{"id":2970,"date":"2024-08-26T19:40:03","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T19:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2970"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:08:46","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:08:46","slug":"from-russia-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/26\/from-russia-with-love\/","title":{"rendered":"From Russia with Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"From Russia with Love <\/strong>(1963)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 United Artists\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (violence, mild sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Terence Young\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Richard Maibaum and Johanna Harwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ted Moore\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 11, 1963 (UK)\/May 27, 1964 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sean Connery, Pedro Armendariz, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Bernard Lee, Daniela Bianchi, Eunice Gayson, Walter Gotell, Francis de Wolff, George Pastell, Nadja Regin, Lois Maxwell, Aliza Gur, Martine Beswick, Vladek Sheybal, Leila, Desmond Llewelyn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Theme song: \u201cFrom Russia with Love\u201d by Matt Munro (closing credits)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $24.7M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0After the success of Dr. No, United Artists gave producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli the go-ahead to make From Russia with Love<\/strong>, the second movie featuring Ian Fleming\u2019s super-spy James Bond of the British Secret Service. They also gave the producers twice the budget of the first movie to work with, $2M to be exact. They got their money\u2019s worth. It\u2019s even better than the first movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is when the Bond movies began to take on their own unique shape. Terence Young returns as director for From Russia with Love<\/strong>, the first 007 film to feature a pre-title action sequence, a cinematic appetizer if you will. It’s also the first to have its own theme song, but it\u2019s heard at the end not over the opening credits like all the subsequent Bond films. It\u2019s also the one that introduced the character of Q (here referred to as \u201cMajor Boothroyd\u201d), the irritable gadget guy whose patience is continuously tested by Bond\u2019s playful attitude towards his work. He was played by Desmond Llewelyn until his death in 1999. In his first appearance, he presents Bond with a special briefcase containing a concealed knife and a canister that will dispense tear gas if opened incorrectly.<\/p>\n

In From Russia with Love<\/strong>, the people at SPECTRE aren\u2019t happy about losing one their own, the maniacal Dr. No. The unseen head of the criminal organization Blofeld, played here by an uncredited Anthony Dawson who previously appeared in Dr. No as the geologist, demands retaliatory action against Bond. Two of his operatives, chess grandmaster Kronsteen (Sheybal, Billion Dollar Brain) and ex-SMERSH head Rosa Klebb (Lenya, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone), devise a plan to lure 007 into a trap where he will be taken out by a hulking assassin named Grant (Shaw, Jaws).<\/p>\n

\u00a0The idea is to get Bond to come to Istanbul to collect a Lektor cryptography device from the Soviet embassy. Everybody, especially British intelligence, would love to get their hands on one. Klebb recruits cipher clerk Tatiana Romanova (Bianchi, Code Name: Tiger) to pose as a potential defector willing to help Bond in exchange for safe passage to England. Aided by local MI6 head Ali Kerim Bey (Armendariz, The Conqueror), they grab the device and board the Orient Express to make their escape with Grant right behind them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0From Russia with Love<\/strong> is Cold War espionage on the sillier end of the spectrum at its finest. One of the greatest thing about the Bond films is they never take themselves seriously. It\u2019s all in good fun with the gadgets, big action scenes and comic book villains. The plot, while a bit more involved than the previous installment, is never too complex or needlessly complicated. There\u2019s more action this time around too including a thrilling chase scene involving Bond trying to evade a helicopter filled with baddies trying to shoot him. Ah, here\u2019s another Bond motif. Every movie except The Man with the Golden Gun has a helicopter scene. There\u2019s also a goodly amount of suspense with Bond and Tatiana, posing as a married couple, trying to stay one step ahead of Grant on the train.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Connery firmly establishes himself as Ian Fleming\u2019s character in this second outing. He\u2019s a tough guy, clever spy and ladies man all rolled into one. Of course, he sleeps with Tatiana shortly after meeting her for the first time. This is a guy who loves to sleep with danger. In the role, the former Miss Universo Italia does a fine job. It doesn\u2019t hurt that she\u2019s easy on the eyes. Klebb is GREAT as the diminutive deadly villain whose preferred instrument of death is a poison-tipped blade concealed in one of her shoes. She\u2019s gleefully cold and evil. Shaw is similarly great as the seemingly indestructible killer who speaks mostly with action rather than words.<\/p>\n

\u00a0From Russia with Love<\/strong> is the one where we first meet the enigmatic Blofeld, the evil megalomaniac in charge of SPECTRE. Here, we only see his lower body as he sits stroking his cat. We don\u2019t get a full view of him until 1967\u2019s You Only Live Twice. But let\u2019s not get ahead of ourselves here. No, that won\u2019t do at all. Instead, let\u2019s talk about something relevant to the movie we\u2019re discussing. This is the one where John Barry took over scoring duties (he worked on Dr. No too but didn\u2019t receive credit). His music for the films is iconic and an essential component. He worked on most of the Bond movies until 1987\u2019s The Living Daylights.<\/p>\n

\u00a0From Russia with Love<\/strong> is one of my favorite early Bond films. It\u2019s fun and entertaining without being too silly. It has plenty of action which is always a good thing. What else can I say? It\u2019s a great spy flick! It\u2019s one of the best of its ilk. I think that says it all.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Russia with Love (1963)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 United Artists\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (violence, mild sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Terence Young\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Richard Maibaum and Johanna Harwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ted Moore\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 11, 1963 (UK)\/May 27, 1964 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sean Connery, Pedro Armendariz, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Bernard Lee, Daniela Bianchi, Eunice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-james-bond-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/From-Russia-with-Love-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4880,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions\/4880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}