| From Russia with Love | |
|---|---|
From Russia with Love film poster |
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| James Bond | Sean Connery |
| Also starring | Daniela Bianchi Lotte Lenya Robert Shaw |
| Directed by | Terence Young |
| Produced by | Harry Saltzman Albert R. Broccoli |
| Novel/Story by | Ian Fleming |
| Screenplay | Richard Maibaum Johanna Harwood (adaptation) |
| Cinematography by | Ted Moore, BSC |
| Music by | John Barry |
| Main theme | From Russia with Love |
| Composer | Lionel Bart |
| Performer | Matt Monro |
| Editing by | Peter R. Hunt |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Released | 10 October 1963 (UK) 8 April 1964 (USA) |
| Running time | 115 min. |
| Budget | $2,000,000 |
| Worldwide gross | $78,900,000 |
| Preceded by | Dr. No (1962) |
| Followed by | Goldfinger (1964) |
| IMDb • Allmovie | |
From Russia with Love (1963) is the second spy film in the James Bond series, and the second to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and directed by Terence Young. It is based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. In the film, James Bond is sent to assist in the defection of Corporal Tatiana Romanova in Turkey, where SPECTRE plans to avenge the killing of Dr. No.
From Russia with Love is considered one of the best films in the James Bond series by many critics and by Connery himself, and is still highly regarded more than 40 years after its release. Michael G. Wilson, the current co-producer of the series, stated "We always start out trying to make another From Russia with Love and end up with another Thunderball." In 2004, Total Film magazine named it the ninth-greatest British film of all time.[1]
In 2005, the film was adapted into a video game, James Bond 007: From Russia with Love. Produced by Electronic Arts, the game featured all-new voice work by Sean Connery as well as his likeness and those of several of the film's supporting cast.
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In a mansion garden late at night, James Bond is alternately stalking and being stalked by a tall, blond assassin. Bond is captured and strangled violently to death by the man named Red Grant, using a garrote wire hidden in a watch. Suddenly, huge floodlights switch on and the dead person turns out to be a man wearing Bond's disguise. This completes SPECTRE's training exercise.
Kronsteen, a chess grandmaster, and SPECTRE's expert planner, has devised a plot to steal a Lektor cryptographic device from the Soviets, sell it back to them, and also punish MI6 (the British Secret Service) for killing their agent Dr. No. Ex-SMERSH operative Rosa Klebb is put in charge of the mission by the megalomaniac Blofeld. She has already chosen a female pawn: Tatiana Romanova, a cypher clerk at the Soviet consulate in Istanbul. Klebb departs to SPECTRE Island, the organisation's secret training base, and approves Red Grant as an assassin.
In London, M tells Bond that Romanova has contacted their "Station 'T'" in Turkey, offering to defect with a Lektor, which MI6 and the CIA have been after for years. She has said that she will only defect to Bond, whose photo she has allegedly found in a Soviet intelligence file. In fact she is following orders from Klebb, who pretends she is still working for SMERSH and that this is a SMERSH deception.
Bond flies to Istanbul to meet station head Ali Kerim Bey. He is followed from the airport by an unkempt man in glasses and by Red Grant.
The next day, after Kerim Bey's office is bombed, Bond and Kerim Bey spy on the Soviet consulate using a periscope from an underground tunnel beneath the consulate. Seeing rival agent Krilencu, Kerim Bey takes Bond to a rural gypsy settlement, where Kerim Bey plans to lie low while deciding how to deal with Krilencu. However the camp is attacked by Krilencu's men. Grant, lurking nearby, shoots a man who is about to kill Bond. Although he is wounded in the attack, Kerim Bey kills Krilencu the next night with Bond's sniper rifle. When Bond returns to his hotel suite, he finds Romanova in bed waiting for him. Bond and Romanova make love, unaware that they are being filmed by Grant and Klebb.
The next day, Romanova heads off for a pre-arranged rendezvous at Hagia Sophia. Bond follows her and stalks the bespectacled man who had followed him at the airport. But unknown to Bond, the man is killed by Grant. When Bond finds the body, he also finds the floor plans for the Soviet consulate that Tatiana was smuggling out for him. Kerim Bey and Bond set up a plan to steal the Lektor and smuggle it back to Britain. On the appointed day, Bond enters the consulate lobby. Kerim Bey then sets off an explosion under the building, releasing tear gas. In the resulting chaos, Bond finds Romanova and escapes with the Lektor on the Orient Express. Kerim Bey and a Soviet security officer named Benz, who recognises Romanova, also board the train, but Grant stealthily kills both of them, making it seem as if they killed each other.
The train crosses southern-central Europe to Belgrade. There Bond arranges for agent Nash from "Station 'Y'" to meet him at Zagreb. Grant intercepts and kills Nash, boards the train, and meets Bond as Nash. He drugs Romanova at dinner with a knock-out pill in her wine, then overcomes Bond. Grant taunts him, boasting SPECTRE has been pitting the Soviets and the British against each other. He also claims that Romanova thinks that "she's working for mother Russia" when she is really working for SPECTRE. Bond offers to buy his last cigarette for 50 gold sovereigns, luring Grant to open his attaché case, which releases tear gas. In the ensuing struggle, Bond stabs Grant with the throwing knife hidden in the attaché case, and then strangles Grant with his own garrote. At dawn, Bond and Romanova leave the train, hijack Grant's getaway truck, destroy an enemy helicopter by sniping the pilot who drops a live grenade, and drive to a dock, eventually boarding a powerboat.
Blofeld is very unhappy, and summons Kronsteen and Klebb. He reminds them that SPECTRE does not tolerate failure; they blame each other. Blofeld calls in Grant's trainer Morenzy to carry out the punishment for failure, so he kills Kronsteen with a poisoned spike in the toe of his shoe. Blofeld tells a shaken and perspiring Klebb that she has another chance - but must not fail again.
Klebb sends Morzeny after Bond with a squadron of SPECTRE's boats. When stray bullets puncture several barrels of fuel stored on his boat, Bond throws them overboard. Pretending to surrender, he fires a signal flare into the fuel, engulfing all the enemy boats in flames.
Bond and Romanova reach Venice and check into a hotel. Rosa Klebb, disguised as a maid, attempts to steal the Lektor. In the climax, Klebb gets the drop on Bond, and holds him at gunpoint but the gun is knocked away by Romanova. Klebb releases her poisoned toe-spike, but Bond narrowly dodges her kicks and pins her to the wall with a dining chair. Romanova grabs the gun and shoots Klebb. Riding in a gondola, Bond throws the illicit film of him and Romanova into the canal, and they sail away.
The film features the first appearance of Desmond Llewelyn as Major Boothroyd, known as Q, the character he would play in all but two of the series' films until his death in 1999. However, screen credit for Llewelyn was omitted at the opening of the film and is reserved for the exit credits. The Q character appeared in the previous film, Dr. No, portrayed by actor Peter Burton, and addressed by M initially as "Armourer," and as Major Boothroyd by Bond.
As President John F. Kennedy had named Fleming's novel From Russia with Love among his ten favourite books of all time in Life magazine,[4] producers Broccoli and Saltzman chose this as the follow-up to the cinematic debut of James Bond, Dr. No. Ian Fleming's novel was a Cold War thriller, however the producers named the crime syndicate SPECTRE instead of the Soviet undercover agency SMERSH so as to avoid controversial political overtones.[4] The SPECTRE training grounds were inspired by the film Spartacus. [5]
The film introduced several "firsts" to the series which would become canonized as essential formula elements: the standard pre-title sequence, the Blofeld character, a secret weapon gadget for Bond, a helicopter sequence (repeated in every subsequent Bond film except The Man with the Golden Gun), a postscript action scene after the main climax, a theme song with lyrics, and the line "James Bond will return/be back" in the credits.
Although uncredited, the actor who played Ernst Stavro Blofeld, was Anthony Dawson, who had played Professor Dent in the previous Bond film, Dr. No. In the end credits, Blofeld is credited with a question mark. Blofeld's voice was provided by Viennese actor Eric Pohlmann.[4] It is rumoured that author and James Bond creator Ian Fleming has a cameo appearance, in a location train scene, standing outside the train in grey trousers and a white sweater.[6]
Many actresses were considered for the role of Tatiana, including Sylva Koscina, Virna Lisi, and Annette Vadim, with 1960 Miss Universe runner-up Daniela Bianchi being ultimately cast, supposedly by Sean Connery's choice. Bianchi started taking English classes for the role, but the producers ultimately chose to dub her voice over. [7] The scene in which Bond finds Tatiana in his hotel bed was used for Daniela Bianchi's screen test, with Dawson standing in, this time, as Bond.[4] The scene later became the traditional screen test scene for prospective James Bond actors. This screen test forms part of the Ultimate Edition DVD series, showing potential candidates auditioning for the role down the years: James Brolin, Sean Bean, and Sam Neill along with future 007 Pierce Brosnan. The scene has also been used to audition several James Bond leading ladies, including Maryam D'Abo and Maud Adams.[8][9]
Katina Paxinou was originally considered for the role of Rosa Klebb, but was unavailable. Terence Young cast Lotte Lenya after hearing one of her musical recordings. Young wanted Kronsteen's portrayer to be "an actor with a remarkable face", so the minor character would be well remembered by audiences. This led to the casting of Vladek Sheybal, who Young also considered convincing as an intellectual.[5] Several women were tested for the roles of Vida and Zora, and after Aliza Gur and Martine Beswick were cast, they spent six weeks practicing their fight choreography with stunt work arranger Peter Perkins.[10]
Pedro Armendariz was recommended to Young by director John Ford to play Kerim Bey. After experiencing increasing discomfort on location in Istanbul, Armendariz was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Filming in Istanbul was terminated, the production moved to Britain, and Armendariz's scenes were brought forward so that he could complete his scenes without delay. Though visibly in pain, he continued working as long as possible. When he could no longer work, he returned home, and took his own life.[4] Remaining shots after Armendariz left London had a stunt double and Terence Young himself as stand-ins.[2]
Most of the film was set in Istanbul. Locations included the Basilica Cistern, Hagia Sophia, and the Sirkeci Station which also was used for the Sofia and Zagreb stations. The MI6 office in London, SPECTRE Island, the Venice hotel and the interior scenes of the Orient Express were filmed at Pinewood Studios with some footage of the train. In the film, the train journey was set in Eastern Europe. The journey and the truck ride were shot in Argyll, Scotland, and Switzerland. The end scenes for the film were shot in Venice.[4]However, to qualify for the British film funding of the time, at least 70% of the film had to have been filmed in Great Britain or the Commonwealth.[11] The gypsy camp was also to be filmed in an actual camp in Topkapi, but was actually shot in a replica of it in Pinewood. [7] The scene with rats (after the theft of the Lektor) was shot in Spain, as Britain didn't allow filming with wild rats, and filming white rats painted in cocoa didn't work. [12]
Director Terence Young's eye for realism was evident throughout production. For the opening chess match, Kronsteen wins the game with a reenactment of Boris Spassky's victory over David Bronstein in 1960.[13] Production Designer Syd Cain built up the "chess pawn" motif in his $150,000 set for the brief sequence.[7] A noteworthy gadget featured was the attaché case issued by the Q-Branch. It had a tear gas bomb that detonated if it was improperly opened, a folding AR-7 sniper rifle with twenty rounds of ammunition, a throwing knife, and 50 gold sovereigns. A boxer at Cambridge, Young choreographed the fight between Grant and Bond along with stunt co-ordinator Peter Perkins. The scene which took three weeks to film and was violent enough to worry some on the production. Yet Robert Shaw and Connery did most of the stunts themselves.[4][2] The fact that there was not as much light thrown on gadgets and vehicles as in future films has been critically appreciated, since it benefitted the storyline.
After the unexpected loss of Armendariz, production proceeded, experiencing complications from rewriting by Richard Maibaum during filming. Editor Peter Hunt set about editing the film while key elements were still to be filmed, helping to restructure the opening scenes. Hunt and Young conceived of moving the training exercise on a Bond double to preface the main title, a signature feature that has been an enduring hallmark of every Bond film since. The briefing with Blofeld was rewritten, and back projection was used to refilm Lotte Lenya's lines.[4]
Behind schedule and over budget, the production crew struggled to complete production in time for the already-announced premiere date that October. On 6 July 1963, while scouting locations in Argyll, Scotland, for that day's filming of the climactic boat chase, Terence Young's helicopter crashed into the lake with Art Director Michael White and a cameraman aboard. The craft sank into 40–50 feet of water, but all escaped with minor injuries. Despite the calamity, Young was behind the camera for the full day's work. A few days later, Bianchi's driver fell asleep during the commute to a 6 a.m. shoot and crashed the car; the actress' scenes had to be delayed two weeks while her facial contusions healed.[4]
The helicopter and boat chase scenes were not in the original novel, but added to create an action climax. The former was inspired by Hitchcock's North By Northwest, and the latter by a previous Young/Broccoli/Maibaum collaboration, The Red Beret. [14]These two scenes would be shot in Istanbul, but were moved to Scotland; the speed boats couldn't run fast enough,[15] due to the many waves in the sea, and a rented boat filled with cameras ended up sinking in the Bosphorus;[7] and a helicopter was hard to get —[15] the special effects crew nearly got arrested trying to get one at a local air base.[16]
The helicopter chase was filmed with a radio controlled miniature helicopter. [7] The sounds of the boat chase were replaced since the boats weren't loud enough, [17] and the explosion, shot in Pinewood, got out of control, burning Walter Gotell's eyelids [15] and seriously injuring three stuntmen.[14]
From Russia with Love is the first Bond film in the series with John Barry as the primary soundtrack composer.[18] The theme song was composed by Lionel Bart of Oliver! fame and sung by Matt Monro,[19] although the title credit music is a lively instrumental version of the tune beginning with Barry's brief James Bond is Back then segueing into Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme"). Monro's vocal version is later played during the film (as source music on a radio) and properly over the film's end titles.[19] Barry travelled with the crew to Turkey to try getting influences of the local music, but ended up using almost nothing, just local instruments such as finger cymbals to give an exotic feeling, since he thought the Turkish music had a comedic tone that did not fit in the "dramatic feeling" of the James Bond movies. [20]
In this film, Barry introduced the percussive theme "007" – action music that came to be considered the 'secondary James Bond Theme'. He composed it to have a lighter, enthusiastic and adventurer theme, in order to relax the audiences.[20] The arrangement appears twice on the soundtrack album; the second version, entitled "007 Takes the Lektor", is the one used during the gunfight at the gypsy camp and also during Bond's theft of the Lektor decoding machine.[4][21] The completed film features a holdover from the Monty Norman-supervised Dr. No music; the post-rocket-launch music from Dr. No is played in From Russia with Love during the helicopter and speedboat attacks.[21]
From Russia with Love premiered on 10 October 1963 at the Odeon, Leicester Square in London. The following year, it was released in 16 countries worldwide. It grossed $24 million at the North American box office,[22] and $78 million worldwide.[23] It is Sean Connery's favourite Bond film,[2] and was received positively by critics. James Berardinelli considers it his favourite Bond,[24] Neil Smith of BBC Films called it "a film that only gets better with age",[25] and Jay Antani of Filmcritic praised the "impressive staging of action scenes".[26] Norman Wilner of MSN chose From Russia with Love as the best Bond film,[27] while IGN listed it as second, behind Goldfinger.[28] Entertainment Weekly, however, put the film at ninth, criticizing the slow pace.[29] On 29 July 2007, it became the first James Bond film to be broadcast on BBC.[30]
The film's cinematographer Ted Moore won the BAFTA award and the British Society of Cinematographers award for Best Cinematography.[31] At the 1965 Laurel Awards, Lotte Lenya stood third for Best Female Supporting Performance, and the film secured second place in the Action-Drama category. The film also received a Golden Globe nomination for the song "From Russia with Love".[32]
The From Russia with Love video game was developed by Electronic Arts and released on 1 November 2005 in North America. It follows the storyline of the book and film, albeit adding in new scenes, making it more action-oriented. One of the most significant changes to the story is the replacement of the organization SPECTRE to OCTOPUS because the name SPECTRE constituted a long-running legal dispute over the film rights to Thunderball between United Artists/MGM and the late writer Kevin McClory. Most of the cast from the film returned in likeness. Connery not only played Bond, but also recorded his voice to the character. Featuring a third-person multiplayer deathmatch mode, the game depicts several elements of later Bond films such as the Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger (1964) and the rocketbelt from Thunderball (1965).
The game was penned by Bruce Feirstein who previously worked on the film scripts for GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and the 2004 video game, Everything or Nothing. Its soundtrack was composed by Christopher Lennertz and Vic Flick.[33]
The game begins with a standard pre-title sequence in which Elizabeth Stark, the British Prime Minister's daughter, is kidnapped by OCTOPUS while attending a party. Fortunately, Bond was assigned to attend the party; he defeats OCTOPUS' henchmen and rescues Stark. Soon, OCTOPUS conceives a plan to avenge the death of Dr. Julius No. The plan involves the theft of a Soviet encoding machine known as the Lektor with the help of a defecting Soviet agent, Romanova, being used by OCTOPUS to lure Bond into a trap; their ultimate goal is to let him obtain the Lektor and then ambush and kill him. Romanova is sent by Rosa Klebb, a KGB agent who has secretly defected to OCTOPUS. Her immediate subordinate, Red Grant, protects Bond through the first half of the game and attacks him in the second. The game ends with a final assault on OCTOPUS headquarters.
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