Vive l’entente Bondiale!

Ou... une célébration de la contribution des acteurs français qui ont joué dans des films de James Bond

There’s always been a special deliciousness in the way French actors have delivered their lines in Bond films. Maybe it’s down to the actor, maybe it’s just the accent. Either way, they've left an indelible mark.

With the unconfirmed news that Léa Seydoux will star in Bond 24, I thought I’d look at the various contributions French actors have made to the Bond films so far.

The films’ first full-on foray into Frenchness came in 1965 with Claudine Auger as Domino Derval in Thunderball. Auger was crowned Miss France in 1958 at the age of 15 (AHEM), studied drama at the Conservatoire de Paris (as did Bérénice Marlohe - but more of her later), and gave birth to her first child aged 49. It’s a shame she was dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl, but if you want to hear her in her native tongue, here she is.

"Auger. It's pronounced 'oh-zhay'. Okay?"

The rest of the 60s and most of the 70s were a bit barren for French actors in the Bond films. That is until The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 and Nîmes-born Vernon Dobtcheff’s turn as club owner Max Kalba (aside: how fucking annoying was the music in the Mojave Club?). He didn’t last long before Jaws bumped him off, but I’m sure someone would have done so eventually due to the club’s music policy. Vernon is still working, by the way, and celebrated his 80th birthday in August.

*VERNFACT: he played an elderly Nazi in Father Ted. Proof.

Next up is the quintessential Bond villain, Moonraker’s Hugo Drax, played by the velvety-voiced Michael Lonsdale. To the delight of the audience, Drax revels in his verbal barbs against Bond. I think he has the best one-liners of any Bond villain, among my favourites: “James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.” Judge for yourself.

"Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him."

Given that Moonraker was mostly shot in France, it's understandable that French actors were peppered throughout the production. Corinne Cléry gives an adequate performance as Corinne Dufour but, again, Nikki van der Zyl dubbed her real voice on-screen, but you can hear her (and see her romp around on a giant hand!) here. Fellow French actor Blanche Ravalec pops up - and almost out - as Jaws’ girlfriend Dolly.

*BLANCHEFACT: she narrated the French version of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Carole Bouquet is next up, essaying the role of vengeful Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only. Melina shows an understated independence from her very first scene and is quite happily bumping off her parents’ assassin before she even meets Bond. In fact, I’d argue that character gets duller from the moment she meets Bond.

*CAROLEFACT: she is the luckiest person alive, in that she no longer goes out with the dick that is Gerard Depardieu.

To the mid-80s now and France is next represented by Jean Rougerie, playing detective Achilles Aubergine in A View To A Kill. He doesn’t make it past the soup course, but does display an excellent moustache.

In The Living Daylights, French native (although half-Dutch, half Georgian by parentage) Maryam D’Abo shines through as Kara Milovy in spite of a nasty raincoat. With her awkward charm, she set my pulse raising a little above average and was the reason I took up the cello for a whole week in 1988.

"You're English?"

Tcheky Karyo’s Defence Minister Dmitri Mishkin in Goldeneye in 1995 was the only main French actor to crop up in the Pierce Brosnan years UNTIL Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough.

Like Carole Bouquet, she played the wronged daughter of a murdered father, but her complicity in his killing and her ability to beguile and manipulate people around her sets her on another level. Marceau is a phenomenal actor, crowned by her butter-wouldn’t-melt half-pout, her wicked laugh as Bond chases her, and her smirking pronouncement to Bond: “You wouldn’t kill me. You’d miss me.” Pure class.

WANTED: for crimes against Dame Judi

The Daniel Craig era has continued this superb run of hiring superlative French actors. Parkour genius Sébastien Foucan gets Casino Royale off to a flying start, leaping off scaffolding as Mollaka.

But while Foucan only lasts 18 minutes into the film, it’s Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd who dominates with the sheer quality of her acting, marking her out as one of the finest talents ever to appear in a Bond film. In Mark O’Connell’s excellent book Catching Bullets (available here), he sums it up better than I could:

“Green plays Vesper as a sort of Evil Under The Sun chanteuse – all 1930s gowns, hats and curls finished off with a sort of Emo-duchess poise and Roedean accent. Enabling Craig to shape his 007, Green has the finest acting chops of many a Bond squeeze with a curious mix of Maud Adams’ grace and Diana Rigg’s balls”.

"Don't look at the necklace. Seriously, don't. It'll give the whole game away"

Casino Royale represented the peak of French acting involvement of the Bond films so far. Unfortunately, Quantum of Solace's Mathieu Amalric is not as successful as Michael Lonsdale in the Bond baddie stakes; he’s creepy but unconvincing (as I stated in a previous entry) although I concede this is more to do with the poor script and direction than to Amalric himself.

And that brings us on to our final French actor, the criminally underused Bérénice Marlohe in Skyfall. As a Bond film, it's definitely one of the best, but the character of Severine is one of the drawbacks. There’s just not enough of her, although I see how the writers didn’t want anyone to intrude on the Bond-M-Silva dynamic and that’s a real shame.

"I've got to tap the ash of this cigarette or it'll go EVERYWHERE"

I hope this upward trend of quality French actors continues. So, come on Babs and Michael: more Lonsdale, Greens and Marceaus please. 

Will Léa Seydoux join their ranks?

Tune-raker: The Best Bond Themes (Part 1)

This is a list I started during the long months of unemployment in the not-too-distant past.

Faced with a plethora of rejection letters and impending poverty, my mind naturally turned to my one constant touchstone in my life: James Bond.

So, one day, I decided to list Bond themes in order of preference, starting with chaff and ending with the wheat, and I present the first part of that chart for you now, from 22 to 12.

Feel free to disagree. But you'll be wrong.


So let's start with the worst...


22. Wings - Live & Let Die

Yes, I know, a controversial choice. I can only think that Paul McCartney was high on the whiff of Mulls of Kintyre when he wrote this atrocious calamity. The psuedo-reggae parts are just plain embarrassing. It sounds like Ali G taking the piss, although I concede that such things might have been perfectly acceptable in 1973.

Summary: Like a bad meal where the courses just get worse and worse and worse.

21. The James Bond Theme (from Dr. No)

Another contentious one, possibly. It's never been my favourite, despite being a constant thread through all of the films. I accept that later versions of this theme (the one that opens The Living Daylights, in particular) are tons better but this version from Dr. No leaves me cold. The calypso and crashing cymbals are just too much for my delicate ears.

Summary: The worst thing about Dr. No

20. Madonna - Die Another Day

This stuttering vocoder-ed oddity doesn't so much annoy me as just constantly disappoint me. It starts out pretty sinister with sharp orchestral accent-y bits, but then I suspect Madonna or one of her producers fell on the synthesiser, accidentally overlaying the master track with a whole of unwanted bells and whistles that they then couldn't delete.

Summary: "Sigmund Freud. Analyse this". No thanks, Madge, you're alright.

19. Shirley Bassey - Diamonds Are Forever

I once saw the lyricist on this song, Don Black, being interviewed and he said that you should just substitute the word 'diamonds' for the word 'penis'. It's THAT one-dimensional. I think he meant it to be sensual, but it's just a bit... well, seedy. In its favour, it is pretty well-orchestrated with lots of sumptuous guitars, and it does build into a nice, ahem, climax.

Summary: It's about dicks. We get it.

18. Rita Coolidge - All Time High

A sleazy saxophone is never a good way to entice me in, and no truer here. It plods along with an okay chorus but - like a lot of the plot of the film - seems thrown together at the last minute, with lyrics that are just cliches that rhyme. Utterly forgettable, and produced the worst ever performance in the charts by a Bond theme.

Summary: Rita who?

17. Lulu - The Man With The Golden Gun

Like Diamonds Are Forever, this goes heavy on the innuendo (he has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot, etc etc ad Carry-On-um) and is none the better for it. The producers of the films were keen to cash in on Roger Moore as the new Bond (having debuted in Live & Let Die the year before) and the film was rushed out. This was a corner that they cut. It's as if they said: "Lulu, can you just read the smutty graffiti on that toilet wall and shout it into the microphone? Thanks, love."

Summary: Oh dear, Lulu. Oh dear, everyone.

16. Louis Armstrong - We Have All The Time In The World (from On Her Majesty's Secret Service)

Another bore-fest. Yes, Louis Armstrong was a legend, but this schmaltzy ballad is so out of place in the Bond canon, it's untrue.

And yes, I know that OHMSS was a completely unique film with George Lazenby, its adherence to the Fleming novel and Bond - shock, horror - getting married, but are you kidding me with this saccharin shit? It is passable at best.

(My advice is skip to the Iggy Pop version below the original. It's brilliant, and shows you that it is not beyond salvage)

Summary: I wouldn't be surprised to find that Westlife have covered this. It's more their bag.

And the Iggy Pop version:

(If the executors of my will read this, I want this version played at my funeral)





15. Sheena Easton - For Your Eyes Only

John Barry, who scored 12 Bond films in total, was in tax exile when FYEO was being put together, so it fell to Bill Conti to come up with a Bond sound for the 1980s. He doesn't do a bad job, neither does Ms Easton, but the whole thing falls a bit flat.

The opening note is like a diver dropping into the sea (to fit with a large nautical section of the film) but it struggles to resurface after that. The lounge-y piano does it no favours either. So 1981.

Summary: Could do better. Much better.

14. Tom Jones - Thunderball

First off, I rather like the lumbering, shark-like orchestration on this theme. Tom Jones' performance is powerful but unexciting.

What I really like about this theme are the lyrics about a man hell-bent on domination, a clever word-play on the growing cult of Bond. I like not being sure whether the song is about Bond or the film's villain, Largo. These lyrics were written by Don Black, responsible for two of the previous entries on this chart (Diamonds Are Forever and The Man With The Golden Gun), and this is a lot better than those.

Summary: Reminds you that Tom Jones isn't just a grey-haired man sat on a revolving chair.

13. Nancy Sinatra - You Only Live Twice

Plundered by Robbie Williams for his Millennium single, this underrated theme bumbles along nicely enough. You get the feeling that by this stage (YOLT was the 5th Bond film), the composers were just writing everything to be sung à la Bassey after the bang-up job she did on Goldfinger. Nancy is no Shirl, let's face it.

But the string arrangement is pleasant, and I love the occasional 'pling' of the harp.

Summary: A solid job. Not much more than that.

12. Sheryl Crow - Tomorrow Never Dies

*Huff klaxon* This should never have been the theme for this film.

If you listen to the end credits, you'll hear a far superior song sung by kd lang, officially entitled 'Surrender'. My theory is this: poor old Sheryl was parachuted in at the very last minute when producers got cold feet about the bankability of kd lang singing the main theme. I may be wrong, but until David Arnold or Barbara Broccoli corrects me personally, I'm sticking to it.

The Sheryl song isn't terrible but suffers - as some Bond themes have - with 'Should-Have-Been-Sung-By-Shirley-Bassey' Syndrome. Who on earth told Sheryl she could hit that top note? Presumably, the same person would suggest Neil Tennant to have a bash at Madame Butterfly. The song demands too much of Sheryl - and the evidence is there to hear for everyone. (I do like some of the guitars, though)

Summary: Repeat after me. Should've been kd lang. Should've been kd lang. Should've been kd lang

And the rightful theme:

So that's the bottom 11.

Who will be number one?

How will Shirley fare? Will nobody do it better than Carly Simon? Was Garbage a load of garbage?

Check here to find out!