The French and James Bond

The French Know Where 007 Acquired His Savoir-Faire – by ELAINE SCIOLINO/NY Times

PARIS — James Bond has never seemed fascinated by the French, but the French certainly are fascinated by James Bond.

The British secret agent has driven British cars, worn Savile Row and Brioni suits, flashed Swiss watches and demanded Russian caviar and Norwegian honey.

But he speaks French — at least in the 1953 novel “Casino Royale.” He detests English tea. He insists that his tournedos béarnaise be served rare and his vodka martinis be splashed with the French aperitif Lillet.

He has sported a French cigarette lighter and French cuff links (S. T. Dupont) and drunk rivers of French Champagne (Bollinger). He has romanced beloved French actresses like Sophie Marceau .

For three days this week, French and foreign researchers came together in a conference sponsored in part by the National Library of France and the University of Versailles to dissect and psychoanalyze, criticize and lionize Ian Fleming ’s debonair creation.

Titled “James Bond (2)007: Cultural History and Aesthetic Stakes of a Saga,” the conference — France ’s first scholarly colloquium on James Bond — was aimed at developing a “socioanthropology of the Bondian universe.”

“James Bond is a fascinating cultural phenomenon who transcends nationality and politics,” said Vincent Chenille, a historian at the National Library who helped organize the conference, which ended Thursday. “He’s very human. His faults are identifiable.”

Hubert Bonin, an economic historian from Bordeaux, who spoke on “the anguish of capitalist conspiracy and overpowering,” had a different explanation. “In France we have the myth of the savior, the Bonaparte, the de Gaulle,” he said. “Here, we’re always searching for the providential hero. James Bond is a very reassuring figure for France.”

The conference was a breakthrough in French scholarly circles. Umberto Eco, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin have all written seriously about Bond, but the French intelligentsia has been slow in embracing global popular culture.

Mr. Fleming, a French speaker whose Bond novels were translated into French decades ago, never has been considered a first-rate novelist. Film studies in France focus on the “artistry” of directors like Truffaut and Hitchcock; Bond films have been treated as haphazard commercial enterprises that, lacking a single director, have no artistic or thematic unity.

“This conference is a revolutionary act,” said Luc Shankland, a lecturer on media and cultural studies at the Sorbonne who is writing his doctoral dissertation on Bond and British cultural identity. “To put this artifact of popular culture in a setting like the highbrow National Library is a kind of provocation. It’s been a taboo in intellectual circles to say you like James Bond.”

But on the political and the popular level, the French appreciate James Bond. Sean Connery , who is married to a French painter and played Bond in seven films, is a chevalier in the French Legion of Honor and commander of Arts and Letters. Roger Moore , a star of seven later Bond films, is a French officer of Arts and Letters.

French television routinely airs Bond films; 7.1 million viewers saw “The World Is Not Enough” last month on the leading French channel, TF1. A Bond fan club publishes a magazine called “Le Bond” and organizes trips to sites in the novels and films.

As far back as 1973, Jean-Paul Belmondo parodied Bond in Philippe de Broca’s film “Le Magnifique.” Last year a Bond spoof called “OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies,” with a comic actor playing a French spy made to resemble a young Mr. Connery, was a runaway hit.

The “Casino Royale” remake has been seen by more than three million people in France since it opened in late November. Eva Green, the film’s Bond girl, is half French in real life. French magazines have published lengthy descriptions of her upbringing in France, favorite Parisian restaurants and boutiques, and devotion to her mother, the well-known French actress Marlène Jobert.

The film has had a ripple effect. At one point, Bond rattles off his martini order: three measures of Gordon’s gin, one of vodka, half a measure of Lillet, shaken over ice and topped with a thin slice of lemon peel. The recipe, taken from Mr. Fleming’s novel, has shone the spotlight on Lillet, a little-known aperitif produced near Bordeaux since 1872.

“We’re a small company, and our distributors used to be told: ‘Lillet? That’s old,’ ” Bruno Borie, the chief executive of Lillet, said in a telephone interview. “The film has given a boost to the brand. It’s changed our place on the map.”

Last month the French accessories company S. T. Dupont introduced two James Bond “seduction cases.” The $3,880 “mini-seduction case” includes a bottle of S. T. Dupont’s own label of Champagne, two flutes, a Dupont cigarette lighter and a metal “Do Not Disturb” door sign. The deluxe $25,800 model comes in a yardlong buffalo leather trunk and includes a setting for caviar, an ice bucket, an MP3 player with Sony speakers, a Baccarat bud vase and candles.

At the Paris conference, speakers dazzled the audience with Bond trivia. Some lamented the fact that the “Casino Royale” remake had lost the novel’s French setting and had been transported to Montenegro.

It was noted that the title “Casino Royale” had a grammatical error in French: “casino” is a masculine noun, “royale” a feminine adjective, an effort by Fleming to give the novel a French-sounding title. The first French translation corrected the error.

As for his culinary tastes, Bond was a “pitiful connoisseur of wine,” said Claire Dixsaut, a researcher at the European Center for Audiovisual Writing. He “never ordered a gastronomic menu,” he said. “He loves grilled chops, sole meunière, rare tournedos and fresh vegetables. He was, at the table as in his investigations, in search of the truth.”

Other topics included Switzerland as a financial haven in James Bond, the geopolitics of James Bond, the evolution of female figures in James Bond and the metamorphoses and permanence of the Bondian personality.

The scholarly seriousness has amused some Bondophiles.

“The propensity people have to speak of so many things with so much seriousness — it’s incredible,” Jean-François Halin, a screenwriter of “OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies,” said in a telephone interview. “In our film, we mock the French colonial, paternalistic vision of the world. We make fun of the James Bond films. But I guess you can find seriousness in everything.”