Someone called Kurt Meyer has taken what looks like hours of effort in researching and photographing almost every film location from the film, creating in the process a wonderful frame of reference for this classic film.
Check out the website here. It's an incredible effort.
Kurt Meyer has worked hard in his research and has produced this informative chronology of photographs. Looking through the locations, with a few exceptions, the locations are outdoors, and do not need too much spending to keep the story line going. The Shepherd’s Bush’s Stanlake Villas-Harry Palmer’s apartment, then perhaps not in an attractive place ( I lived near Shepherd’s Bush in late 1970s, and even then the Villas area had a reputation as a not-so desirable location). I was near the place a few months ago, and the surrounding is really bad. Why was this location chosen, albeit for brief shots? I wonder!
ReplyDeleteOne can gather from the above, Harry Saltzman wanted a low budget film and the director has rightly chosen these locations given context of the original story which helped . Saltzman as the first name producer with Broccoli of Bond films from Dr No, From Russia With Love, GoldFinger and halfway perhaps through Thunderball as it was also released in the same period , cleverly guessed as soon as the novel made waves that with a minimal investment, he could bring it to the screen as a successful film. It is this side of his genius ( leaving out all other failings of him, which were many), which made him to buy the film rights of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels a few years before. The selection of John Barry , the very successful music director by then ,and of course the editing genius of Peter Hunt which in no small measure contributed to the success of Bond film by then, meant that the film had the right smell of success, which turned out to be true.
A brilliant bit of work by Herr Meyer.
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