Even so, I don't think the fantasy of James Bond is a purely male one, as long as you don't feel the need to always identify with a character in terms of needing to be him. Some characters reflect back a general aura of glamour that's simply delightful to bask in, and Connery's Bond is one of them. In the Bond movies, Connery plays a sex symbol without actually being one. Though many women may find the young Connery sexy, I'd say his stiff elegance is hardly erotic -- Pauline Kael described his demeanor at the time as the "waxy deadpan of a sex-fantasy stud dummy," and she didn't even get around to mentioning his wing-nut ears. That said, though, Connery as Bond is sexy, but mostly when he's not trying to be. His best look is that of wry, detached amusement, and luckily, he wears it often.

And then there's the fact that he's confident to the point of arrogance -- an unattractive quality in real life, maybe, but in an action hero it's not so bad. There's something comforting about a character who naturally assumes everything is going to go right, and so it does. (Our unshakable faith in Bond is also the thing that makes us remember vividly those few moments when we've seen him break a sweat -- like the scene in "Goldfinger" in which he's tied spread-eagled to a table as a laser beam heads for his most prized possession.)

Beyond that, Bond vibrates with so much masculine sexual allure that he ceases to be about sex at all -- he's all about getting it, over and over again, which only heightens the enjoyable cartoonishness of it all. He's always surrounded by lavish appointments -- expensive brandy decanters, beds spread with buttercream satin -- but his decadence is also discreet almost to the point of meekness. You never see Bond doing anything so gauche as spending money -- only wearing, eating and drinking it.

The soul of Bond is laid out right in front of us in the choices he's made: in the cut of a suit, in the gleam of a cigarette case. The '60s Bond movies are largely about things -- distressing to anti-materialists and bliss to those who have fully come to terms with their love of cool stuff. Nearly all Bond fans look forward to the scene where keeper-of-the-gadgets Q (the recurring character played by the late, and wonderful, Desmond Llewellyn) presents Bond with the latest immensely useful doohickeys, almost slapping him on the wrist in advance, since he knows none of them will be returned. In "You Only Live Twice" (1967) he meets Bond in Japan with "Little Nellie," a fully loaded helicopter that's been transported with her parts lovingly packed in a series of red-velvet-lined black suitcases. Bond's host informs him that Little Nellie "and her father" have arrived, and Llewellyn appears shortly thereafter in natty safari shorts, looking both exasperated with Bond in advance and excited to show him Nellie's features (which basically consist of cool missile shooters and other accouterments that will allow him to blow stuff up). There's a clever bit of something in every '60s Bond movie, from Lotte Lenya's knife-pointed shoes in "From Russia With Love" (1963) to that syrupy drop of poison that slithers down a dangling thread in "You Only Live Twice" -- it's meant for Bond, but it ends up killing one of his lovers by mistake.

The stylishness of the Bond movies isn't always jokey or simply clever. The great Ken Adam, who served as production designer on many of the '60s Bonds, devised amazingly distinctive looks for each one. "You Only Live Twice," which is, incidentally, my favorite of the Connery Bonds (and perhaps my favorite Bond ever, although I reserve a very soft spot for the most romantic and mournful of all Bond movies, the 1969 "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," with George Lazenby) features a gleaming rocket-launch station hidden entirely within a "Japanese" volcano. That a futuristic volcano HQ was built entirely at London's Pinewood Studios is another feat of near magic that qualifies as something beyond the typical optimism of the '60s. The set, which featured a sliding roof through which helicopters could actually be flown, reached 120 feet high -- it took almost every available light in the studio to illuminate it.

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The stylized male action figure known as Bond may be the first character that comes to mind whenever anyone mentions the '60s spy genre. But women had their place, too -- and it wasn't always rolling around in bed with 007. One of the great disappointments of '60s spy movies is that Joseph Losey's "Modesty Blaise," based on the characters created by Peter O'Donnell in his series of adventure novels, is virtually unwatchable -- and, worse, that the lead actress, Monica Vitti, captures none of the spark of O'Donnell's Modesty.

The "real" Modesty, as O'Donnell so vividly described her, is always cool, calm and in charge. Her right-hand man, a Cockney knife thrower named Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp plays him in the movie), doesn't think twice about looking to her for guidance in the stickiest of situations. (In O'Donnell's novel "A Taste for Death," an acquaintance of Willie's asks him if he minds taking his cues from a woman, and he replies that she's in command because "She's better at it than I am. Better than anyone.") Yet Losey's movie wanders and hops along at a puzzling cricket's pace -- it's lousy even as camp. And Vitti -- robustly exotic and, worst of all, simply not English -- is all wrong for Modesty. The film version of "Modesty Blaise" is one of the great blown chances of '60s moviemaking. Until someone does it right, it's best to stick with O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise books.

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