Without a single explanation? Nice try.
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My good friend and former colleague Tina tagged me for one of those Facebook “challenges”—in this case, the “10 Day Movie Challenge”:
Every day I must select an image from a film that has impacted me in some way, present it without a single explanation and nominate somebody to take the challenge by starting his/her own post and selecting someone to continue. Today I nominate: [insert name here] #day1
Generally, this type of thing kind of annoys me—as I expect it annoyed another of my good friends, judging from how he politely refused my nomination. But I’m sure I tagged Tina on some other challenge, probably related to books, and thus I deserve what I got.
Besides, I like movies.
The hard part was that one little limitation: to “present it without a single explanation.” I mean, I get it; if we all had to compose an explanation for our selection, no one would bother. And there’s the added fun of looking at the picture and saying, What the hell movie is that?
But I have a blog, so I can obey the rule on Facebook—and flout it here.
So, for #day1, I chose For Your Eyes Only. It was my first Bond film, and—hey, nostalgia!—it remains my favorite, even though Roger Moore isn’t my favorite Bond. Though I didn’t know this at the time, the plot is less outrageous, the Bond more serious, and the “Bond girl” (as I knew those sidekick women from stolen Playboys) more self-determined than most.
I don’t remember a lot of theater experiences from back then, in my late teens/early twenties, perhaps because I didn’t actually see a lot of movies in theaters, but I remember this one.
Part of it was the frisson of the forbidden: my dad hadn’t let me see Bond movies growing up. (Yes, my childhood was pretty sheltered… though, on the other hand, it means that Moonraker wasn’t my first Bond film. If it had been, I might never have seen another.)
And part of it was the film. I know now that it’s old hat, but that was the first time I’d encountered the Bond formula—the gun-barrel perpective, the thrilling (and, often, irrelevant-to-the-plot) opening scene, the pop-star theme song, the artsy/sexy title sequence. I don’t remember a lot from my youth, but I remember those first minutes vividly.
Only a couple other films have hit me like that, gripping my attention from the opening through to the end—and beyond, now that I think of it. (Those films will appear later in the challenge.) Indeed, it wasn’t even the first to do so.
But it was the first that came to mind when I considered what films had an impact on me. And I feel that same nostalgic thrill the beginning of every James Bond film—even the ones I’m not particularly fond of.