_______
55th Anniversary Cinematic Special
From Russia with Love
Directed by Terence Young
Starring Sean Connery, Pedro Armendariz, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Bernard Lee, and Daniela Bianchi
Premiered October 10, 1963 (UK); April 8, 1964 (US)
General US release: May 27, 1964
Wiki said:
From Russia with Love is a 1963 British spy film and the second in the James Bond film series produced by Eon Productions, as well as Sean Connery's second role as MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Terence Young, produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and written by Richard Maibaum and Johanna Harwood, based on Ian Fleming's similarly named 1957 novel. In the film, Bond is sent to assist in the defection of Soviet consulate clerk Tatiana Romanova in Turkey, where SPECTRE plans to avenge Bond's killing of Dr. No.
FWIW, I did do a 55th anniversary rewatch of
Dr. No last year, but I wasn't covering 55th anniversary business in as much detail at the time, so I didn't write it up.
Typical of the earlier Bond films,
From Russia with Love is much closer to the Fleming book than will become the norm over the course of the film series. It's perhaps second only to
On Her Majesty's Secret Service in its faithfulness to the source material, and thus feels more grounded than most of the other films, relatively speaking. The major difference in the overall plot is that the film makes the bad guys' scheme a plot by SPECTRE to pit the British and Russians against each other, while in the book it was simply a Russian plot against the British. The film has SPECTRE operation-runner Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) working for the KGB counterintelligence branch SMERSH as a cover; and offers another nod to Bond's recurring nemesis from the early novels when Bond, upon learning that Grant (Robert Shaw) is an enemy operative, initially assumes that he's working for SMERSH.
Series First: This one gives us our first pre-credits teaser,
Dr. No having opened with the gun barrel logo leading straight into the credits. But here the barrel circle diminishes and the screen goes to back, rather than widening to reveal the first shot of the teaser as will be the case starting with
Thunderball. Bond only sort-of appears in the teaser...the man that Grant kills in a SPECTRE training exercise is disguised as Bond, and hence played by Connery until the Scooby Doo reveal. Walter Gotell, who'll become a familiar face in the recurring role of General Gogol in the Moore era, makes his series debut as Morzeny, who runs the training camp.
The credits sequence, which features the credits being projected onto the body of a belly dancer, uses an instrumental version of the title song that includes a segment of the James Bond Theme. The version sung by Matt Munro is saved for the end of the film.
More Series Firsts: Our first appearance of Blofeld, physically portrayed here by Anthony Dawson (previously Prof. Dent in
Dr. No) and voiced by Eric Pohlmann...collectively credited as "?," with the character's ever-changing face remaining unseen until
You Only Live Twice. It's also the first appearance of the white Persian cat that will visually tie the various seen and unseen Blofelds together.
Early Installment Weirdness: There's more continuity here than will become the norm, with SPECTRE scheme-planner Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) referencing the title character and events of the previous film. We get something a lot like the Q Branch scenes of later films when Morzeny is showing Klebb the training camp, with SPECTRE trainees using deadly weapons against live targets.
Also in the "unusual amount of continuity with the previous film" department, Bond's first scene has him on a date with Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson), who'd originally appeared in Connery's famous introductory scene in
Dr. No. We also see Bond's Bentley...his personal car in the books, but written out of the film series in
Goldfinger in an offhanded way that suggested it was supposed to be a company car.
A Huge Series First: Desmond Llewelyn makes his series debut, here identified as Boothroyd, the character from the books played by Peter Burton in
Dr. No. Llewelyn will become a beloved fixture of the series under the better-known alias of Q:
Bowing out of the role in 1999's
The World Is Not Enough, Llewelyn appeared in 17 Bond films. His run is rivaled only by Lois Maxwell, who appeared in the most consecutive Bond films (14)...Desmond having not appeared in 1973's
Live and Let Die.
Pedro Armendariz, who was terminally ill during filming and died months before its release, delivers as one of Bond's more memorable allies from the books, Turkish station head Kerim Bey. A detail I never noticed before: The picture of Churchill on Bey's desk.
The parts with Bond arriving in Istanbul and checking into his hotel play a lot like the similar scenes in
Dr. No. Here Bond outsmarts himself by calling the desk to get another room after he finds all the bugs in his first one...playing right into SPECTRE's hands, as they put him in the bridal suite where they have a movie camera hidden behind the mirror.
The Gypsy girl fight stands out as perhaps the most iconic scene from the film:
John Barry's "007 Theme" makes its debut during
the subsequent assault on the Gypsy camp. Not to be confused with the "James Bond Theme," it will become a recurring piece in action sequences of the early film series, making its final appearance in 1979's
Moonraker after being absent from most of the '70s films.
The movie poster of Anita Ekberg that camouflages Krilencu's escape hatch had been one of Marilyn Monroe in the book. And the Lektor decoding machine was originally known as the Spektor, the name having been changed for the film for obvious reasons. As I recall, the Spektor in the book was treated as a not-particularly-valuable MacGuffin that was being used as an obvious lure. Here the Lektor is treated as a more serious objective, not only by the British but by SPECTRE.
I get a giggle out of Bond telling Tatiana (Daniela Bianchi) that he has to keep a meeting with Kerim on the train because it's tea time...literary Bond was outspoken in his loathing for tea. We get one of film Bond's rougher scenes with a woman when he slaps Tatiana for information after Kerim's murder. It's a nice, subtle touch that she's clearly still upset about this in the dining car.
The other major difference from the novel is how the film adds two action sequences after what had been the climax of the book--Bond's train compartment fight with Grant:
We'll be getting similar fight sequences in
Live and Let Die and
The Spy Who Loved Me.
Bond restores some of his gentleman cred when he makes an effort to bring the drugged Tatiana along for his escape from the train. The first part of the added escape sequence is the famous helicopter chase, inspired by a scene from
North by Northwest:
The second part has SPECTRE pursuing Bond and Romanova by boat:
The bit at the end with Bond fighting Klebb in the hotel room played a much more pivotal role in the book, where it ended with Bond succumbing to a wound from the poison-tipped shoe dagger, leaving his fate hanging. This was Fleming's attempt to give himself an out from continuing the series. The scene in
Dr. No in which Bond is issued his Walther PPK, with a reference to a jamming incident that caused him to spend six months in the hospital, is picked up from the book, which was the next in the series. In the book, that incident was the conclusion of the
From Russia, with Love novel.
NOT QUITE THE END
JAMES BOND
WILL RETURN IN
THE NEXT
IAN FLEMING THRILLER..
"GOLDFINGER"
_______
Joe Friday versus the Gypsies. This was all very odd.
Yeah...assuming it was based on reality, all the stuff about American fortune tellers being networked in a Gypsy Mafia was news to me.
What I found novel about this episode is how Friday effectively went undercover as himself.
Yeah, and they milked it for an awkward man-love moment.
I always get amnesia when I'm expected to attend a party.
We have nice soft blankets waiting for you in L&D.
You may be thinking of "Coward of the County," a loathsome song that advocates vigilante murder over pacifism. This song doesn't advocate violence, although it does reference it in its depiction of the horrifying despair of a crippled war veteran.
I was thinking of how you were under the impression that there was a multiple shooting involved in the climax of "Coward," when I always took it as a brawl.
Apparently there is an acknowledged ambiguity in that part of the song...
Wiki said:
Fueled by his long-bottled-up aggression, Tommy cuts loose and furiously fights the Gatlin boys leaving all three of them lying on the barroom floor by the time he left; the lyrics are ambiguous as to whether the Gatlins were dead or just unconscious, or if guns were used or if it was a fistfight.
...though I'd argue that the final iteration of the song's refrain, "Sometimes you gotta fight when you're a man," more readily evokes a fistfight than a shooting incident. But I was reminded of your take on "Coward" by the following lyric from "Ruby"...
Kenny said:
And if I could move I'd get my gun
And put her in the ground
...which I'd say leaves much less room for ambiguity.
It's kind of amazing how many covers they did when they were first starting out.
Filling albums with covers was the norm in those days. Three of the Beatles' first four British albums are roughly half-full of covers. But the covers found on the early albums barely touch upon the years that Beatles primarily played covers in clubs. There's a lot more of their cover repertoire to be found in the BBC collections.
