The Living Daylights short story

[commander0077again]

Was just re-reading The Living Daylights today, with a couple of points standing out: 1/ the opening scenes with Bond at the shooting range, at dusk, should have been in the movie (or in another Bond film); 2/ Fleming's writing is just a lot of fun, throwing in the obscure word and observation here and there .... I can see him laughing at times when he wrote like this; 3/ 007 gets his heart tugged just from watching the beautiful girl with the cello case, he says to himself, How very odd, this hadn't happened to him since he was a young tyke (I'm too lazy to get the quote out now, but will perhaps tomorrow)... this, is of course, further ammo to the argument that Fleming's Bond had a heart and further, 4/ he was a gentleman. You can see in in the way he treats people, the rangemaster, and even M. M hates to send a man on a murder mission, and Bond realizes he's just putting on an act of 'the commanding officer' so Bond makes it easy for M. 5/ and then when Bond is supposed to kill 'Trigger' he spares her life, even though 'it will probably cost me the Double-O.' All these things and others again show that Craig's Bond is a thousand leagues away from the Fleming Bond.

[Count_Lippe]

TLD is probably Fleming's best short story and one that deals very much with secret agent business, even the 007 books were otherwise often a bit larger-than-life as you know.

And it's nice that so much of the story was incorporated into the film even if Bond at the shooting range was left out.

[Omega]

How much of it was like the movie? cause I like the movie a lot


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

[Count_Lippe]

The whole part with Bond assigned to kill a sniper who were supposed to shoot a defector from the eastern bloc was in the film.

In the short story Bond is sent to Berlin and an apartment by the border between East and West Berlin, there he meets Sanders (Saunders in the film) who supervises the operation.

Bond is on the lookout by a window facing the border several nights in row, he spots a lady orchestra and a girl with a cello case walking down the street and becomes interested in her from afar.

When the defector appears it turns out the girl with the cello case is the enemy sniper and like in the film Bond only wounds her instead of killing her.

[commander0077again]

The whole part with Bond assigned to kill a sniper who were supposed to shoot a defector from the eastern bloc was in the film.

In the short story Bond is sent to Berlin and an apartment by the border between East and West Berlin, there he meets Sanders (Saunders in the film) who supervises the operation.

Bond is on the lookout by a window facing the border several nights in row, he spots a lady orchestra and a girl with a cello case walking down the street and becomes interested in her from afar.

When the defector appears it turns out the girl with the cello case is the enemy sniper and like in the film Bond only wounds her instead of killing her.

Of course in the book Bond never sees "the girl" again. She did have a cellist look in the film, I could believe she was a musician. In the book Bond concludes that she would probably be punished by her people. One wonders if Fleming had written a book, would Bond be involved against his better judgment in saving her? Her backstory would also be interesting, perhaps an Olympian, and a real musician.

[Kristatos]

Of course in the book Bond never sees "the girl" again. She did have a cellist look in the film, I could believe she was a musician. In the book Bond concludes that she would probably be punished by her people. One wonders if Fleming had written a book, would Bond be involved against his better judgment in saving her? Her backstory would also be interesting, perhaps an Olympian, and a real musician.

The newspaper strip adaptation adds a detail that wasn't in the original story - Bond reading a newspaper with a headline that read something like "RUSSIAN CELLIST KILLED IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT".