Six times 007: Restored Bond classics reviewed on disc and streaming

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"My name is Bond, James Bond." Anyone who has watched television or gone to the cinema over the past 60 years will be familiar with this line. Now Warner Bros., in cooperation with Amazon as the new owner of the brand, has remastered the six official films starring the first Bond actor, Sean Connery. For the first time, they are available in 4K resolution in HDR color space with Dolby Atmos sound on Ultra HD Blu-ray (UHD).

In this article, we briefly highlight the cultural significance of the films and then go into detail about the technical differences between the new UHD edition and the previous Blu-ray discs and streaming versions offered by Apple in 4K resolution in SDR color space. This will help you decide whether the picture and sound quality justify the extra cost of the new UHD discs.

The collection includes the following titles: "Dr. No" (1962), "From Russia with Love" (1963), "Goldfinger" (1964), "Thunderball" (1965), "You Only Live Twice" (1967) and "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971). The "unofficial" Connery Bond "Never Say Never Again" (1983) – a remake of "Fireball", which was not filmed by Eon Productions – is not included. Amazon plans to release all titles in the box set as individual UHDs in early November.

How a man became an icon

In the 1960s, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the British secret agent with the service number 007 became a projection screen for ideals of masculinity and for the promise that British elegance could also prevail in a world of superpowers. No one embodied this ideal more than Sean Connery. Between "Dr. No" (1962) and "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971), he shaped Bond as we know him today: charming, dangerous, ironic, but also a little reckless and intimidating.

And that despite the fact that he wasn't even the first choice. The two producers, Broccoli and Saltzman, had wanted Cary Grant or David Niven, i.e., more of the British gentleman type. It took some time before they agreed on Connery – a man from a humble background who earned his living as a milkman, unskilled laborer or truck driver. As a former bodybuilder, he had a physical presence that made his role all the more credible. However, Terence Young, the director of the first Bond film, first had to introduce Connery to the customs of high society so that he could confidently distinguish a Dom Pérignon from 1953 from one made in 1955.

Ian Fleming, the author of the original novel, was so enthusiastic about Connery's first Bond appearance in "Dr. No" that he quickly added a Scottish background to his character for "You Only Live Twice", which was currently in the works. In the novel, Bond has a mother from Switzerland and a father from Scotland, but had been an orphan since the age of eleven and was sent to an elite boarding school in Eton. The film character thus retroactively influenced the novel character , a rare interaction between literature and cinema.

Another trademark of the films was Bond's relationship with Miss Moneypenny, who provided him with a certain grounding in short, flirtatious scenes that oscillated between office flirtation and unspoken intimacy. Remarkably, many of these dialogues were filmed without Connery and Lois Maxwell being on set together. Nevertheless, the scenes developed a cult status and became a kind of interlude in the adrenaline rush of the films. Of course, the iconic music also has cult status, especially Monty Norman's Bond theme, which later led to a legal dispute between him and John Barry, who claimed to have composed the piece himself.