Agent Hamilton’s death at the beginning of Live And Let Die is particularly brutal, especially because he is casually observing a New Orleans funeral procession when a seemingly innocent question gets him stabbed in the gut. The close-up staging makes the killing even more uncomfortable, with the camera lingering just enough on the stabbing itself to make me wince every time.

It’s a striking pre-title sequence, made even more unusual by the fact that James Bond never appears, which is quite a gamble for Roger Moore’s first outing as 007. I can only imagine audiences in 1973 wondering when they were finally going to get their first proper look at the new Bond, having to sit through the entire title sequence and theme (albeit Paul McCartney’s awesome one) before Moore finally appeared. Today, that approach seems even harder to imagine working, particularly after such a long wait between Bond movies when patience for the next 007 is already running thin.

Show us the new Bond as soon as possible, please!