Daniel Craig - Fleming's Bond?

Daniel Craig is, perhaps, the most controversial actor to assume the film role of James Bond since Ian Fleming's initial objection to Sean Connery.  How does he measure up against his literary counterpart?

One of the most remarkable things about Eon's James Bond film series, aside from its sheer longevity, is the extent to which it has enjoyed great success with so many different interpretations of the character: six actors, over the course of 21 feature films thus far, from the Early Swinging Sixties to the Grim New Century, have each given us a 007 with his own individual, unmistakably personalized stamp.  To be sure, some have been more successful than others, and the franchise has waxed and waned accordingly, but the mystique and appeal of Ian Fleming's craftily-drawn character has always managed to confound and outlive his critics and detractors.  Never before was this better put to the test than in October 2005, when the tuxedo was offically passed to Daniel Craig---and the question of just what James Bond ought to look like became a front-and-center issue...as well as the question of whether 007 should remain an infallible superman in the post-9/11 era.

"...Only A Silhouette"   

"And what would the casual observer think of him, 'Commander James Bond, C.M.G., R.N.V.S.R.'...the rather saturnine young man in his middle thirties sitting opposite the Admiral?  Something a bit cold and dangerous in that face.  Looks pretty fit.  May have been attached to Templer in Malaya.  Or Nairobi.  Mau Mau work.  Tough-looking customer.  Doesn't look the sort of chap one usually sees in Blades."¹

Ian Fleming was judicious in how he doled out such tidbits of description---sometimes as a means of allowing his reader an insight as to how Bond viewed himself, rather than how he was actually viewed by others.  It was a clever---and economical---way to provide an occasional, fleeting element of what the literary adventures of James Bond generally did not dwell upon: self-reflection.  Occasionally, however, taking full advantage of the 'third-person omiscient' point-of-view, Fleming allowed us to actually 'hear' the thoughts of those who observed 007:

"The table was becoming wary of this dark Englishman who played so quietly, wary of the half-smile of certitude on his rather cruel mouth.  Who was he?  Where did he come from?  What did he do?"²

Based on passages like this, one might reasonably surmise that James Bond, the character, is as much an attitude as he is a "very good-looking" man with striking features and a singular, instantly recognizable face.  Fleming was, after all, certainly trying to tell us something with his countless references to the "cruel mouth;" he couldn't even let his protagonist go to sleep, at the end of the first chapter of his debut novel, without giving us something to think about:  "...and with the warmth and humor of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold."³  Coming, as it does, so early in the first book, it is an enticingly blank screen, onto which all of us might project our own ideas and expectations---and many of these are not easily cast aside by the handful of specifics we're eventually given.

Vesper Lynd comments that Bond is "very good-looking,"⁴ then goes on to compare him, if only fleetingly, to jazz musician Hoagy Carmichael.  Later, after having been told of her remark, Bond regards his own reflection in a mirror:  "His grey-blue eyes looked calmly back with a hint of ironical inquiry...With the thin vertical scar down his right cheek the general effect was fainly piratical.  Not much of Hoagy Carmichael there, thought Bond..."⁵  Here we see Bond's self-image in contrast to what others see, which (intentional or not on Fleming's part) is very effective in providing additional leeway...and room for endless discussion and debate. 

The letter vs. the 'spirit'

It is at least interesting, if not ironic, that most of the specific physical attributes Fleming provides, over the course of his twelve novels and two collections of short stories, are clearly violated by the casting of Daniel Craig, to wit:  "It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sunburned skin of the right cheek.  The eyes were wide and level under straight, rather long black brows.  The hair was black, parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma fell down over the right eyebrow.  The longish straight nose ran down to a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel mouth.   The line of the jaw was straight and firm."⁶  Again with the cruel mouth!  Also given here are some very specific vitals:  "Height: 183 centimetres; weight; 76 kilograms; slim build; eyes: blue; hair: black..."⁷  But then Fleming again pulls back and provides a more subjective impression, as viewed through the eyes of an enemy:  "General G. held the photograph out at arm's length.  Decision, authority, ruthlessness---these qualities he could see."⁸

There's no question that a chasm exists between James Bond and Daniel Craig if we hold firm to the  letter of Fleming's text, and demand a man over six feet tall with dark hair.  At 5'11" (standing slightly tip-toed), he is the shortest actor ever to play James Bond for Eon Productions.  With blonde hair, he is the very opposite of 'dark.'  He has a pugilist's nose, rather than one of the long and straight variety that Fleming indicated.  At least Craig gets the eye colour more or less right.

Where Craig gains back an undetermined amount of this lost ground, at least to an apparent segment of Bond fans, are in some of the more generalized (and therefore subjective) traits:  "saturnine," "tough-looking customer," "taciturn...ironical, brutal, and cold," "decision, authority,  ruthlessness."  Then comes the endless riddle of the "cruel mouth," which is just vague enough to make an arguable case that each of the six Bond actors, to date, has possessed such a mouth, to one degree or another.   Similarly, the notion of what constitutes "very good-looking" is highly subjective from one person to the next.  For every fan who remains convinced that Craig is "too blonde," "too ugly," "too muscular" or "too short" to be James Bond, there seems to be another (usually a female) who finds him quite attractive indeed.

Paying The Price

Woven into the escapist tapestry of the Fleming novels is a persistent element of pain for the hero.  James Bond always triumphs, but often at great physical cost.  Largely ignored by the films until a bloodied and battered Timothy Dalton emerges at the climax of Licence To Kill---and only slightly addressed with Pierce Brosnan's nagging shoulder injury in The World Is Not Enough, and his unpleasant episode with scorpion venom in Die Another Day---the notion of Bond as a hero who bleeds (aside from the occasional token bloody nose or lip!) has remained a largely literary notion.  The James Bond of Fleming's novels was a flawed man who occasionally made mistakes, even as a tenured professional in the world of espionage---mistakes which (most of the time) led to his capture and wretched mistreatment at the hands of the villain-of-the-moment, and often meant a subsequent stay in hospital...or at least an extended leave of absence for R & R. 

This sort of thing certainly wasn't what Eon was aiming for when the films began in 1962.  As noted Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum wrote of the early films:  "The common denominator is deadpan spoofing.  We know it, the audience know it, yet they are perfectly willing to alternately believe and disbelieve what is happening on the screen.^"9  As the series progressed, the so-called 'deadpan spoofing' arguably became something more overt, and the films became very much their own entity, quite entirely separate from the original novels.  Fleming's 'tough guy' Bond quickly evolved into a much smoother and unflappable superagent, and box office cash registers continued to ring.

But times, and the marketplace, change.  After 20 films, producer Barbara Broccoli, daughter of Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and heir to the Cinematic Bond Empire, decided to attempt what her father had firmly decided against in the 1980s, following the hugely successful run of Roger Moore Bond films:  take Bond back to square one, earlier in his career---in other words, a 'reboot' of the film franchise.  Not only did Eon gamble on a 'reboot' and cast the controversial Daniel Craig; in choosing Casino Royale as the next project, they committed themselves to a revisiting of the Fleming source material.  

Speculation was rampant:  Since it was Casino Royale, would we get the infamous torture sequence?  Would we get "The bitch is dead"?  Yes...and yes. 

Craig's performance during the torture sequence is a defining moment for the new Bond era.  Based on this alone, it no longer seems impossible (or 'uncinematic') to imagine James Bond getting his 'pinky' finger broken, such as in the Live And Let Die novel...or, while bound to a chair, goading the villain into beating him senseless so that he leaves the room in a state of distraction, leaving a blowtorch behind for Bond to use in his teeth to free himself---only to be subjected to the pain of the steam-hose---in Moonraker ...or to be stomped to within an inch of his life by goons with boots, as in Diamonds Are Forever.  It truly is a brave new world.  One can only wonder what Dr. No's obstacle course would look like today, if Daniel Craig were the Bond forced to run that particular gauntlet.

Final Thoughts

Is Daniel Craig the James Bond envisioned by Ian Fleming?  Certainly not, in any strictly-interpreted take on his books---no more than any of his predecessors, and indeed less than some of them.  Like all who have worn the tuxedo before him, he brings his own 'thing' to the role...and the element of "deadpan spoofing," to which Richard Maibaum referred so many years ago, arguably remains very much in place---having experienced its own sense of evolution.  Does Daniel Craig bring certain fresh elements of Ian Fleming's James Bond into play, in a way that none before him have managed---and, if so, does this bode well for the long-term health of the character?

Perhaps...

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