James Bond and New Year’s Day

In the James Bond canon, New Year’s Day has a special, and tragic, place.

I do.

James Bond said the words at ten-thirty in the morning of a crystal-clear New Year’s Day in the British Consul General’s drawing room.

And he meant them.

(On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, “All the Time in the World,” page 186, 11th printing, Signet paperback edition.)

It was not a marriage that would last the day. To the credit of Eon Productions, director Peter Hunt and screenwriter Richard Maibuam, that ending from Ian Fleming’s novel was preserved in the film. John Barry’s score enhances the scene: