James Bond travels in style. Take as an example his arrival in the movie Moonraker, released in 1979, in Rio de Janeiro. The spy in the service of his majesty lands in a Concorde, from which he emerges impeccable, wearing a suit tailored on Savile Row. Next, he gets into a Rolls-Royce that waits for him at the foot of the runway, since Bond does not know what airport security checks are. After accompanying an attractive Brazilian colleague to the Rio carnival and fighting a villain on the cable car on the way to Sugarloaf Mountain, the secret agent travels to the Amazon jungle. There, with a more sporty, light blue outfit, he looks for a rare species of orchid, with the Iguazú waterfalls as a backdrop.
The appearance of Iguazú Falls in Moonraker was a requirement of Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzam, owners of Eon, the production company behind the twenty-five James Bond films, which are already part of global popular culture. From the first (Agent 007 against Dr. No, directed by Terence Young in 1962), both producers understood that to narrate the adventures of the character created by Ian Fleming, locations were essential.
Therefore, over six decades, the secret agent with a license to kill has traveled half the planet. At first, to the places Fleming himself sent him to in his novels. Later, to those desired by the producers or suggested by those responsible for localization. Sometimes the script was even altered to fit a specific landscape or setting. And, as Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, today responsible for the 007 saga, explain: “Locations are not just backdrops or a context that gives us information about the characters. In our films, the locations are characters.”
The Bond films have been filmed in more than one hundred natural settings. Countries such as Japan, India, Greece, Egypt, Jamaica, Thailand, Mexico, Switzerland and Italy. Seas, mountains, jungles, deserts, historic cities, impressive villas and some of the most sophisticated hotels in the world (such as the Danieli, in Venice, the Cala di Volpe, in Sardinia and the Lake Palace, in Udaipur). The appeal of these settings is evident in a new book: James Bond Destinations, published by the Assouline publishing house and which compiles images of the most emblematic places that 007 has passed through. Destinations, as Daniel Pembrey, author of the book, points out: “ "That made the public dream about exciting and glamorous places."
“Let's not forget,” says Pembrey, “that in the mid-1960s, when the first Bond was released, international travel was rare.” People, consequently, were enthralled by those white sand Jamaican beaches, from whose transparent sea Ursula Andress emerged in a white bikini. In front of the villas with pools of Acapulco, the hotels of the Côte d'Azur, the snow-capped mountains of the Alps, the marble palaces of the maharajas, the Egyptian temples, the islands in the seas of Asia and the lush jungles of South America. All of these places have been the scene of the chases, romances and adventures of a character who, of course, is never a tourist and, furthermore, rarely breaks his hair, despite the increasingly frenetic pace of the Bond narrative.
In the beginning, locations were chosen using National Geographic magazine, the bible of those who dreamed of traveling or, like Bond, could afford it. Still, as travel has become more accessible, writers have had to sophisticated the secret agent experience. Thus, in Casino Royale (2006) Bond sailed on a sailboat along Venice's Grand Canal, which was closed to the public for the first time in three centuries. In Spectra (2015), he jumped across the rooftops of the historic center of Mexico City, while a colorful parade celebrating the Day of the Dead took place in the street. This parade was an idea of the scriptwriters, but the impact that the film had was so great that the capital's government has incorporated it into the festival's activities since 2016.
Jamaica is another place where Bond has left his mark. In fact, this Caribbean island is considered the spiritual home of the character. The beach where Dr.No was filmed, located on a small peninsula in Oracabessa Bay, was renamed James Bond Beach, and receives thousands of visitors. Access to Goldeneye is more restricted: Ian Fleming's Jamaican villa, where he wrote the fourteen novels in the saga, is rented seasonally. Among the writer's personal objects, the book stands out: Birds of the West Indies, by ornithologist James Bond, a name that Fleming considered perfect for his already mythical character.
