The Bond Films: ‘Determination’ and ‘Production’

Abstract

The first work which we undertook on James Bond, above and beyond our rather different experiences of adolescent reading and film-going, was a study of the production of one of the later James Bond films, The Spy Who Loved Me made in 1976 and 1977.² That original case-study raised a series of theoretical problems about some of the existing ways of analysing the texts and formations of popular culture. The case-study focused on what is usually termed the ‘occupational ideologies’ of people who made the Bond films. It consisted of interviews with the Bond production team combined with filmed and written accounts of a number of the planning meetings where policy decisions were made in relation to different aspects of the organisation of the film and its production. We also examined some of the shooting and editing of the film, the development of the musical score and the development of the publicity campaign which accompanied the opening of the film. In terms of its theoretical orientations, the case-study attempted to combine an analysis of the occupational ideologies of the film-makers with an analysis of the ideological economy of the Bond films generally and particularly of The Spy Who Loved Me. In this chapter, we examine the same period of production of The Spy Who Loved Me and reconsider some of the assumptions about the relationship between the views of film-makers and film texts which characterised our own and other accounts of the process of making a film.

‘I think that the mere fact that we were lucky enough to stumble upon Ian Fleming and Bond was a bit of good fortune. The rest was all hard work.’ (‘Cubby’ Broccoli, 1976)¹