Dr. No (film)

Dr. No
In the foreground, Bond wears a suit and is holding a gun; four female characters from the film are next to him.
British theatrical release poster by Mitchell Hooks
Directed byTerence Young
Screenplay by
Based onDr. No
by Ian Fleming
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyTed Moore
Edited byPeter R. Hunt
Music byMonty Norman
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release dates
    • 5 October 1962 (1962-10-05) (United Kingdom)
    • 8 May 1963 (1963-05-08) (United States)
Running time
109 minutes
Countries
  • United Kingdom[1]
  • United States[2]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.1 million (£392,022[3])[4]
Box office$59.5 million

Dr. No is a 1962 spy film directed by Terence Young. It is the first film in the James Bond series. Starring Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman and Jack Lord, it was adapted by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather from the 1958 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The film was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, a partnership that continued until 1975. It was followed by From Russia with Love in 1963. In the film, James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a fellow British agent. The trail leads him to the underground base of Dr. Julius No, who is plotting to disrupt an early American space launch from Cape Canaveral with a radio beam weapon.

Although it was the first of the Bond books to be made into a film, Dr. No was the sixth of Fleming's series, beginning with Casino Royale. The film makes a few references to threads from earlier books, and later books in the series as well, such as the criminal organisation SPECTRE, which was not introduced until the 1961 novel Thunderball. Produced on a low budget, Dr. No was a financial success. While the film received a mixed critical reaction upon release, it has gained a reputation over time as one of the series' best instalments. Dr. No also launched a genre of secret agent films that flourished in the 1960s. The film spawned a comic book adaptation and soundtrack album as part of its promotion and marketing.

Many aspects of a typical James Bond film were established in Dr. No. The film begins with an introduction to the character through the view of a gun barrel and a highly stylised main title sequence, both of which were created by Maurice Binder.[5] It also introduced the iconic theme music. Production designer Ken Adam established an elaborate visual style that is one of the hallmarks of the film series.

  1. ^ "Dr. No". Lumiere. European Audiovisual Observatory. Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  2. ^ "AFI|Catalog". Archived from the original on 29 August 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
  3. ^ Chapman, L. (2021). “They wanted a bigger, more ambitious film”: Film Finances and the American “Runaways” That Ran Away. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 18(2), 176–197 p 180. https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2021.0565
  4. ^ Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945–1985. Edinburgh University Press p 360
  5. ^ "Spies". Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema. Series 2. Episode 3. 2 April 2020. Event occurs at 13:26. BBC. BBC Four. Archived from the original on 9 May 2020. Retrieved 3 April 2020.