06 Mr Big
On the page: Live and Let Die (1954).
Buonaparte Ignace Gallia is a French-Haitian criminal and SMERSH operative. His scale is fundamental: 6 ft 5 in and approximately twenty stone. Fleming gives him a huge head and a disturbing greyish complexion; his physical presence is meant to dominate the encounter. [5, 15]
On screen: Yaphet Kotto as Mr Big and Dr Kananga in Live and Let Die (1973). [16]
The film makes Mr Big a disguised identity of Kananga. That revelation is not the explanation of the novel’s man. Kotto’s performance consequently operates on two levels: the deliberately altered gangster face and the poised ruler beneath it. Comparing the literary portrait only with unmasked Kananga misses half the screen conception.
The criminal enterprise changes too. Fleming’s operation uses historical gold coins and Soviet connections; the film revolves around heroin. The Baron Samedi association is also redistributed: literary Big cultivates the belief that he possesses supernatural authority, while the film supplies a separate, theatrically embodied Baron Samedi. [15, 16]
His name contains a small joke: the initials Buonaparte Ignace Gallia spell B.I.G. [15] Yet the portrait should not reduce him to a joke about size. What distinguishes him is the combination of huge physical presence and organised, calculating power. An upright, largely motionless composition can express that more effectively than another cigar, glass and crowded desk.
