BONDATHON: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

The plan was always to turn the Bond novels into a series of films, but it wasn’t a done deal until Dr. No was released and made nearly sixty times its $1 million budget. With that success, work on the sequel began almost immediately and From Russia With Love was released in 1963, almost a year to the day after Dr. No. But can such an assembly line production really yield a quality film? Particularly after the original was sometimes lacking in strong storytelling?

In this case, the answer is a resounding yes. From Russia With Love isn’t just a better thriller than Dr. No; it blows its predecessor out of the water. Bond (Sean Connery) is sent to Istanbul to receive a Lektor cryptographic device from a defecting Soviet file clerk named Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi). Tatiana suposedly fell in love with Bond after seeing a photograph of him. It’s obvious to everyone that it’s a trap of some kind, but even the smallest chance of getting a Lektor is too much for MI:6 honcho M (Bernard Lee) to pass up. So Bond’s off to Istanbul where he meets with MI:6’s man in charge, a man named Ali Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendáriz) to facilitate the transfer of the girl and the Lektor and discover whether or not the whole thing is on the level. It is indeed a trap, but not a Russian one as Bond and co. assume. Instead the whole thing is a cunning ploy by SPECTRE (the terrorist organization behind the villainy in the first film) to play East and West against each other. Even the girl doesn’t know that she’s just a pawn in a much larger scheme.

It's all a lot of fun, there’s a lot more for Bond to do in this film: he has to find the girl and seduce her (the thing Bond does best). He also has to help unravel a plot to kill Kerim Bey, bomb an embassy, outrun waves of rats and help settle a blood feud at a gypsy camp. Bond even gets to kill someone with a machete! After he finally gets his hands on the Lektor, he must get it back to England safely. That task will be even harder than he knows, because he is being tailed every step of the way by SPECTRE agent Red Grant, played by the excellent Robert Shaw (Jaws, The Sting). Grant isn’t just a psychotic or a good fighter, but he is one of the more cunning villains Bond faces in these films. He doesn’t have a hollowed out volcano, but we actually see him trail and outsmart Bond at every turn. There is a wonderfully built sequence where we see Grant trick Bond into thinking he’s a fellow agent. Returning director Terrence Young, builds the tension to their final showdown with a dreadful efficiency. Maybe it's because Bond is so often on top of things, but watching the Grant zero in on the unsuspecting super spy proves to be one of the more entertaining sequences in the franchise.

Eventually Grant and Bond have a showdown, and it is a masterful display of athleticism. With the exception of one shot, no stunt doubles were used (it should be noted that extended fight scenes were practically non-existent in Western cinema). Young resists the urge to put any music under it and used sound very pointedly. The result is a brutal, unromantic sequence where these two men beat each other to a pulp. It may be tame by today's standards but, it was one of cinema’s first decathlons of violence. Grant is the first of many henchmen Bond will face in these movies, few will be as memorable, though far too many will use him as a model.

Connery gives a cooler and more confident performance as Bond. The key to movie Bond is that he's not a real person, he's pure fantasy. Master of all he sees, particularly women. The whole plot of the film is, after all, based on his sexual prowess being so strong as to attract people he's never even met. It's only a momentary subversion of the image to know that Romanova is under orders to sleep with Bond, because by the morning she's converted. Still, it's an interesting scene that puts two people in bed together where neither one knows that the other is being coerced. Bond's is not the only prowess in the film. Karim Bay is essentially Bond with a desk job and even more women. Karim Bay has a small army made up entirely of his offspring and seems to have more sex then is practical. Also of note in this regard, is SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb, played by Lottie Lenya (immortalized in Louie Armstrong's version of Mack the Knife), a former soviet turned SPECTRE agent. The fact that her defection was kept secret by the Russians allows her to recruit Tatiana under the guise of still being a Soviet official. That recruitment scene has some sado-masochistic, lesbian undertones as Klebb practically gropes the young clerk. It's an amusing scene, but it's a bit dated when one considers that it's in line with Hollywood's portrayal of the LGBT community as sadistic murderers. A portrayal the Bond films will do plenty of over the years.

In many ways From Russia displays much of the classic Bond formula. Not all of the pieces are in place, but we’re getting closer. We have a pre-credit sequence, though it doesn’t feature Bond yet. The credit sequence by Robert Brownjohn (he also did the cover for the Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed) replaced the Saul Bass-esque dancing circles of the previous film with names projected onto dancing women, an idea that will become an obligatory element of Bond credit sequences from here on out. We don’t have a true Bond song yet, but we do have the first score written by John Barry, whose work will have an insurmountable effect on the Bond pictures. We have our first real gadgets (Bond’s explosive briefcase and a fold-up rifle), but they aren’t larger than life yet and play a relatively small role in the plot. Most importantly, the film introduces us to Blofeld, the most famous Bond villain, he will be seen in several other films and while he will eventually get a face, for now he will only be seen as a pair of hands stroking a white cat.

Evil, James Bond style

So what’s keeping this from being a real Bond film? Well it’s quite simple, Terrence Yong and the films producers lean very heavily on Hitchcockian influences. Dr. No made no bones about aping Hitchcocks style (the man practically invented the spy movie after all), but it's success was limited in that regard. Russia does it much better but is also more obvious, in addition to containing shades of Notorious, the film bares a great deal of similarity to Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece North By Northwest. In both films the hero is a pawn of forces he’s not entirely aware of. Both films have extended sequences on trains and scenes finding the hero chased by some sort of aerial contraption (biplane in North by Northwest, a helicopter in From Russia) in addition they both have an enemy spy being seducing the hero for nefarious reasons but then falling for him, and important exposition where the director deliberately hides dialogue under the sound of a vehicle.

1958 vs. 1963.

Of course Hitchcock did all these things better, there's a reason he's the Master of Suspense. By the 1960's he had raised the bar so high that all the likes of Terrence Young could do was follow. Young's version of the helicopter scene is honestly the low point of the film. The scene feels stitched together from bits of repeated footage, it's a huge letdown so soon after the excellent train fight. It's not all Young's fault, From Russia was reportedly a very difficult shoot, a massive rescheduling happened after Pedro Armendáriz became terminally ill, there where last second location changes, and the whole thing had to be restructured in the editing room.

Still, it's to the films credit that, apart from that helicopter scene, Young imitates Hitchcock rather well and even manages to infuse some of his own style but while these influences help elevate Russia into a superior thriller than it's predecessor,  they also hold the series back. The identity of Bond as a character is all here, but the style of the films themselves need more distinction before they can become what we know them as today.

The film version of From Russia with Love keeps much of Fleming’s source material intact. But a key change reverberates through the plot. Like the previous film, Soviet villains are replaced with the fictional SPECTRE. It’s a more problematic change as the plot of Fleming’s book revolves around the Russians trying to humiliate British intelligence. The insertion of the terrorist organization can't be a pure substitution, that would necessitate a change in title and From Spectre With Love just doesn't sound as good. The solution is to keep the Russians in the film, but allow them to be victims too. The result is hardly a labyrinth, but the film is still a more complex piece for the changes, leading to what is ultimately a more suspenseful film.

Grade: A-

From Russia With Love is currently streaming on Netflix Instant.

Other Bondathon entries:
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Diamonds are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View To A Kill 
The Living Daylights 
Licence to Kill
Goldeneye 
Tomorrow Never Dies 
The World Is Not Enough  
Die Another Day 
Casino Royale 
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall