The Living Daylights (1987)
is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond film series and the first to
star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film's
title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story, "The Living
Daylights". It was the last film to use the title of an Ian
Fleming story until the 2006 instalment Casino Royale. Originally the
film was proposed to be a prequel in the series, an idea that
eventually resurfaced with the reboot of the series in 2006.
The
beginning of the film resembles the short story, in which Bond acts
as a counter-sniper to protect a Soviet defector, Georgi Koskov. He
tells Bond that General Pushkin, head of the KGB, is systematically
killing British and American agents. When Koskov is seemingly
snatched back, Bond follows him across Europe, Morocco and Afghanistan.
The collection of short
stories including, Octopussy and The Living Daylights (sometimes just
published as Octopussy) would be the fourteenth and final James Bond
book written by Ian Fleming and was published posthumously in the
United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape on June 23 1966. The book originally
contained just two stories, "Octopussy" and "The
Living Daylights", with subsequent editions also carrying
firstly "The Property of a Lady" and then "007 in New
York". The stories were first published in different
publications, with "Octopussy" first serialised in the
Daily Express in October 1965. "The Living Daylights" had
first appeared in The Sunday Times in February 1962; "The
Property of a Lady" was published in November 1963 in a
Sotheby's publication, The Ivory Hammer, whilst "007 in New
York" first appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in October
1963. Both "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights",
were both adapted for publication in comic strip format in the Daily
Express in 1966–1967. The Living Daylights film was produced by
Albert R. Broccoli, his stepson Michael G. Wilson, and his daughter
Barbara Broccoli. The Living Daylights was generally well received by
most critics and was also a financial success, grossing $191.2
million worldwide.
In
Autumn 1985, following the financial and critical disappointment of
A View to a Kill, work began on scripts for the next Bond film, with
the intention that Roger Moore would not reprise the role of James
Bond. Moore, who by the time of the release of The Living Daylights
would have been 59 years old, claims he chose to retire from the role
after 12 years and 7 films. Albert Broccoli, however, claimed that he
let Moore go from the role. A significant search for a new actor to
play Bond saw a number of actors, including Sam Neill (pictured right
in his 007 screen test), Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton audition
for the role in 1986. Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson, director
John Glen, Dana and Barbara Broccoli "were impressed with Sam
Neill and very much wanted to use him." However, Albert Broccoli
was not sold on the actor. In the UK Neill won early fame, and was Golden-Globe
nominated, after portraying real-life spy Sidney Reilly in
mini-series Reilly, Ace of Spies (1983). Reilly, a Russian Jew,
became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among
his exploits, in the early 20th century, were the infiltration of the
German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks
in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for
espionage. Many historians consider Reilly to be the first
20th-century super-spy and Ian Fleming used Reilly as as one of his
inspirations for James Bond. Neill would go on to play Dr. Alan Grant
in the blockbuster Jurassic Park.
The
producers eventually offered the role to Brosnan after a three-day
screen-test. At the time, he was contracted to the television show
Remington Steele which had been cancelled by the NBC network due to
falling ratings. The announcement that he would be chosen to play
James Bond caused a surge in interest in the series, which led to NBC
exercising (on the very last day) a 60-day option in Brosnan's
contract to make a further season of the show. NBC's action caused
drastic repercussions, as a result of which Albert Broccoli withdrew
the offer given to Brosnan, citing that he did not want the character
associated with a contemporary TV series. This led to a drop in
interest in Remington Steele, and NBC did not slot a full twenty-two
episode season into their schedule. The final abbreviated season
consisted of six hours of made-for-TV films broadcast in early 1987,
before the show was finally cancelled. The edict from Broccoli was
that "Remington Steele will not be James Bond." The
Remington Steele cancellation and reversal not only impacted
Brosnan's chance to play Bond but effected his co-star in the series
as well. Stephanie Zimbalist had accepted the role of Officer Anne
Lewis in the science-fiction movie RoboCop and was forced to pull out
of that production, to be replaced by Nancy Allen. Stephanie
Zimbalist's father is actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr, well known for his
starring roles in the television series 77 Sunset Strip and The
F.B.I. In the 1990's he was the voice behind the character Alfred
Pennyworth in Batman: The Animated Series and its numerous spin-offs.
In 1995 Brosnan would get a second chance to play 007 in GoldenEye.
Dana
Broccoli suggested Timothy Dalton. Albert Broccoli was initially
reluctant given Dalton's public lack of interest in the role, but at
his wife's urging agreed to meet the actor. However Dalton would soon
begin filming Brenda Starr and so would be unavailable. In the
intervening period, having completed Brenda Starr, Dalton was offered
the role once again, which he accepted. For a period, the filmmakers
had Dalton, but he had not signed a contract. A casting director
persuaded Robert Bathurst, an actor who would become known for his
roles in Joking Apart and Cold Feet, to audition for Bond. Bathurst
believes that his "ludicrous audition" was only "an
arm-twisting exercise" because the producers wanted to persuade
Dalton to take the role by telling him they were still auditioning
other actors. Other actors considered for the role of James Bond
included; Mel Gibson, Mark Greenstreet, Lambert Wilson, Antony
Hamilton, Christopher Lambert, Findlay Light, and Andrew Clarke.
Maryam
d'Abo, a former model, was cast as the Czechoslovakian cellist Kara
Milovy. In 1984, d'Abo had attended auditions for the role of Pola
Ivanova in A View To a Kill. Barbara Broccoli included d'Abo in the
audition for playing Kara, which she later passed. In 2002, d'Abo
co-wrote the book Bond Girls Are Forever, a tribute to the women who
have played the role of a Bond Girl. The book formed the basis for a
documentary, featuring d'Abo and other famed Bond girls, including
Ursula Andress. The documentary appeared on the American AMC network
in 2002, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of Die Another
Day. It was later included as a gift with the purchase of Die Another
Day on DVD by some retailers. In 2006, a new version of the
documentary, updated to include interviews with cast from Casino
Royale (2006) was again aired on the AMC network and later released
as a bonus feature on the March 2007 Blu-ray Disc and DVD release.
In 2007, d'Abo had surgery
for a brain hemorrhage from which she recovered. It inspired her to
meet other people who had similar experiences and in 2009, she worked
on a documentary on this topic. If you remembered seeing Maryam on
the popular TV series The Wonder Years, you would be wrong. Maryam is
the look-a-like first cousin once removed of Olivia Jane d'Abo, the
English-American actress and singer-songwriter, best known for
portraying the rebellious teenage sister Karen Arnold in The Wonder
Years and later the recurring villain Nicole Wallace in Law &
Order: Criminal Intent.
Originally, the KGB general
set up by Koskov was to be General Gogol; however, Walter Gotell was
too sick to handle the major role, and the character of Leonid
Pushkin replaced Gogol, who appears briefly at the end of the film,
having transferred to the Soviet diplomatic service. This was Gogol's
final appearance in a James Bond film. Morten Harket, the lead
vocalist of the rock group A-ha (which performed the film's title
song), was offered a small role as a villain's henchman in the film,
but declined, because of lack of time and because he felt they wanted
to cast him due to his popularity rather than his acting.
Director John Glen decided
to include the macaw from For Your Eyes Only. It was seen chirping in
the kitchen of Blayden House when Necros attacks MI6's officers.
AV
CLUB FEATURETTE DEPARTMENT
Untitled
Original Trailer for the
1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights. Buy
it here.
The film was shot at
Pinewood Studios at its 007 Stage in UK, as well as Weissensee in
Austria. The pre-title sequence was filmed on the Rock of Gibraltar
and although the sequence shows a hijacked Land Rover careering down
various sections of road for several minutes before bursting through
a wall towards the sea, the location mostly used the same short
stretch of road at the very top of the Rock, shot from numerous
different angles. The beach defences seen at the foot of the Rock in
the initial shot were also added solely for the film, to an otherwise non-military
area. The action involving the Land Rover switched from Gibraltar to
Beachy Head in the UK for the shot showing the vehicle actually
getting airborne. Trial runs of the stunt with the Land Rover, during
which Bond escapes by parachute from the tumbling vehicle, were
filmed in the Mojave Desert, although the final cut of the film uses
a shot achieved using a dummy. Other locations included Germany, the
United States, and Italy. The desert scenes were done in Ouarzazate,
Morocco. The conclusion of the film included the Schönbrunn
Palace, Vienna and Elveden Hall, Suffolk (below).
Principal photography
commenced at Gibraltar on September 17th 1986. Aerial stuntmen B.J.
Worth and Jake Lombard performed the pre-credits parachute jump. Both
the terrain and wind were unfavourable. Consideration was given to
the stunt being done using cranes but aerial stunts arranger B.J.
Worth stuck to skydiving and completed the scenes in a day. The
aircraft used for the jump was a C-130 Hercules, which in the film
had M's office installed in the aircraft cabin. The initial point of
view for the scene shows M in what appears to be his usual London
office, but the camera then zooms out to reveal that it is, in fact,
inside an aircraft. Although marked as a Royal Air Force aircraft,
the one in shot belonged to the Spanish Air Force and was used again
later in the film for the Afghanistan sequences this time in
"Russian" markings. During this later chapter, a fight
breaks out on the open ramp of the aircraft in flight between Bond
and Necros, before Necros falls to his death. Although the plot and
preceding shots suggest the aircraft is a C-130, the shot of Necros
falling away from the aircraft show a twin engine cargo plane, a
C-123 Provider. Worth and Lombard also doubled for Bond and Necros in
the scenes where they are hanging on a bag in a plane's open cargo door.
The
press would not meet Dalton and d'Abo until October 5th 1986, when
the main unit travelled to Vienna. Almost two weeks after the second
unit filming on Gibraltar, the first unit started shooting with
Andreas Wisniewski and stunt man Bill Weston. During the course of
the three days it took to film this fight, Weston fractured a finger
and Wisniewski knocked him out once. The next day found the crew on
location at Stonor House, doubling for Bladen's Safe House, the first
scene Jeroen Krabbé filmed.
The film reunites Bond with
British car maker Aston Martin. Following Bond's use of the Aston
Martin DBS in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the filmmakers then
turned to the brand new Lotus Esprit in 1977s The Spy Who Loved Me,
which reappeared four years later in For Your Eyes Only. Despite the
iconic status of the submersible Lotus however, Bond's Aston Martin
DB5 is recognised as the most famous of his vehicles. As a
consequence, Aston Martin returned with their V8 Vantage.
Two different Aston Martin
models were used in filming, a V8 Volante convertible, and later for
the Czechoslovakia scenes, a hard-top non-Volante V8 saloon badged to
look like the Volante. The Volante was a production model owned by
Aston Martin Lagonda chairman, Victor Gauntlett.
The Living Daylights was
the final Bond film to be scored by composer John Barry. The
soundtrack is notable for its introduction of sequenced electronic
rhythm tracks overdubbed with the orchestra, at the time, a
relatively new innovation.
The title song of the film,
"The Living Daylights", was co-written with Paul Waaktaar-Savoy
of the Norwegian pop-music group A-ha and recorded by them. The
group and Barry did not collaborate well, resulting in two versions
of the theme song. Barry's film mix is heard on the soundtrack (and
on A-ha's later greatest hits album Headlines and Deadlines). The
version preferred by the band can be heard on the 1988 A-ha album
Stay on These Roads. However, in 2006 Pal Waaktaar-Savoy complimented
Barry's contributions "I loved the stuff he added to the track,
I mean it gave it this really cool string arrangement. That's when
for me it started to sound like a Bond thing". The title song is
one of the few 007 title songs that is not performed or written by a
British or American performer.
In a departure from
previous Bond films, The Living Daylights was the first to use
different songs over the opening and end credits. The song heard over
the end credits, "If There Was A Man", was one of two songs
performed for the film by Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. The other
song, "Where Has Everybody Gone", is heard from Necros's
Walkman in the film. The Pretenders were originally considered to
perform Daylights' title song. However, the producers had been
pleased with the commercial success of Duran Duran's "A View to
a Kill", and felt that A-ha would be more likely to make an
impact in the charts.
The
original soundtrack release was released on LP and CD by Warner
Bros. and featured only 12 tracks. Later re-releases by Rykodisc and
EMI added nine additional tracks, including alternate instrumental
end credits music. Rykodisc's version included the gunbarrel and
opening sequence of the film as well as the jailbreak sequence, and
the bombing of the bridge. Additionally, the film featured a number
of pieces of classical music, as the main Bond girl, Kara Milovy, is
a cellist.
The Prince and Princess of
Wales attended the film's premiere on June 27th 1987 at the Odeon
Leicester Square in London. The Living Daylights grossed the
equivalent of $191.2 million worldwide. In the United States it
earned $51,185,000, including an opening weekend of $11,051,284,
surpassing the $5 million grossed by The Lost Boys that was released
on the same day.
In the film, Koskov and
Whitaker repeatedly use vehicles and drug packets marked with the Red
Cross. This action angered a number of Red Cross Societies, which
sent letters of protest regarding the film. In addition, the British
Red Cross attempted to prosecute the filmmakers and distributors.
However, no legal action was taken. As a result, a disclaimer was
added at the start of the film and some DVD releases.
IGN lauded The Living
Daylights for bringing back realism and espionage to the franchise
and showing James Bond's dark side. Many, including John J. Puccio
and Chuck O'Leary, praised Timothy Dalton's performance and his
performing most of the stunts himself. The Washington Post even said
Dalton developed "the best Bond ever." Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times criticised the lack of humour in the protagonist,
however, while Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail wrote of Dalton's Bond
that "you get the feeling that on his off nights, he might curl
up with the Reader's Digest and catch an episode of Moonlighting".
In
Autumn 1985, following the financial and critical disappointment of
A View to a Kill, work began on scripts for the next Bond film, with
the intention that Roger Moore would not reprise the role of James
Bond. Moore, who by the time of the release of The Living Daylights
would have been 59 years old, claims he chose to retire from the role
after 12 years and 7 films. Albert Broccoli, however, claimed that he
let Moore go from the role. A significant search for a new actor to
play Bond saw a number of actors, including Sam Neill (pictured right
in his 007 screen test), Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton audition
for the role in 1986. Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson, director
John Glen, Dana and Barbara Broccoli "were impressed with Sam
Neill and very much wanted to use him." However, Albert Broccoli
was not sold on the actor. In the UK Neill won early fame, and was Golden-Globe
nominated, after portraying real-life spy Sidney Reilly in
mini-series Reilly, Ace of Spies (1983). Reilly, a Russian Jew,
became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among
his exploits, in the early 20th century, were the infiltration of the
German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks
in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for
espionage. Many historians consider Reilly to be the first
20th-century super-spy and Ian Fleming used Reilly as as one of his
inspirations for James Bond. Neill would go on to play Dr. Alan Grant
in the blockbuster Jurassic Park.
Maryam
d'Abo, a former model, was cast as the Czechoslovakian cellist Kara
Milovy. In 1984, d'Abo had attended auditions for the role of Pola
Ivanova in A View To a Kill. Barbara Broccoli included d'Abo in the
audition for playing Kara, which she later passed. In 2002, d'Abo
co-wrote the book Bond Girls Are Forever, a tribute to the women who
have played the role of a Bond Girl. The book formed the basis for a
documentary, featuring d'Abo and other famed Bond girls, including
Ursula Andress. The documentary appeared on the American AMC network
in 2002, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of Die Another
Day. It was later included as a gift with the purchase of Die Another
Day on DVD by some retailers. In 2006, a new version of the
documentary, updated to include interviews with cast from Casino
Royale (2006) was again aired on the AMC network and later released
as a bonus feature on the March 2007 Blu-ray Disc and DVD release.
The
press would not meet Dalton and d'Abo until October 5th 1986, when
the main unit travelled to Vienna. Almost two weeks after the second
unit filming on Gibraltar, the first unit started shooting with
Andreas Wisniewski and stunt man Bill Weston. During the course of
the three days it took to film this fight, Weston fractured a finger
and Wisniewski knocked him out once. The next day found the crew on
location at Stonor House, doubling for Bladen's Safe House, the first
scene Jeroen Krabbé filmed.
The
original soundtrack release was released on LP and CD by Warner
Bros. and featured only 12 tracks. Later re-releases by Rykodisc and
EMI added nine additional tracks, including alternate instrumental
end credits music. Rykodisc's version included the gunbarrel and
opening sequence of the film as well as the jailbreak sequence, and
the bombing of the bridge. Additionally, the film featured a number
of pieces of classical music, as the main Bond girl, Kara Milovy, is
a cellist.
