When reminiscing about his time editing From Russia With Love, editor Peter Hunt intoned: “You have to get the film, and fight with it.”
How apt for a movie like From Russia with Love (1963), which not only faced an uphill battle following so closely behind the first Bond outing, Dr. No (1962), but was also one of the most tumultuous productions in Bond history.
The movie also represents the last throes of a push-and-pull between Ian Fleming’s Bond novels—taut, potboiling, travelogue thrillers—and EON Productions’ globetrotting, tongue-in-cheek extravaganzas, an approach cemented just a year later with Goldfinger.
With stakes like these, how could From Russia With Love not be an unmitigated disaster? Well, these frictional forces shaped the movie like a diamond, resulting in what is considered by many to be the best Bond of them all.
The plot is steeped deeply in Cold War paranoia. The terrorist organization SPECTRE wants to steal a Lektor decoder from the Russian consulate in Istanbul and, to hide their tracks, concoct a plan to use Secret Agent James Bond (the one and only Sean Connery) as their pawn.
SPECTRE dispatches former Russian colonel Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) to recruit consulate clerk Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) as bait to bring Bond to Istanbul to steal the decoder for them. Hot on Bond’s trail as he races the decoder across the continent is SPECTRE assassin “Red” Grant (Robert Shaw). Grant is Bond’s perfect match in the spy game: where Bond is the sleek, dark-eyed and dark-haired, hidden dagger of the British Empire, Grant is SPECTRE’s cold-blooded, blonde and barrel-chested bull.
Along his journey by train, plane and tactfully-tailed automobile, Bond is assisted by Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendáriz), the avuncular head of MI6’s Station T, and his army of dutiful sons.
During From Russia with Love’s striking and style-defining opening credits, the above plot, based on Ian Fleming’s 1957 novel, is credited in a bizarre way: “Screenplay by Richard Maibaum, Adaptation by Johanna Harwood”—only the very first hint at the trials faced by director Terrence Young during the movie’s production.
While Johanna Harwood’s draft of the screenplay adhered closely to the novel—which spends its first 120 pages placing the chess pieces of a meticulous revenge plot planned by the very real Russian counterintelligence agency SMERSH—for the film, it was decided to shift the big bad to the fictional terrorist organization, SPECTRE. This was an attempt to remove the plot from any real-life tensions. Richard Maibaum, who wrote or contributed to a whopping thirteen of the Bond movies, was brought in to make the change—a change that he continued to refine with Terrence Young throughout the shooting of the film.
The production was plagued by bad luck: the director was nearly drowned during a helicopter crash; the lead actress spent two weeks off-camera when her face was injured during a car accident; and the massive explosion during the film’s speedboat finale was set off accidentally during a rehearsal.
However, the biggest and most tragic hurdle that beset production came when actor Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with inoperable cancer halfway through shooting and his scenes had to be rescheduled to allow him to finish his part while he was still healthy. From Russia With Love would be Armendáriz’s final role, as he took his own life shortly after finishing his work.
Armendáriz’s performance is indelible, charismatic, and an archetype that can be seen throughout the later Bond movies (see Marc-Ange Draco in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Milos Columbo in For Your Eyes Only).
And Kerim Bey is only the first of many Bond firsts in From Russia With Love. It was the first of the series composed exclusively by John Barry and features the first true theme song. It is also the first time a Bond movie places the opening teaser scene between the gun barrel and the title sequence.
It is perhaps most famously the first Bond movie to feature SPECTRE head Ernst Stavro Blofeld, seen only as a pair of hands petting his white cat, followed secondly by the premiere of Desmond Llewelyn’s Q and his arsenal of spy gadgets.
The film features travel and lifestyle moments reminiscent of Fleming’s writing which would soon be eschewed in favour of more action-driven plots. We take a moment as Bond orders his breakfast (green figs, yogurt, and coffee, very black), and we watch Bond explore the picturesque streets and mosques of Istanbul, sometimes alongside Tatiana, who climbs the cobblestones in high heels.
From Russia With Love also spotlights some of Ian Fleming’s less than savoury storytelling interests. While a bit xenophobic and sexist by today’s standards, at about the halfway mark, Bond and Kerim escape to a gypsy encampment after nightfall, to hide out, imbibe, and take in both belly dancing and girl wrestling, this all before the bad guys show up, of course.
One would be remiss not to mention Bond and Grant’s brutal hand-to-hand contest on the Orient Express, which stands as one of the most infamous in the Bond pantheon. Blood is spilled, razor wire is deployed, and Sean Connery’s hair is actually mussed in the action.
James Bond is a character that has been reinterpreted endlessly over the decades to fit the taste of the time. Roger Moore played him for laughs, Timothy Dalton broke up drug rings and brutalized henchmen, Pierce Brosnan was thrown into a tornado of special effects, and Daniel Craig pondered the character’s soul; but, to many, Sean Connery is James Bond and From Russia With Love is Sean Connery’s best James Bond movie. The Bond in this film is equal parts Ian Fleming and matinée star, gritty and suave, and those are the aforementioned frictional pressures that formed this cinematic diamond—and, as we all know, diamonds are forever.