
4:30 The World Is Not Enough
1999. Great Britain. Directed by Michael Apted.
With Pierce Brosnan, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards
The terrorist Renard, who has a bullet lodged permanently in his brain, masterminds a London explosion that kills mogul Robert King and blows a huge hole in MI6 headquarters. M, sensing the next target in Renard’s madness is King’s daughter Elektra, sends Bond to protect the very willful young woman. Richards is amusingly miscast as Christmas Jones, a hot pants–wearing American physicist who oversees the dismantling of a nuclear reactor. 128 min.
Wednesday, October 17
4:30 Die Another Day
2002. Great Britain. Directed by Lee Tamahori.
With Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, John Cleese.
Bond goes rogue once again on a vendetta mission, irritating M with an unauthorized flight to Cuba. In a quintessential Bond-girl entrance, Jacintha “Jinx” Jonselle emerges from the ocean in an orange bikini with a low-slung belt bearing a golden “J” buckle. Former Monty Python member Cleese portrays tech genius Q and introduces Bond to yet another custom built car; this time it’s an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish. 132 min.
Goodbye Pierce Brosnan, welcome Daniel Craig.
8:00 Casino Royale
2006. Great Britain. Directed by Martin Campbell.
With Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Giancarlo Giannini.
Le Chiffre, banker to terrorists, organizes a very high-stakes poker game at Montenegro’s Casino Royale in order to recoup some much-needed capital. Bond joins the game, ready to thwart any gains by his opponent—and drag him back to MI6 headquarters for interrogation. Craig’s Bond is dark, moody, unfriendly, and more of a brawler than a gentleman. As usual, 007 is irresistible to the ladies, but this time he falls deeply in love with Vesper Lynd. 145 min.
Thursday, October 18
4:00 Quantum of Solace
2008. Great Britain. Directed by Marc Forster.
With Daniel Craig, Mathieu Amalric, Olga Kurylenko.
Ostensible ecophilanthropist Dominic Greene is secretly out to corner Bolivia’s water supply for his own nefarious ends. Bond, still smarting from the troubling suicide of Vesper Lynd, has gone more maverick than ever. M wants him nearby, but instead he flees to Haiti and Bolivia, where the spirited Camille, who has a vendetta of her own, draws in the grieving 007. 106 min.
Repeat screenings of the Bond retropective ... starting with Bond #1
7:00 Dr. No
1962. Great Britain. Directed by Terence Young.
With Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman.
109 min. (See Friday, Oct 5, 8:00)
Friday, October 19
4:00 From Russia with Love.
1963. Great Britain. Directed by Terence Young.
With Sean Connery, Lotte Lenya, Daniel Bianchi.
114 min. (See Saturday, October 6, 2:00).
8:00 Goldfinger
1964. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Gert Frobe.
110 min. (See Saturday, October 6, 5:00)
Saturday, October 20
2:00 Thunderball
1965. Great Britain. Directed by Terence Young.
With Sean Connery, Anthony Dawson, Lois Maxwell.
133 min. (See Saturday, October 6, 7:30).
5:00 You Only Live Twice
1967. Great Britain. Directed by Lewis Gilbert.
With Sean Connery, Donald Pleasance, Mie Hama.
116 min.(See Sunday, October 7, 2:30).
8:00 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
1969. Great Britain. Directed by Peter Hunt.
With George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas.
135 min. (See Sunday, October 7, 5:30).
Sunday, October 21
2:00 Diamonds Are Forever
1971. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Lana Wood.
120 min. (See Monday, October 8, 4:30).
5:00 Live and Let Die
1973. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Seymour.
121 min. (See Monday, October 8, 8:00).
Monday, October 22
4:00 Man with the Golden Gun
1974. Great Britain. Directed by Guy Hamilton.
With Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Hervé Villechaize.
125 min. (See Wednesday, October 10, 4:30).
Wednesday, October 24
4:30 The Spy Who Loved Me
1977. Great Britain. Directed by Lewis Gilbert.
With Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Richard Kiel.
126 min.
(See Wednesday, October 10, 8:00).
7:30 Moonraker
1979. Great Britain. Directed by Lewis Gilbert.
With Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale.
126 min. (See Thursday, October 11, 4:30).
Thursday, October 25
4:30 For Your Eyes Only
1981. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol.
127 min. (See Thursday, October 11, 8:00).
8:00 Octopussy
1983. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Louis Jourdan.
131 min. See Friday, October 12, 4:00).
Friday, October 26
4:30 A View to a Kill
1985. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones.
131 min. (See Friday, October 12, 7:00).
8:00 The Living Daylights
1987. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Timothy Dalton, Joe Don Baker, Jeroen Krabbe.
130 min. (See Saturday, October 13, 1:15)
Saturday, October 27
1:30 Licence To Kill
1989. Great Britain. Directed by John Glen.
With Timothy Dalton, Carey Lowell, Talisa Soto.
133 min. (See Saturday, October 13, 4:30).
4:30 GoldenEye
1995. Great Britain. Directed by Martin Campbell.
With Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, Sean Bean.
130 min.
(See Saturday, October 13, 8:00).
7:30 Tomorrow Never Dies
1997. Great Britain. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode.
With Pierce Brosnan, Teri Hatcher, Jonathan Pryce.
119 min. (See Monday, October 15, 4:30)
Sunday, October 28
2:30 The World is Not Enough
1999. Great Britain. Directed by Michael Apted.
With Pierce Brosnan, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards.
128 min. (See Monday, October 15, 7:00).
5:30 Die Another Day
2002. Great Britain. Directed by Lee Tamahori.
With Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, John Cleese.
132 min. (See Wednesday, October 17, 4:30).
Wednesday, October 31
4:00 Casino Royale
2006. Great Britain. Directed by Martin Campbell.
With Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Giancarlo Giannini.
145 min. (See Wednesday, October 17, 8:00).
8:00 Quantum of Solace
2008. Great Britain. Directed by Marc Forster.
With Daniel Craig, Mathieu Amalric, Olga Kurylenko.
106 min. (See Thursday, October 18, 4:00).
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