Gun for hire: what does Denis Villeneuve joining as director tell us about the new James Bond?
White smoke has emerged from the funnel marked 'director' – though still nothing from the funnel marked 'star' – and it's a really big hitter. Denis Villeneuve is the Canadian film-maker who gave us the excellent science-fiction movies Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune Parts One and Two, and has demonstrated a real flair for big-budget action thrillers in Sicario and Prisoners, with plenty of the ambient sexiness in hardware and spectacle. (Perhaps Villeneuve will now get the ultimate corporate blessing of being a last-minute wedding guest at the Bezos wedding in Venice this weekend, precisely the sort of event that tends to feature as a Bond film opening scene, to be disrupted by helicopter attack, explosion, kidnapping etc. Mr Bezos himself needs a white persian cat on his lap to stroke.)
Villeneuve is much more than a safe pair of hands or a technical director who can be relied upon to do what the suits tell him; he is an alpha-grade auteur in the same league as Christopher Nolan and so his presence will reassure the fanbase with mixed feelings about the Amazon sale. The message is that, yes, Amazon is still thinking big and that the future Bond will be primarily up there on the big screen where Villeneuve has made his reputation and not simply on the smaller screens where long-form streaming content is reportedly going to be spun off: The Adventures of Moneypenny, The Prequel Adventures of M etc etc. (Although these are surely in development.)
But even given that Villeneuve is in place and he can work perfectly happily with James Norton or Regé-Jean Page or Henry Golding or Tom Hiddleston … what about the writing? When Danny Boyle was temporarily and unhappily brought on as director in 2018, the problem was that he had his own very specific creative vision as regards story, wishing to work in tandem with his own longtime collaborator, the screenwriter John Hodge. But their ideas wouldn't fly with Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli who had their own trusted writers, Bond script veterans Neal Purvis and Robert Wade who had a track record of getting the goose to lay the golden egg as regular as clockwork.
Who will Villeneuve want to work with? He co-wrote with Jon Spaihts on Dune, with Hampton Fancher and Michael Green on Blade Runner 2049, with Eric Heisserer on Arrival and with Taylor Sheridan on Sicario – on the face of it, he has no sustained partnership in the way Boyle had with Hodge and so he is perhaps not yet married to any high-concept visionary plans, which are going to go over badly when he presents them to Amazon. My guess is that, among these existing writers, he might more instinctively want to work with Sheridan who has certainly shown he can deliver action, thriller-drama and unresolved sexual tension on the 'secular' level outside science fiction.
But basically, yes, Denis Villeneuve is very good news for Bond: a smart, capable director who is going to produce the bangs for Amazon's buck and a witty, involving story for the fans.
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The Guardian
38 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Our director is a madman': a century on, Gloria Swanson's disastrous film Queen Kelly is finished
In the long history of Hollywood excess, there is no tale as torrid as that of Queen Kelly. This lavish silent melodrama starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Erich von Stroheim will screen as the pre-opening event at this year's Venice film festival, with a new score by composer Eli Denson. The film is an outlandish saga of illicit love in sordid surroundings – and so is the story of its production. Queen Kelly is set in Europe before the first world war and tells the story of Patricia Kelly (Swanson), a convent girl who falls in love with a prince (British actor Walter Byron) who is engaged to a deranged queen. Patricia is sent away to Tanzania, where she is forced into marriage with a vile character called Jan, later earning the nickname Queen Kelly. It's a far-fetched tale, which sets a curious tone from the beginning with its infamous meet-cute, in which Patricia is so overawed by meeting the prince that her knickers fall to the ground. On the first day of shooting in 1928, Swanson had a premonition that the film would never be finished, and events proved her correct. The screening at Venice consists of a new restoration by Dennis Doros that incorporates previously unseen material, and some inventive methods of recreating the film's grand finale. He describes this version as a 'reimagining'. Viewers of the film have always had to fill in the gaps, as did those who wanted to learn what happened behind the scenes. The story of the film begins with a love affair. In 1927 Swanson was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, married to French war hero Marquis Henry de la Falaise, when she met the married Boston businessman Joseph P Kennedy, father of the Kennedy clan. The following year Swanson and Kennedy became lovers, and their relationship was soon an open secret in Hollywood. Swanson, who was living beyond her generous means, put her financial affairs in his hands. Kennedy had been in the movie business for some years, and together they planned a lucrative showcase for Swanson's talent. Making an expensive silent film when the talkie revolution was already in motion was one questionable decision. The next was hiring Von Stroheim to write and direct it. He was anything but a safe bet, known for his censor-baiting storylines, immense profligacy (insisting the extras in 1922's Foolish Wives be supplied with silk underwear) and epic running times (his original cut of 1924's Greed was said to be nine hours long). Von Stroheim proved as immoderate as ever. In the third month of filming, with costs soaring, Swanson and Kennedy called the whole thing off. Her objection was that Von Stroheim had taken the narrative in a direction that would never pass the censors. The scenes they were working on in Africa were clearly set in a brothel. She was exhausted by his reshoots and horrified by having to do a scene in which Jan (Tully Marshall) dribbled tobacco juice on to her hand. She called up Kennedy, saying: 'Our director is a madman.' For his part, Von Stroheim claimed the shoot was abandoned purely because the coming of sound rendered this expensive silent film obsolete. Whatever the reason, Swanson and Kennedy cut their losses, which totalled a reputed $800,000. Von Stroheim was unceremoniously removed from the project. He would never complete a film as director again, although he would continue to find success as an actor, dubbed the 'The Man You Love to Hate' for playing German villains, most notably in Jean Renoir's 1937 classic La Grande Illusion. Swanson and Kennedy tried to complete the film as a talkie and even a musical. A 1932 cut of Queen Kelly was shown in a few countries, but this was essentially only the film's first half. Fast-forward to 1950, when Swanson staged her own glorious comeback, playing washed-up silent film star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's black comedy Sunset Boulevard. None other than Von Stroheim was hired to play Norma's butler, the man who keeps her fantasy of enduring fame alive. And when Wilder needed to use a scene from one of Norma's old movies? A clip of Queen Kelly was chosen. Swanson was back in the spotlight, and one of her most famous follies was once more a talking point. From then on, she did her best to revive the project she once thought was doomed – screening her cut of the film at one-off events and even on US TV, with the words: 'This Queen Kelly gal was a child that somehow didn't want to be born.' Swanson died in 1983, just two years before Doros completed his first reconstruction. He used Swanson's own prints and outtakes, which had been preserved at the George Eastman Museum. This new restoration, and its red-carpet premiere in Venice, may just be everything that Swanson dreamed of for her lovechild Queen Kelly. Von Stroheim, one suspects, would prefer to try a few more takes. Queen Kelly screens in Venice on 26 August
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘Our director is a madman': a century on, Gloria Swanson's disastrous film Queen Kelly is finished
In the long history of Hollywood excess, there is no tale as torrid as that of Queen Kelly. This lavish silent melodrama starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Erich von Stroheim will screen as the pre-opening event at this year's Venice film festival, with a new score by composer Eli Denson. The film is an outlandish saga of illicit love in sordid surroundings – and so is the story of its production. Queen Kelly is set in Europe before the first world war and tells the story of Patricia Kelly (Swanson), a convent girl who falls in love with a prince (British actor Walter Byron) who is engaged to a deranged queen. Patricia is sent away to Tanzania, where she is forced into marriage with a vile character called Jan, later earning the nickname Queen Kelly. It's a far-fetched tale, which sets a curious tone from the beginning with its infamous meet-cute, in which Patricia is so overawed by meeting the prince that her knickers fall to the ground. On the first day of shooting in 1928, Swanson had a premonition that the film would never be finished, and events proved her correct. The screening at Venice consists of a new restoration by Dennis Doros that incorporates previously unseen material, and some inventive methods of recreating the film's grand finale. He describes this version as a 'reimagining'. Viewers of the film have always had to fill in the gaps, as did those who wanted to learn what happened behind the scenes. The story of the film begins with a love affair. In 1927 Swanson was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, married to French war hero Marquis Henry de la Falaise, when she met the married Boston businessman Joseph P Kennedy, father of the Kennedy clan. The following year Swanson and Kennedy became lovers, and their relationship was soon an open secret in Hollywood. Swanson, who was living beyond her generous means, put her financial affairs in his hands. Kennedy had been in the movie business for some years, and together they planned a lucrative showcase for Swanson's talent. Making an expensive silent film when the talkie revolution was already in motion was one questionable decision. The next was hiring Von Stroheim to write and direct it. He was anything but a safe bet, known for his censor-baiting storylines, immense profligacy (insisting the extras in 1922's Foolish Wives be supplied with silk underwear) and epic running times (his original cut of 1924's Greed was said to be nine hours long). Von Stroheim proved as immoderate as ever. In the third month of filming, with costs soaring, Swanson and Kennedy called the whole thing off. Her objection was that Von Stroheim had taken the narrative in a direction that would never pass the censors. The scenes they were working on in Africa were clearly set in a brothel. She was exhausted by his reshoots and horrified by having to do a scene in which Jan (Tully Marshall) dribbled tobacco juice on to her hand. She called up Kennedy, saying: 'Our director is a madman.' For his part, Von Stroheim claimed the shoot was abandoned purely because the coming of sound rendered this expensive silent film obsolete. Whatever the reason, Swanson and Kennedy cut their losses, which totalled a reputed $800,000. Von Stroheim was unceremoniously removed from the project. He would never complete a film as director again, although he would continue to find success as an actor, dubbed the 'The Man You Love to Hate' for playing German villains, most notably in Jean Renoir's 1937 classic La Grande Illusion. Swanson and Kennedy tried to complete the film as a talkie and even a musical. A 1932 cut of Queen Kelly was shown in a few countries, but this was essentially only the film's first half. Fast-forward to 1950, when Swanson staged her own glorious comeback, playing washed-up silent film star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's black comedy Sunset Boulevard. None other than Von Stroheim was hired to play Norma's butler, the man who keeps her fantasy of enduring fame alive. And when Wilder needed to use a scene from one of Norma's old movies? A clip of Queen Kelly was chosen. Swanson was back in the spotlight, and one of her most famous follies was once more a talking point. From then on, she did her best to revive the project she once thought was doomed – screening her cut of the film at one-off events and even on US TV, with the words: 'This Queen Kelly gal was a child that somehow didn't want to be born.' Swanson died in 1983, just two years before Doros completed his first reconstruction. He used Swanson's own prints and outtakes, which had been preserved at the George Eastman Museum. This new restoration, and its red-carpet premiere in Venice, may just be everything that Swanson dreamed of for her lovechild Queen Kelly. Von Stroheim, one suspects, would prefer to try a few more takes. Queen Kelly screens in Venice on 26 August
Times
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The Times Luxury cartoon: August 11, 2025
Tom Reese is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator. His work appears primarily in a sketchbook on his kitchen table. He lives outside Chicago.
