My favourite Bond film: Goldfinger

Goldfinger has the most sinister villain and best soundtrack but it's the inept fumbling of 007 that truly sets this Bond film apart

Anne Billson
Tue 2 October 2012

The first time I laid eyes on James Bond, he had just emerged from the ocean with a fake seagull on his head. He then blew up a drug lord's laboratory, peeled off his wetsuit to reveal an immaculate white DJ, snogged an exotic dancer, clocked in her eyeballs the reflection of a bad guy sneaking up behind them, tipped said bad guy into the bathtub, threw an electric heater in after him, and quipped: "Shocking, positively shocking!" All this, and the credits hadn't even started. My 12-year-old self thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Many years later, Goldfinger (1964) remains not just my favourite Bond movie, but the standard by which all other Bond movies must be judged. It has Sean Connery, of course, and the best theme song, incorporating Shirley Bassey and lashings of John Barry brass.

My favourite Bond film / From Russia With Love

My favourite Bond film: From Russia With Love

Sean Connery's 1963 outing to Istanbul may look grainy now, but his exchanges with Robert Shaw have lost none of their edge

Posted by Peter BradshawThe Guardian, Monday 24 September 2012

From Russia With Love is my favourite James Bond movie, simply because it is the first Bond I ever saw at the cinema. This was at the old Classic in Hendon Central in London, some time in the early 1970s, in an era before Bond films were shown on television, and going to see them at the cinema was a special school-holiday treat. Quite long-in-the-tooth Bond films would be revived on the big screen like this: this was a double bill of From Russia With Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965).

1. From Russia With Love
2. Production year: 1963
3. Country: UK
4. Cert (UK): PG
5. Runtime: 118 mins
6. Directors: Terence Young
7. Cast: Bernard Lee, Daniela Bianchi, Lois Maxwell, Lotte Lenya, Pedro Armendariz, Robert Shaw, Sean Connery
8. More on this film

What a thrill to hear that incredible theme tune played live (as it were) for the first time, echoing around the cavernous old cinema and seeing those opening titles: the mysterious circle shunting across the dark screen, Bond walking in profile, turning dramatically face on and firing, the descending curtain of blood. It was like a bad dream or expressionist ballet. Perhaps nothing in any 007 film can ever match the heart-racing thrill of Monty Norman's inspired Bond theme. That was the 007 brand, right there. Then it was time for the title-sequence itself, a fantastically silly image of a belly-dancer on whom the titles were ripplingly projected. To my saucer-eyed 12-year-old self, this was the grownup world as it was meant to be: erotic, exotic, mysterious and dangerous. Actually, it is a Raymond Revuebar vision of adult sophistication.