By Paul Byrnes
James Bond has a way with women. Half of them end up dead after sleeping with him. Most of the others try to kill him, perhaps because he's the greatest male chauvinist in popular entertainment.
He was a sort of poised Neanderthal in a sharp suit in the early films. In Goldfinger (1964), James lay by the pool at a Miami hotel having his back massaged by the comely Dink (Margaret Nolan). Felix Leiter of the CIA (Cec Linder) turned up with a cable from London. Sean Connery introduced her then slapped her on the bottom. "Dink, say goodbye to Felix," he says. "Man talk."
In Thunderball, he seduced a nurse at a health spa by threatening to tell her superiors that he was nearly killed by "the rack", a spine-stretching apparatus.
"I suppose my silence could have a price," Bond says.
"You don't mean ...?"
"Oh yeah," and they retire to the steam room.
A degree of coercion was common in the Connery years, from 1962 to '67. Even Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), supposedly a lesbian, surrendered to his charms after they exchanged judo throws in Goldfinger's stable. It was literally a roll in the hay.
Bond has always used sex as a tool. He seduces to get information, as with Miss Taro (Zena Marshall), an agent for Dr No. Russian agent Tatiana (Daniela Bianchi) in From Russia With Love gave him a "Lektor Decoder
"Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?," he asks Ling (Tsai Chin) after a night of fun in Hong Kong.
"You think we better?" she asks.
"No, just different. Like Peking duck is different to Russian caviar. I love 'em both."
"Darling, I give you very best duck," she says, in one of the better lines of that era.
In the Daniel Craig era, James has changed. He's more chivalrous. He doesn't like it when women are killed because of him, such as Solange (Caterina Murino), the horse-riding beauty in Casino Royale. She was tortured first, M (Judi Dench) informs him, coldly.
The biggest change is not within James, but in the women around him. This is partly at Daniel Craig's insistence. He doesn't like a lot of what James represents. In the current round of endless media for Spectre, opening on November 12, someone asked him what lessons the character could offer people in their daily lives. "Nothing," said Craig.
But many people admire his way with "the ladies", said the interviewer.
"But let's not forget that he's actually a misogynist. Lots of women are drawn to him chiefly because he embodies a certain kind of danger and he never sticks around too long."
And the increased chivalry? "That's because we've surrounded him with very strong women who have no problem putting him in his place."
One is Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who meets him in the train en route to the card game in Casino Royale. He says he's a good judge of character, then offers a brutal assessment of her as a woman who tries too hard to be masculine and thereby loses the respect of her superiors in the Treasury.
She returns fire: "All right. From the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford or wherever. Naturally you think human beings dress like that, but you wear it with such disdain … My guess is you didn't come from money and your school friends never let you forget it. Which means you were at that school by the grace of someone's else's charity, hence the chip on your shoulder …
"Having just met you, I wouldn't go as far as calling you a cold-hearted bastard," she says.
"Course not," says James.
"But it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine you think of women as disposable pleasures rather than meaningful pursuits. So as charming as you are, Mr Bond, I will be keeping my eye on our government's money and off your perfectly formed arse."
No woman had ever talked to James Bond like that, but the trend started before Daniel Craig. In Goldeneye (1995), the first with Judi Dench as M, she tells Pierce Brosnan off in a wholly new way.
"I think you're a sexist misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War whose boyish charms, though wasted on me, obviously appealed to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you."
Dench's M changed the game. Every major Bond woman since she came on board has been tougher, more resourceful, more interesting. Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), a Chinese agent to die for. Sophie Marceau as Elektra King, an heiress to fear in The World is Not Enough (1999). Rosamund Pike and Halle Berry in Die Another Day (2002); Naomie Harris as the new Moneypenny in Skyfall (even if she did shoot 007).
It is only partly true that Bond films stand or fall on the quality of their villains. The Bond women now carry a huge amount of the storyline, and a fair bit of the action. You could take Ursula Andress out of Dr. No and the plot would not fall over. That's no longer true. Judi Dench made the whole silly idea of Bond more real. After her, it became impossible to return to the days of the slapped arse. The sexism sold well in the 1960s among male viewers; the lack of it now sells just as well among women.