By Hank Reineke
As
the eagerly anticipated premiere of Skyfall,
the twenty-third James Bond film, counts down to its October 2012 release, Boston area fans of Britain’s favorite secret agent are
being afforded the rare opportunity to revel in all that has come before. The staff of the Somerville Theater (located on Davis Square in the
Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts), are in the midst of celebrating
the fiftieth anniversary of Ian Fleming’s super-spy on the big screen in a big way; with an ambitious year long series-encompassing
twenty-two film retrospective. The
architect of screenings is Ian Judge, the theater’s Director of
Programming. Judge has not only been managing
the nearly one-hundred year old theater for the past ten years, but he has long
shared a history with the venue having grown up only a few blocks away from its
gilded entrance. Built in 1914 as a posh
nine-hundred seat forum for vaudeville-era acts and stage plays, the theater
began screening films right from the advent of the silent era. Though the intimate, wonderfully decorative
auditorium retains its opulent splendor, the theater combines old world
elegance with new world technology. Three
years ago the venue’s grand balcony was completely refurbished and, perhaps
more importantly, the theater was fit with a Dolby digital sound system and twin
Norelco DP-70 projectors, the latter addition allowing the venue to be one of
the few cinemas in New England to have the capability of presenting films in
the 70mm format.
Judge,
it’s not too surprising to learn, especially given his enthusiasm and the
breadth of the 007 retrospective he’s programmed, has been a long-time fan of
the James Bond series. Though his
favorite Bond film is From Russia with
Love (1963), as a self-described “child of the ‘80s,†Judge admits to a
soft spot for Roger Moore’s swan song A
View to a Kill (1985), principally due to Christopher Walken’s smooth
portrayal of the genetically engineered psychotic industrialist Max Zorin.
Though
nothing short of nirvana for some, the concept of screening, chronologically,
every James Bond film from Dr. No
(1962) through Quantum of Solace
(2008) is, without doubt, something of a gamble. But although neighborhood repertory theaters
are closing and/or having to devise methods to cope with a sluggish economy and
studio pressure to move toward all-digital projection screenings, Judge was
adamant that the James Bond films should be screened as they had been over the
course of the last fifty years, in glorious 35mm. That’s one of the principle roles of the
repertory theater, Judge contends, as “that’s what we’re here for – to show
people the magic of the movies, and to make a profit doing so. Despite their availability on TV and DVD, the
Bond films still draw a crowd.†There
was never any consideration of cheating moviegoers by splashing the 007 back
catalog onto the big screen via digital-projection. It was important that the Bond series be presented
to fans in the most authentic manner possible outside use of a time-machine… by
sourcing the best 35mm prints available. “There’s no question of not
doing it on 35mm,†Judge explained, “It is the superior format for these films,
and the format they were intended to be shown in. We’re intensely defensive of the 35mm and
70mm film formats. So long as there are
prints for classic films, that is the way we intend to show them.â€
The
retrospective was launched on the weekend of March 2-4 with screenings of the
first five Sean Connery films and George Lazenby’s one-shot On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
(1969). The weekend of May 4-5 (which I
attended with my daughter Sara, one of innumerable father and child units
filling the seats) marked their second exclusive weekend of Bond films. The program featured such entries from the
‘70s as Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). The old-timers (present company included) instantly
noted that the strikingly pristine prints featured the original and nostalgic
“United Artists – A Trans-America Company†animation prior to the series’
iconic “gun barrel†opening.
