Dr. No

Essential as the origin of everything, and much stranger than the series it founded. It was made for around a million dollars, there are almost no gadgets, the villain appears for roughly fifteen minutes, and the plot is a missing-person investigation in Jamaica that takes an hour to become a thriller.

What it establishes is the grammar. The gun barrel, the theme, the introduction by surname, the briefing in a panelled office, the quartermaster handing over a replacement sidearm with a note of contempt: all of it arrives here fully formed. Terence Young is generally credited with building the character around his own manner, down to the tailoring and the way Connery orders a drink, and the result is a performance that reads as class aspiration rather than competence.

The thing that surprises people watching it now is how cold Bond is. The scene where he sits in the dark waiting for an assassin, lets the man empty a gun into a decoy, questions him, and then shoots him twice in the back while he is on the floor is the most ruthless thing in the first twenty films. The series spent the next decade making him charming instead.

Ursula Andress emerging from the sea is the image that outlived the film. The score credit remains disputed between Monty Norman and John Barry to this day. It is not the best Bond film and nothing else makes sense without it.