This is not a review of Quantum of Solace, the 22nd James Bond picture. There was a screening Wednesday night, but I had to put my Walther PPK aside…and babysit. My license to kill has been revoked, my piece replaced with a 4 oz. bottle.

In any event, it gives me a chance to do what Popdosers often do: stroll down memory lane. Week-to-week, most of this column is in the here and now, but today I go back…way back, from Bond 1 to Bond 21. We start at the age of eight, circa 1973, when Nixon was still in the White House and my dad took me to see a double feature of Diamonds are Forever and Live and Let Die. I have vivid memories of the former, Sean Connery’s second-to-last turn in his signature role: From the get-go, it was more perverse than what I was used to be taken to, with gay villains, lesbian villainesses, and a bad guy in drag, not that any of this registered with any clarity (though its swishy portrait of homosexuality is on a third-grade level today). But I immediately grasped its structure, with the pre-opening credits action, the fusion of opening song and sinuous animated titles, the introduction of series regulars, and a rise-and-fall pattern to the expository, bedroom, and action scenes. Everything snapped perfectly into place, like one of Q’s gadgets.

There was a playful formality to it, credited, I came to recognize, to co-producer Albert R. Broccoli, who from Dr. No to Licence to Kill lavished as much attention on his baby as David O. Selznick did on Gone with the Wind. (His partner Harry Saltzman, who I think kept some of his lesser impulses in check, left the series after The Man with the Golden Gun, as the series made a decisive shift.) The journeyman directors, never A-list auteurs in their own right, who were hired to keep the works running smoothly did some of their best work on the series. Then again, how could they not, with the likes of composer John Barry, production designer Ken Adam, and titles creator Maurice Binder in their corner? (more…)