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Released: October 1963
Producers: Albert R. Broccoli & Harry Saltzmann
Director: Terrence Young
Writers: Richard Maibaum & Johanna Harwood
Plot:
SPECTRE sets up an elaborate plan to get its revenge on James Bond while making some sweet coin. They use a beautiful Russian agent, Tatiana Romanova, as a honeytrap, luring James Bond to Istanbul on the promise she’ll get the British a Lektor, a highly-sought after piece of Soviet kit. SPECTRE’s woman on the inside, Rosa Klebb, also enlists the psychopathic assassin Red Grant to tail Bond, to ensure the plan goes off without a hitch. Which of course it doesn’t.
Famous For:
The first appearance of Desmond Llewellyn as “Q” and first official gadget
Daniela Bianchi’s insanely radiant jaw-droppingly stunning beauty
Lotte Lenya’s iconic steely expression and steel-tipped murder shoes
Questionable gypsy content
Umm
On 20 November 1963, the lights dimmed at a White House for a movie night. The film-du-jour had already been released in the United Kingdom, but had yet to cross the Atlantic. President John F. Kennedy was getting an early peek at From Russia With Love before a wider US release in early 1964.
It was possibly the last perk of his job. Two days later, he was shot in Dallas.
The story goes that the reason producers Harry Saltzmann and Albert R Broccoli had chosen to make From Russia With Love as their second James Bond instalment was because JFK had named it in his top ten favourite books.
At least the famous Ian Fleming fan got to see it before Lee Harvey Oswald/the Russians/the Cubans/the Mob/the guys from the Oliver Stone movie really doubled down on that whole “Kennedy Curse” thing. As far as “final films” goes, it’s a pretty good one for posterity.
“The name’s Kennedy. Jack Kenn——”
From Russia With Love regularly makes it to the top or near top of Best Bond Films lists for good reason. It’s a cracker of a spy film, with more solidified Bond elements and believable action sequences, a fantastic array of villains and a captivating supporting performance by Pedro Armendáriz as Turkish MI6 station head Ali Kerim Bey.
It’s strange then on a rewatch to remember that we don’t actually see James Bond until 18 minutes into the film. Sure, we see him stalked and murdered by Red Grant in a training session, but that turns out to be a double in a shonky mask.
The device of the pre-credits sequence allows the film time to establish an elaborate plot - all seen from the villains’ point of view. We’ve seen Grant already, so after Maurice Binder’s simply seductive belly-dancing credits, we move to a languid chess game in which Czech grandmaster Kronsteen is enjoying toying with his opponent, until a message delivered via glass of water (side question - who holds a coaster while taking a sip?) prompts him to end the game with a simple move.
Kronsteen is Number 5 in the Spectre pecking order, and he arrives onboard a large boat for a meeting with two of his superiors: Number 3, the defected SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb; and Number 1, whose face we never see BECAUSE IT’S BLOFELD, IT’S TOTALLY BLOFELD, LOOK, HE’S STROKING THE CAT, TALK ABOUT SIZZLE
I have three foster kittens and NONE of them let me do this. Jerks.
Ahem. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Kronsteen unveils his master plan to acquire a Lektor decoding device from the Russians by dangling it and a hot chick in front of the British so they can lure James Bond to Istanbul, get him to do the actual stealing, then kill him and sell the Lektor back to the Russians for vastly inflated roubles. Sure, I guess that’s a plan. Number 1 is certainly able to explain via the means of Siamese fighting fish; the cautious one lets the other two fight, then murders the victor when he is tired.
Ahh, so they just need somebody on the ground who’s very experienced with fish-based revenge.
Well yes, that guy will do, but can we have him about 15 years younger and able to take a knuckle duster to the gut like a champion?
Klebb’s short time on “Spectre Island” (I mean, maybe go for something less obvious?) is unintentionally hilarious, courtesy of the exposition scene in which she is briefed while walking past a series of fighters training in every possible art of war - from bare-chested knife duelling to martial arts to goddamn flamethrower practice.
One imagines this was hella impressive at the time. But with our jaded 2020 hindsight, it’s almost a meta-commentary on how both the Spectre Island training staff and the From Russia With Love production designers both decided Spectre Island would be far more impressive if everyone was training in everything at the same time.
Klebb, still pretending to be a true Russian SMERSH boss, then recruits the otherworldly beautiful cipher clerk Tatiana Romanova into a special mission, a “labour of love”. Her job is to feed false information to the enemy via the means of a love affair. Romanova is offended by Klebb’s personal comments about her appearance and past lovers, but takes the assignment when it becomes clear the alternative is death.
It’s only after all of this setup that we then see James Bond, in a punt with his pole out, macking on with his date from Dr No, Sylvia Trench. Look at our beloved Sean Connery’s furry Scottish body:
That’ll keep you warm on those cold Highland nights.
He gets a phone call on his car phone, which delightfully is a rotary phone handset with a squiggly cord rigged up to his dashboard, and promises to head to the Universal Exports office immediately, just as soon as he’s finished digging in a Trench one last time.
Incidentally, this is the last we ever see of Sylvia Trench, who was supposed to be Bond’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, but never returned to the series. She’s not given much to do, but I rather like her as someone just as keen for minimal-strings-attached sex as Bond is. When Bond tells HQ he’ll be an hour and a half, she gives a little clap, as if thanking some higher sex muse who’s given her the opportunity for a bit more pleasurable punting.
Back at the office, M informs Bond of the news that a beautiful Russian agent insists she will defect and bring a Lektor with her to Britain - on the condition that Bond goes to Istanbul to collect her. Clearly it’s a trap, but Bond says it’s worth the risk if they can actually get a Lektor, and also because he’s been handed a photo of Romanova and has to cross his legs to stop his penis Road Runnering it through the door and onto a plane.
Before Bond can go, M (and the producers) introduce us to a character and concept that would become as tied to the 007 mythology as those beautiful women and bonkers bad guys - Q and his gadgets.
The Fleming novels never specified an actual person named “Q”, and indeed Desmond Llewellyn was not referred to as “Q” in this scene. There’s also none of his trademark disgruntled banter with Bond - one imagines because this is the first gadget, and Bond hasn’t wrecked it yet.
Also, Llewellyn was famously tech-phobic, and never understood half of his lines. One can imagine him here, in his one scene, fully focused on getting every detail of the fully kitted out briefcase right. Quirky character moments would come later, once he got a callback for another film.
Luckily Britain has the best choice of station head in Istanbul (not Constantinople, sorry, I had to get it out now before it ruins the rest of the piece) - the marvellous, many-son-having Ali Kerim Bey.
Kerim Bey immediately dismisses the Lektor plot as a hoax, but gives Bond all of his time and resources, including as many of his employed sons as he can handle.
And it’s not without danger - Bond’s arrival and Red Grant’s sneaky stalking/strategic life saving results in a small turf war breaking out between the British/Turkish side and the Russian/Bulgarian side.
Like Dr No, there’s some actual spycraft in From Russia With Love, in the way that Kerim Bey outlines the rules of the game in his part of the world, and the way he spies on the Russian embassy via an British navy periscope - accessed via a spooky underground boat ride.
Actual footage.
Kerim Bey becomes the target of two assassination attempts - one a limpet mine outside his office that only misses him because he was too busy getting busy with his lady friend; the next at the Romani camp outside town. He gets Bond to assist him in taking out Soviet agent Krilencu, who organised both attempts on his life. Bond offers to make the kill as Kerim Bey’s arm was badly wounded in the camp shootout, but ultimately Kerim Bey is adamant he must pull the trigger himself.
It’s a strangely intimate scene of these two new friends, brought together by their strange Cold War jobs, carrying out their own brand of justice quietly and efficiently. Like Bond’s killing of Professor Dent in Dr No, it’s a no-fuss extrajudicial action, something that would become increasingly rare in the franchise.
However it’s here that one of Bond’s proto-puns is on display as the scene concludes - the “She should have kept her mouth shut” quip. Yes, it references the window aligned directly with a poster version of Anita Ekberg’s mouth, but also, what? Like, he climbed out of her “mouth”, but it’s the window that closes, not the “mouth”, and “she” is just a poster. I mean, we get it, but it’s also not quite there as a true Bond pun.
Where From Russia With Love steps it up from Dr No is in the action sequences. Once Bond gets on the road there are a bunch of them, each more ambitious than the big brawl at the end of the previous film.
The invasion of the gypsy camp, where Kerim Bey takes Bond to lay low, by Bulgarian thugs, is a brash gunfight with Bond sort of strolling around almost disinterestedly, clocking the odd dickhead to help Kerim Bey and the Romani fighters, while being secretly saved by Red Grant, who’s keeping SPECTRE’s plan on track.
There’s the flash bang attack on the Russian consulate, in which Bond grabs a gas mask to assist Romanova to make off with the Lektor, escaping to the Orient Express to get the hell out of Dodge.
There’s the epic man-on-man fight with Red Grant in their train compartment, the confined space adding a level of danger and destruction to the sequence, which ends with Bond choking Grant with the same garrote Grant used to kill the Bond impersonator in the cold open.
Grant is nearly Bond’s mirror image; he’s certainly been trained to fool 007, finally coming into contact with him and Romanova on the train, after he kills the British agent Bond requested to meet him at Zagreb, and takes his identity. Grant’s “jolly good old man” affectation is suss to Bond straightaway, but it’s not until Grant orders red wine with his fish supper that 007 knows something is truly up.
It’s a classic Bond move; while he’s not necessarily British aristocracy, he is of the “gentleman” class, which places about 90 per cent of its trustworthiness in other men who visit the right tailors, smoke the right cigarettes and know how to pair wines.
So poor Robert Shaw’s fish hubris was his downfall.
Bond then throws a drugged-out Romanova off the train in order to get away using Grant’s pre-established escape route.
Once the sun rises, they are chased down by a SPECTRE helicopter - the first appearance of a chopper in a Bond film, and no doubt a consequence of the film’s budget doubling to $2 million. It’s a genuinely tense scene as Bond tries to take cover while also drawing the chopper’s fire away from Romanova, and buying time to get his convertible rifle working.
Once the helicopter crashes in flames, it’s onto the final big action sequence - a boat race along the Dalmatian coast to Venice. It’s always great seeing Bond in a boat. As a British navy commander, it’s his best-fitting form of transport, despite what will come with all of those beautiful Aston Martins.
Word has gotten back to SPECTRE about Grant’s death, and after dispensing shiny shoe justice on chess man Kronsteen for not predicting Bond would whip their collective asses, they are somehow able to scramble a fleet of murder boats that are able to intercept Bond and Romanova as they make waves towards Venice.
Luckily the boat Grant had arranged was well-stocked with fuel barrels, allowing Bond to let them loose, shoot them with a flare gun and set all of SPECTRE’s revenge dreams on fire.
Let’s diverge now to talk about The Girls.
Tatiana Romanova is far and away one of those most physically stunning Bond Women the franchise has ever seen. An Italian model, her voice ended up being dubbed over, like Ursula Andress’ was in Dr No.
Like, how is anyone actually this good-looking?
The thing is though, Romanova’s beauty is kind of the point. She is recruited for her loyalty to Russia, yes, so she won’t question Rosa Klebb, but primarily they need a looker that James Bond will find irresistable.
And they’re right - when he finds her wrapped up like a nudey present in his bridal suite bed, he cannot take his eyes off her and calls her one of the most beautiful girls he’s ever seen. She replies that she thinks her mouth is too big, prompting this close-up:
Followed by Bond saying “It’s just the right size…for me that is.”
Did we need this? Probably not, but for me there’s just enough tongue-in-cheek to that mouth that means I’ll swallow it. Wa-hey.
Compared to the organic freedom of Honey Ryder, there is a case to be made that Romanova has far less agency. She is basically told what to do through this film; Rosa Klebb orders her to do whatever Bond says, plus sleep with him for the honour of Mother Russia; she then follows what Bond tells her to do because she’s fulfilling her orders. Or is she?
We’re given a clue in her first scene with Rosa Klebb, the other dominant female character in the film. Klebb is strongly coded as a lesbian in the film, and potentially a physically pushy one. It’s setting up a binary of the young, soft, pliant clerk versus the duplicitous, scheming, older, unattractive general - in case you didn’t know whom to cheer on.
Klebb is definitely the more complex of the two characters - utterly ruthless when it comes to dealing with underlings like Romanova and the staff of Spectre Island, she is nevertheless terrified of Number 1 and the power of SPECTRE. She at times seems like she regrets her defection from the USSR; shaking when the plan goes wrong and taking it upon herself to launch a final attack on Bond near the finale in Venice.
But when Romanova is not without depth. When she confirms to Klebb that she has had three lovers, she states “I was in love”. We can gather, then, that Romanova equates love and sex to at least some degree. So perhaps her immediately falling for James Bond isn’t just the result of his magic penis. She has found him attractive, both in his picture and in real life, done the wild thing in the highly romantic bridal suite (complete with SPECTRE’s creepy in-house porno blackmail team), and has therefore jumped onboard the Bond Bus/Freedom Train with extreme prejudice.
The magic penis sure does some wonders though. When Bond is trying to get her to explain how the Lektor works into his hilariously high-tech Box Brownie recorder, she keeps interrupting to make him promise to make love to her over and over when they get to England. It makes for a brilliant scene with M, Moneypenny and a bunch of other British spy toffs listening back to the recording. M sends Moneypenny out of the room after Bond namechecks him as accompanying Bond on some sort of wild night in Tokyo. Moneypenny of course then just eavesdrops on the rest of the recording from the reception room.
(As an aside, I feel like a side story just on Bond and Moneypenny’s interactions is in order; perhaps once we’ve got a few more films under our belt. Safe to say - I love her to bits).
Romanova is also drugged by Red Grant, rendering her useless in the confrontation with Bond in the train cabin. It is then explained what was to become of her; just a patsy, he would shoot her then Bond to make it look like a murder-suicide. Bond cottons on to the fact this is a SPECTRE plan, and that Romonova had nothing to do with Kerim Bey’s earlier death in a train cabin. So he recognises her as a victim in a larger power play, and makes sure to take her with him (and the Lektor) off the train once he overcomes Grant. And sure, he still wants to bone her, but a more callous spy could have chosen to leave her having already done the deed.
Romonova doesn’t have much to do in the subsequent action sequences; she is not a trained field operative, so can’t really assist much - beyond helping with maps and flares in the boat.
Where she does come good though is in the final confrontation with Rosa Klebb, in their hotel room in Venice. Klebb has somehow discovered exactly which hotel they’re in, and disguised herself as a maid. Romanova spots her, but she is still scared enough of Klebb to be quiet, and then to help her open the door and take the Lektor.
But then, Romanova comes good - at least in the sense that she makes a decision wholly on her own. She throws herself back in the door to disarm Klebb, who then releases her spiky shoe tips in order to battle Bond. He traps her with a chair and Romanova grabs Klebb’s gun and shoots her. Klebb is given a relatively lengthy death, her face twisted. How you want to read it might depend on on your personal biases and preferred cultural conventions - was it giving a proper villain a deserved final death moment; or was it making a point about what happens to women who exist outside the norms of beauty, loyalty and heterosexuality?
Either way, Bond has the good graces to look shaken as he sits on the same chair he just used to pin Klebb to the wall. Romanova massages his neck and says “Horrible woman”. It would have been lovely for the moment to finish there… but the puns are here to stay. “She’s had her kicks”, drawls Bond, again with the “Yes, I get it, but still, not THAT great” a pun.
The film ends with Bond and Romanova leaving Venice by boat; with Bond doing the cheesy flinging of their sex tape overboard and waving it goodbye. But there is another moment in Romanova’s defence - she gives Bond back the wedding ring he had given her onboard the Orient Express as part of their disguise as an English couple on their honeymoon. “In case you ever need it again,” she says, which seems to me to be an acknowledgement that this is Bond’s job, and their relationship may not be permanent. She seems relatively happy to be going to a new life in the UK, with a hot fella making the transition easier.
And now, since I’ve been put it off long enough, let’s talk about… the gypsies. Specifically, the gypsy girl fight.
Now I am aware that many Romani people dislike gypsy as a perjorative, so my use of the word is simply reflecting back the language used in the film. “Gypsy” has its roots in “Egyptian”, which the Romani are not; they are an Indo-Aryan people who trace their origins back to the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent.
I think it’s fair to say that the Romani way of life and symbols of their culture have been perceived as “exotic” or “mysterious” by outsiders for centuries. Clearly in the worst case scenario this has led to mass enslavement, persecution and genocide; in more general terms, it’s been the inspiration for set-ups like this - two girls, in love with the same man, must fight it out to determine who wins him to be their husband.
Cursory internet searches fail to enlighten me on whether this is indeed a common practice; not to mention that there are many subgroups of Romani people so their traditions cannot be lumped together. So let’s take the bet that the filmmakers thought this would be a fun action sequence with some “exotic” and “mysterious” girl-on-girl action, to hell with any basis in reality. It’s a fantasy, after all.
Personally - I don’t hate the fight. I kinda think it’s cool. Leaving aside the whole “fighting over a man” business (which automatically means said man is not worth either of them), it’s very visually effective, and shows strong female bodies, not passive ones. And the thing is - it makes Bond uncomfortable. He’s very happy to watch the beautiful bellydancer, but he’s turned off by female violence. For that alone, I’m like, “Yeah! Fight on, ladies! You make that white straight man uncomfortable at female power!”
What I dislike is when it turns into a sex buffet for Bond. Because he saves the gypsy chief’s life, he asks them to stop the fight, and in turn is told to decide who should be the victorious bride. It is heavily implied he “tests” the women; certainly they are shown attending to his wounds and helping him dress. At first, I didn’t like the fact that he took off the next morning without explicitly stating who the winner was - but now I appreciate the ambiguity. Frankly, it would just make Bond seem like an asshole.
So yes, gypsies. It hasn’t aged well. But as long as we know that, and can appreciate that, is it still OK to watch? That will be up to the discretion of the individual viewer.
I started this essay with the anecdote that it was the last film President Kennedy ever saw. Let me end by highlighting the particularly fascinating man who has this as the last film he ever made.
Pedro Armendáriz was a famous Mexican actor, who crossed over into Hollywood in the late 1940s, and also made appearances in a number of European films. In 1956, he starred in The Conqueror, a Howard Hughes film notorious for many reasons, including that John Wayne played Genghis Khan.
Pictured: A Thing That Happened.
It was filmed downwind of a bunch of nuclear testing, meaning a good portion of the cast and crew eventually got cancer.
Armendáriz was one of them - he was terminally ill with neck cancer, and took the role of Ali Kerim Bey because he knew the pay cheque would help his family. He was in pain through much of the filming, and often had to be doubled. You wouldn’t know it, apart from a slight limp at times.
Kerim Bey is a wonderfully realised character, a man of skill and subterfuge, but also one with strong morals, an active sex drive and a brilliant sense of humour. Just before he is killed - which happens offscreen on the Orient Express - he and Bond capture the Bulgarian spy Benz. They slag off his terrible suit, then Kerim Bey agrees to watch him in the cabin until it’s time for Bond and Romanova to escape.
As Bond leaves the cabin, Ali Kerim Bey lights up a massive stogie and utters his brilliant final line “I have had a particularly fascinating life. Would you like to hear about it?” It’s such a badass move.
In June 1963, four months before the film was released, Armendariz shot himself in the chest with a gun he’d had smuggled into the hospital where he was being treated.
He never lived to see his fantastic creation of Ali Kerim Bey on screen. But as someone with a remarkable life of his own, what a fantastic final line for Armendariz to have committed to celluloid.
Thank you for reading the second instalment of this James Bond Retrospective! This series will remain free to read, but if you are a fan, you can sign up to my reactivated Patreon page.
And for more insights and laughs, make sure to check out the accompanying Raven Bond podcast with me and the Lektor decoding machine of all my nonsense, Stuart Layt.
See you next time for Goldfinger!