The Bond Girl through the ages

How far have we come along in cinematic portrayals of women insofar as Bond is concerned?

From IGN

Previsioning the 'Bond Girl':

Insofar as the cinematic depictions of Bond girls are concerned, a clear inspiration can be found in the many 'femme fatale' female leads of film noir genre from the 1940s to the 1950s. The likes of Jane Greer, Barbara Stanwyck, Marie Windsor etc. against strong, assertively masculine leads like Robert Mitchum and Sterling Hayden, and the onscreen pairings of Humprey Bogart's private eye characters of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe against Mary Astor and offscreen paramour Lauren Bacall, respectively. These female 'leads'--although their purpose was always more to support the male leads--would parry the male's wisecracks with equally saucy innuendo, setting the template for the Bond dynamic with his female opposites; a distinct difference, however, being in the very nature of these flirtations. In the film noir genre these saucy discourses were either harmless bits of fun, or the female manipulating the male through her sexuality; the Bond films in a sense, provided a sort of subversion of this by having the male use his sexuality to win over females as a means to an end. There's that one scene in The Big Sleep (1946) which previsions this sort of dynamic through the one scene where Bogart's Marlowe uses his sexual allure to entice Dorothy Malone's bookstore propietress. The seductive back-and-forth between them is perhaps, the most clear precursor to Bond besides perhaps North by Northwest.


From IGN

This brilliant Hitchock thriller, starring Cary Grant in the frequent character trope of the 'man on the run' for a crime he did not commit, has been frequently described in many cinematic circles as effectively the first Bond film. Not so much in terms of the conception of Grant's Thornhill itself, who's more of an amateur 'spy', a somewhat bumbling but lucky advertising executive who just happens to be ensnared into a world of espionage, but more for the deliciously villainous portrayals of James Mason and a very young Martin Landau as some very depraved, verbally astute individuals, the action set-pieces, and of course Eve Marie Saint's Eve Kendall sort of femme fatale figure who in fact provides a very interesting dual portrayal of very distinct types Bond girls would soon take up the mantle of. The cool seductress, and the warmer fellow agent/comrade to Bond: Saint plays both sides excellently with the right amount of style, class and wit for each, and her portrayal of the character provides a very interesting template with which to view the later Bond girls with, and charter the progress they make with these roles.

The First Wave of 'Bond Girls': The Fetishizing Movement
The Connery films can be grouped as 'snobbery with violence' as James Chapman terms it: adaptations which fully embrace box-office excess, and treat women with a patronising, fetishizing excess of sexual exposure. They can be seen as the espionage equivilance of the Hammer Horror films, contrasting with the British 'new wave' movement of the Angry Young Men, which embraced naturalistic and gritty acting and directorial style, contrasting with the campy smoothness of the Connery Bond films. Indeed, Laurence Harvey's portrayal of an 'Angry Young Man' in the kitchen-sink drama Room at the Top could be contrasted with Connery's bond in terms of their approach to women: using them as means to an end. Harvey's Joe Lampton aspires to climn the social ladder with them; Connery uses them to crack the case and save the day, women's rights be damned. This can be all seen as a bit of a subversion of the femme fatale figure: the women are prized and cast for their looks, but the characters, rather than using them to ensnare men, are instead being ensnared by men.

To be fair to Fleming himself, the character of 007 had been even more misogynised by the filmmakers b the increasing of sexual partners to him in the films; it was definitely an intelligent bit of marketing decision-making on their behalf, and I suppose if the themes were there, might as well milk it for all it's work. The dim view with which the Bond films took to the likes of Honey Ryder (whose actress, Ursula Andress, was clearly cast for her looks alone as she was dubbed for both her speaking and singing voice) and Jill Masterson (whose sole purpose in Goldfinger so it seems, is to act as sexual fodder and then be killed off in the most sexually fetishized way possible, covered head to toe in golden paint) seems to be mirrored in the likes of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The character of Liz Gold/Nan Perry, played by Claire Bloom, may be in a way the 'damsel in distress' of the piece, strung along by MI6 to be a pawn in the game being played by Richard Burton's Alec Demeas, but the subversion is that that's not the spy's intent at all. Burton's fantastically cynical and downbeat performance, by far the best I've seen him in anything, and Bloom's diametrically luminous turn, have great chemistry that's not at all one-sided. Bloom plays her female foil with intelligence even within the character's naievity and at its conclusion, a brave, righteous sense of indignation that's far removed from the nonchalance of Bond girls at the times to proceedings, so long as they got to get in bed with Bond at the end.

From 007james.com

The Connery Bond films in this wave pretty much continued along the same sort of fetishizing wave, with an added touch of 'meta' to it. As the qualities of the films and Connery's investment in the role dwindled, the Bond girls were increasingly used as tools for the film. Casino Royale remained untouched (aside from that admirable effort of a parody film starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen). Increasingly the ladies became disposable playthings for the dominant male hero. Good actresses like Julie Christie were turned away by producers because, according to the producers of Thunderball, she wasn't voluptuous enough. Roald Dahl, when adapting (loosely) Fleming's You Only Live Twice, was allegedly given a specific 'girl formula' to the various roles Bond girl (s) should play in the films: one who is to be killed off as a attractive sacrificial lamb, one who's (secretly) a villain but who Bond gets the better of by the end anyway, and a 'pro-Bond' female who is involved in the third act and should preferably be saved as a damsel in distress, and swept off her feet into Bond's bed.

Pro-Female Progression (?) in On Her Majesty's Secret Service?

From Wikimedia.org

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was such a change from these immediate predecessors in more ways than one. I for one have a great deal of love for this particular Bond entry, for even though it in many way overturns the Bond scheme in many ways--there's a streak of meta humour, a decidedly downbeat ending, and the portrayal of Bond does differ a great deal (which I'll get onto in a bit)--, but all in all it's a fantastic motion picture with many an excellent set-piece (particularly the Swiss Alps chase which features some of the best camerawork I've ever seen in any 1960's action film); Peter Hunt's direction is unforced and lets the intricacies of the plot linger before a second-half onslaught of great action pieces. A rather intriguing depiction of Blofeld by Teddy Savalas as not just a cold megalomaniac, but a rather depraved one, a rather thoughtfully written script that delves into surprisingly dark territory, and of course the wonderful Diane Rigg as Countess Tracy di Vicenzo. Perhaps most well-known to modern audiences as the scene-stealing Oleanna Tyrell in Game of Thrones, her Bond girl is one of the reasons the film works so well. She plays the troubled side of the character well, showing the cynicism and inherent sadness over past failed relations and bringing into her performance a sense of rejuvenation at meeting Bond. She doesn't feel like a cipher, or fodder but rather, a well-written character in her own right, testament to excellent work by screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Simon Raven. There's even a female side villain: Ilse Seppat as Irma Bunt, a henchwoman to Blofeld later to be parodied in the Austin Powers films, but who here makes for a suitably intimidating presence.

For once it's not a one-sided affair for Bond is equally enamoured with Tracy, and it's easy to see why: Rigg's performance is not only so, so very sweet, with her porcelain good looks and softly intoned lines, but she's also got 'lots of guts' as Lazenby's Bond would say. The character is written not as just someone who needs to be rescued, but who can do a fair bit of rescuing on her on: matching Bond with a quip to match each of his, and is a rather cracking driver to boot. I've read a lot of reservations about Lazenby's performance as being flawed in its uncertain, softer and sometimes even a bit whiny Bond, but I actually like his performance a great deal here because it fits so well with Rigg's: they make quite the winning couple, and Lazenby's more tender approach to Bond makes his passion for Tracy all the more palatably felt, and gives the film's ending so much of its power. It's clear why later films like For Your Eyes Only and Licence to Kill continued to make references to Tracy: she's just a great example of a Bond girl who lingers on in your mind even after the credits roll.

Moore Focus on the Bond Girls
The last Connery entry (technically speaking non-canonical) Diamonds are Forever, and the Moore's Live and Let Die, and The Man with the Golden Gun all revert to a campier, more screwball-esque style of seduction with regards to Bond's sexual escapades. The misogyny is still quite appalling, but it's somewhat tempered by the broad approach that's take with it: innuendo, broad humour and self-aware one-liners (Moore's speciality), as well as an extreme depiction of the majority of females as bimbos (for example Bond's daffy assistant Mary Goodnight in The Man with the Golden Gun who really is as silly as her name sounds). The self-mockery these films verge upon may well prove that Moore and his various directors were secretly genius, scoffing at the Bond conventions and satirizing through their distinctly mock-comic approaches. There's nothing particularly substantial about Bond girls from this period aside from the fact that they had funny names like Jill St. John and Solitaire, and had quite the stylized approach to their performances: for example, Jane Seymour plays in Live and Let Die is the closest the films have to a 'manic pixie girl' with her campy, enjoyable take on the female psychic.


From schmoesknow.com

The Spy Who Loved Me proved to be a turning point for these films: the titular agent as gradually, villains become less 'important' insofar as more emphasis on writing given to female characters. The titular Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) is a Russian agent who works with Bond to uncover and stop a plot to initiate a WWIII. Her introductory scene is particularly interesting: shot with her lover on the side, a phone call calling for a spy to duty being answered by not HE, but rather SHE, completely subverts the audience's attentions. There can be female spies, this film insists, and or such a campy and fun Bond film there's a surprising amount of depth given to the dynamic between her and Bond as firstly there's a cool, uncompromising rivalry tinged with a hint of mutual respect, representing perhaps the Transatlantic-Russian relationship at the time (Anya's Russian nationality becoming quite a significant plot point here): this international scope given to the Bond girl extends to later on Moonraker where the CIA agent Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) would represent the tenuous but grudging alliances between Britain and America in many international respects in this period. Aside from the nominal lead Bond girls, the 'supporting' Bond girls too began to have rather interesting arcs of their own: May Day (Grace Jones) in A View to Kill, henchwoman to Max Zorin, is a muscular, domineering presence and actually has a heel-face turn near the end of the film, making her little story within the film resonate.

From esquire.com

The 'Stylized' Bond Girls
The Timothy Dalton entries The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill don't have much in the way of interesting discussion about love interests, the main focus on those films being of cours Dalton's excellent, edgy interepretation of the character as one cool, cold and calculating fellow. Worth noting though that one of the central arcs in Licence to Kill is the avenging of Felix Leiter's wife murder by Bond. Women aren't necessarily an afterthought, then, though it takes the Pierce Brosnan films to return back to creating memorable Bond girls, for better or worse.

trentonherzog.wordpress.com

Famke Janssen's Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye is one of the most fascinating examples of a contemporary Bond girl: almost an amalgamation of the classic Bond girl types as she's both an incredibly alluring presence and a very depraved psychopath. Janssen's physicality is very well harnessed in this performance: the best modern-day equivalent I can find is perhaps the depiction of Mystique in the X-Men films, a character who uses sex as a weapon, literally. She stands out as a villain, perhaps the best one, in a film chock-full of them, and starts off a trend of Bond girls who are clearly archetypes of specific styles, but nevertheless interesting in their own right. Sophie Marceau's interesting take on a victim of Stockholm Syndrome in The Worlds is Not Enough and Michelle Yeoh's Chinese spy in Tomorrow Never Dies are fairly thinly written characters, but the strong performances behind them help to elevate them into memorable sparring partners for Bond. Marceau in particular helps to make the otherwise fairly predicatable TWINE into quite a cliffhanger insofar as you're never quite sure (and neither is Bond) her Elektra King is going to do. Others fair less well (in the same film as Marceau Denise Richards is the least convincing astrophysicists ever, and Rosamund Pike and Halle Berry in Die Another Day are examples where the style of 'badass action girl' and 'ice queen' can verge on self-parody if done poorly), but nevertheless this period in Bond films provides an interesting discussion regarding the fairer sex.

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Revisionist Bond, Revisionist Bond Girls
The franchise experienced a major rejuvenation and change in tone with the entrance of Daniel Craig as 007 in 2005's Casino Royale, and the role of the Bond girl followed suit. Eva Green's Vesper Lynd stands as one of the best Bond girls in the series: Green, who just naturally has quite the exotic air to all her performances, plays a perfectly capable treasury agent who accompanies Bond to take down Le Chiffre at a poker tournament. She has a terrific dynamic with Craig, with the sexual and romantic chemistry between the two providing enough substance to convince the audience that Bond would seriously consider leaving the service for her. The allure of her character is always prevalent but importantly, it never is the defining feature: to use the cliché, she's more than just a pretty face.

From nerdynothings.com

The tonal imbalance by the ladies of Quantum of Solace make the jarring comparisons of Olga Kurylenko's Camille, an vengeful agent, and the easily manipulated Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton), feel considerably less impactful, but thankfully the last two entries Skyfall and Spectre have rectified this by some sterling portrayals of women. Judi Dench's M is the nominal Bond girl lead of Skyfall and her relationship to Javier Bardem's Silva is one of the most interesting aspects of the film: Silva becomes a character rather easy to see him as a figure more sinned against than sinning, through his treatment as a sacrificial lamb by the MI6 and M,  and M's complicity in his downfall as an agent, and ascension as a villain, as an insufficient maternal figure is surmised by Bardem's chilling delivery of the line ‘Mommy was very bad’. The reimagining of Ms Moneypenny as an action girl in her own right by Naomie Harris is also quite interesting, and Berenice Lim Marhole's tragic, if somewhat shortchanged, arc as a showgirl with a dark and sordid past gives much depth to what could've, and probably would've, been the thinnest of stereotypes in some of the old Bond films.

From dailymail.com

Spectre is in many ways a modern-day reinvention/reimagining of many of the 'greatest hits' of the old Bond films, and I loved it for that. Monica Bellucci's cameo is arguably a not particularly necessary bit of gratuitous sexuality but she plays her grieving widow as well as anyone could've, and with her more emotional approach contrasted well with Lea Seydoux's Madeline Swann, who starts off her character arc with that icy doctor routine that's really quite effective in establishing her independent nature, and gradually in her relationship with Bond thawing this side out and carrying her side of the film very well, both as an emotional anchor (the scene where she watches footage of her father's suicide is heartbreaking) and of course, as a love interest for blonde, making sure to depict her character as a bit of a scattershot mess in terms of her affectations. There's certainly a great deal more potential with her character, and if the ending of Spectre is anything to go by, we might see more of that.

Conclusion
The Bond girl has always been a mainstay of the films and will continue to be so long as they're churned out on a regular basis. The progression made has had its fair share of ups and downs, but if the arc it's been going in is any indication, we've come a long way from the days of them just being sugarcoated paper-thin 'objects'. No matter the subjective opinion about the performance or writing behind the character, it's clear that the Bond girl is now respected by directors and actresses as a role with potential to create a character sufficiently interesting to carry her own side of the film, without having to just be a lifeless foil to Bond.