Me and my mom got a colour televion only in the middle of the eighties. So before this I saw everything in b/w.
The advantage of this was that everything looked the same to me, because everything was b/w. As a child I didn’t realize that TV series like Ivanhoe and The Lone Ranger were actually old. I had no idea and therefore judged them on quality and entertainment value, without realizing this of course. The downside was that I never saw the Hulk turn green in my youth. 
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Precisely. Those guys can employ color because they know how it can enhance the frame. It helps, of course, if you have directors who know about that, too. Too many these days only know digital cameras and the umpteenth ways to manipulate the image on the Avid.
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Those were the ones I discovered Fleming with.
And, boy, my grandmother, who lived near a bookstore and was sent out by me to buy “a James Bond book”, was deeply ashamed - and when she gave them to me, she often put a sticker over those revealing parts. Which I, of course, just for curiosity, tried to peel off.
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The story of the German Fleming translations is a long and winding one, full of distortions and producing at times downright surreal results.
The books started getting translations in 1960, owing to the popularity of British crime writers since the days of Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace. But their first publisher, Ullstein, picked only the first two and the fourth, Diamonds Are Forever (which they turned into ‘Diamantenfieber’), then their editor - who disliked Fleming - voted to kick the series.
Next up was Scherz. And it quickly dawned on them why Ullstein had given Moonraker a pass: with its Nazi theme the book was a red-hot poker in the side of a German readership who had often been extensively involved in Hitler’s war machine and atrocities which were only just 15 years in the past. So Scherz took its time with Moonraker, going instead for From Russia With Love. A popular decision as Russia had not just been the enemy in the last war but was still ruling their half of the divided Germany (Europe effectively) and was also threatening to set its fangs into the rest of it.
So German readers got more of Fleming, only this time it was a Reader’s Digest diet as Scherz was set on a railway station/airport portfolio and ruthlessly cut out what they deemed not necessary. For Fleming that meant whole chapters and many brand names were cut. Just as bad: most ‘politically sensitive’ parts - mention of Gestapo torture and German war crimes for example - were also cut, thus subtly changing the spirit of Fleming’s work and its impact on us readers.
Moonraker finally got its translation only in 1967 (and that was my first Bond I read after watching THE SPY WHO LOVED ME in 1977). But what a dog’s breakfast that translation was. Drax was still a Nazi, but most of his war crimes were omitted or changed into a vague resemblance of ‘acceptable’ acts of warfare. No ‘Sieg Heil!’ shouts at the pub when Tallon is shot; no concern about German rearmament, so on so forth. It’s still a gripping novel of suspense - but the main villain comes across more as a willing proxy of his Soviet paymasters. Ironically, today that particular alliance is far more realistic than it was in 1955.
But the worst crime against Fleming was the sick translation joke to call the Moonraker missile Mondblitz - at a time when Britons still remembered well enough the horrors of ‘the Blitz’. I wonder what Fleming might have made of this, had he lived to hear about it.
Anyway, long and winding tale of hit and miss. German readers only got complete (and completely revised) translations thanks to Cross Cult by the early 2000s.
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This has been one of my pet peeves until we finally got the new translations. That 1967 translation is missing 25% of the original. They not only cut out most of the Nazi bits but also stuff the apparently deemed lengthy and tedious (because they wanted a “hard american style”). For example, half of the description of Blades is missing (and I’m sure the German publishers cursed Fleming for using Bridge as the game, which was seen as game for old ladies).
As Peter Janson-Smith once put it: “For many years, the German rights to the Bond books have not been in good hands.”
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This old Cinema MOONRAKER Special had an article about the German fan club at the end. They complained massively about the situation of the books and what translations omitted. The first I heard of and The. Big. Kick. in my behind to sit down and master the language ASAP.
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Oh, man, memories of that special…
And I was such an idiot in my late teenage years to throw this out.
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I actually have that one from Ebay (bought for way too much money). 
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Same phenomenon as with the ‘Space 1999’ toys. The treasures we had…
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J. Hoberman years ago said that all films were beginning to resemble animation with the increasing ability to manipulate the image.
I know community members here will understand what my husband and friends think is just my idiosyncrasy: the images of older films feel different. Actual bodies, moving in space, and encountering other bodies. It created a different mise en scene.
Danny riding his Big Wheel in the Overlook Hotel went through real (set-built) hallways, and the sound produced was a happy and welcome accident.
THE TRIAL was filmed in an unused train station, and though sets were built, something of the decaying Gare D’Orsay seeped into the movie and the actors.
Margo confronts Bill, Lloyd, and Max about Eve being her understudy in an actual theater–the Curran in San Francisco, which still stands.
The futuristic world of ALPHAVILLE is Paris at night in 1965.
Ludwig’s castles are actually Ludwig’s castles in LUDWIG.
And to continue in the Visconti vein: that is the Lido in DEATH IN VENICE, and Unterach am Attersee (doubling for Bad Wiessee) in THE DAMNED (though all the Nazi banners/decorations were not red, but green . They would not allow Visconti to recreate exact replicas. He achieved the correct color on film with filters).
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It is an interesting question: do we feel that way about real sets and real people due to our knowledge that they were real back when all the digital manipulation was not possible - or is the digital manipulation still not as effective as it should be?
If a director and a director of photography know how to do it - see David Fincher and Harris Savides in ZODIAC - it achieves a perfect illusion. If not…
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I’ve recently watched that last Indiana Jones flick - I was entertained but not hugely so - and shortly after that the original WEST SIDE STORY. And while the New York scenes in DIAL OF DESTINY look legit enough they don’t feel this way when I compare them with the 1961 film. Even scenes which were no doubt shot on soundstage and studio backlot feel ‘authentic’. I’ve not yet seen the Spielberg version but I suspect that too may feel a bit different from the ‘real’ thing.
It’s fascinating how the camera can build this illusion of a time and place. The New York of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S or DOG DAY AFTERNOON or MARATHON MAN is probably no less artificial than any other location shooting, with fenced off areas, composed frames and whatnot, everything filming on location just requires. But since these films don’t pretend to depict a different era they seem just that bit more convincing to me.
This didn’t bother me at all when I was younger, I usually accepted any film at face value whether it was a western shot in Monument Valley or a costume drama that was entirely a studio production. Nowadays, I find myself scanning productions for errors, the satellite dish in a 1930s setting or the same ‘authentic’ 60s bike chained to a fence in Endeavour. And while I realise large parts of these historic settings could be created by CGI I’m thankful for every production that goes to the trouble of trying to get by without.
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The NY scenes in Dial of Destiny indeed look artificial and CGI-laden, something with the sunlight is just not right. Of course, it featured moving crowds during that parade chase, and they had to do it during the height of COVID, so apparently they needed to CGI the heck out of it.
But as an homage to movies with tons of back projection I allow the Indy films that artificiality.
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I watched Octopussy last evening, stiil a great movie for the whole familiy.
I went to see it 9 times in the summer of 1983.
Moore became 56 in the end of that year, so he was 55 during filming. He still looks the part but getting older now.
Hum… I became 56 on New Years Day this year… I still feel more like a 15 year old, tricking every other adult into thinking that I really am and feel very grown up.
Anyway I also tried A View to a Kill afterwards, but I fell asleep after the Eiffel Tower scene and waked up missing the complete French stables section of the film. So I decided looking for my bed, which isn’t necessarily very unusual at 2:30 in the morning. I will try watching the movie this evening again.
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After I watched “A View To A Kill” today there was still time to see another movie.
What could it be?
A movie from French director Godard, or a French gangster movie from Melville, or an Igmar Bergman movie?
Mwaa… Ofcourse it just became “DAF” again! 
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I just watched my favorite Bond movie Moonraker again.
I love it! I don’t care if this is like a comicbook adventure movie, I just love it!
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In the late afternoon/early evening I watched this sunday one of my favorites, “For Your Eyes Only”, it was the first Bondmovie I ever watched and saw in the cinema and made me a Bondfan for life. Roger Moore, Sheena Easton, the Lotus Esprit Turbo, the Bond music, the action scene’s, Carole as Melina Havelock: everything still has the same magic for me as it did in 1981.
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My first cinema Bond was ‘Moonraker’ - I love it dearly to this day. Everybody laughed in the skydiving sequence when Bond did the ‘clutchy-cheeky’ to go head-down and gain on the hapless pilot, but it looked feasible to my young eyes… Years later, over Netheravon, I decided to see if it worked. And it does. I went down like a meteorite, it took me a while to get re-oriented and by then I’d lost too much height to continue safely. I pulled my main, landed off to one side (Of the biggest DZ in Europe) and had a long walk back to the lines. I was whistling the Bond tune as I got back - our Instructor tried to deck me; I had to buy the beers that night!
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That photo makes it look like James Bond is hanging upside down from the wing of the airplane! Apparently, he still has those suction cups from You Only Live Twice. 
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You never get rid of a Q gadget. They always come in handy.
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