FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE - "Who is Bond, compared with Kronsteen?"

It has become an accepted state of affairs that a sequel to a successful film is generally the same, but bigger. The stakes are higher, the chases faster, the running time longer and the wait for the toilets afterwards more agonising. The Bond films occupy an unusual niche, however, being adapted from a series of books which do not necessarily need to be produced in order. Casino Royale is intended as our first sight of Bond, but with a little skilful scripting and minimal rewriting, Dr. No serves equally well for the cinema.

This then raises the question of what you do next after a hit like Dr. No. Going bigger is a given, thanks to the higher budget and greater confidence from the studio. But do you shoot for the moon with some elaborate tale of world domination, or head in a different direction? In the case of From Russia with Love, you head east for Turkey, the land of honey traps and black gloves.

Tweaks to the formula laid down in the first film are visible from minute one. The Bond theme plays over a reprise of the gunbarrel graphic, while the producers’ credit is missing. The white circle of the sight then shrinks into the corner of the screen and disappears, in order to give way to the first pre-titles teaser of the series.

This is going to be a real short movie.

Bond is being stalked around a hedge maze by an imposing opponent, who draws a garrotte from his wristwatch and uses it to swiftly and near-effortlessly dispatch the British agent. Unexpected. Suddenly the entire area is lit with floodlights to reveal it as a training ground, and an unconvincing rubber mask is peeled from the corpse to reveal it as merely a disposable nobody.

The logic behind the sequence is somewhat elusive. Although the audience needs a little set-up for the assassin, creating this set-piece purely to wrong-foot viewers seems excessive. The victim wears a rubber mask for no real reason, and if anything it would hinder his ability to provide the killer with the sufficient challenge, if he is preparing to kill Bond.

The teaser also acts as the set-up for Grant, the killer, as quiet, efficient and ruthless. This does contrast oddly with the book, where the opening chapter seems to spend a long time narrating from his masseuse’s point of view the perfection of his muscly body. In fact, the set-up for the opponents’ side goes into more detail than any of the books.

As we segue into the titles, we are greeted first with the brassy music of John Barry, then the title designs of Robert Brownjohn projected onto the bodies of women. The latter is most definitely the trope codifier, despite coming from a new title designer and not Maurice Binder, with whom such iconic images will be indelibly associated.

The music is at first an instrumental piece, before it smoothly slides into a version of the title number. At the end of the titles, however, we are greeted with a full-blown orchestral version of Barry’s James Bond Theme. This sends the unmistakable message that this is Barry’s show, and that Monty Norman could suck it.

Norman, who wrote the score for Dr. No, had begun work on the film with a view to providing a score with an Eastern European flavour befitting its setting. However, it appears he was told his services would not be required, and Barry was enlisted instead. This may the source of the enmity between the two men, with the precise authorship of the James Bond Theme the subject of two court cases.

The film proper opens in Venice, with a chess match being played in opulent surroundings. This is another display of the increased financial clout, as this set appears in this scene only before one of the players, the vulpine Kronsteen, receives a message requesting his presence. He calmly composes himself, moves a single piece, and immediately accepts his opponent’s surrender.  The implication is that he’s being toying with him for some time and only breaking off the match as he has to leave. Kronsteen so thinks he’s it.

The League of Evil Foreigners holds its AGM.

Kronsteen arrives on a yacht, where he meets with the mysterious Number One and a Russian defector named Rosa Klebb. They are members of SPECTRE, the organisation for which No was working, and a new plan has been concocted to play the British and Russian sides against each other, while also gaining a valuable decoding device. The identity of Number One is not revealed until the closing credits, but for anyone with an even passing familiarity with the books it would be obvious that this is the first appearance of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Although the film rights to his first novel appearance in Thunderball were held by Kevin McClory, Blofeld appears in several of the other books as well, and it appears that this loophole is what allows the character to appear here. Putting his name in the end credits seems like a bit of a thumbed nose in McClory’s direction, however.

In the book, the plot originates from SMERSH, the counter-intelligence wing of the Soviet machine, and the aim is simply to embarrass the British intelligence services. This may have been a little too near the knuckle at the time, thanks to the Profumo affair. The scandal, which had exploded all over the British press while the film was in pre-production, was in short thus: war minster John Profumo had been discovered to have been having an affair with a call-girl named Christine Keeler, who was in turn the mistress of a Soviet naval attaché and suspected spy, Yevgeny Ivanov. The potential for a breach in national security lead to MI5 breaking up the relationship and the subject hitting the headlines when another boyfriend of Keeler’s, a drug dealer named Johnny Edgecombe, tried to shoot his way into the flat where she was staying. At the time when the script for From Russia with Love was being written, Profumo’s indiscretions were already the subject of gossip in some circles, leading one to speculate on the motives for rewriting beyond simply changing the villainous organisation’s identity.

The presence of SPECTRE also creates a neat entwining of events, with the death of Dr. No being explicitly referred to and the targeting of Bond for the scheme alluding to the R in the outfit’s name. They are after revenge, and judging by the unusual choice of camera angles, the mastermind behind the scheme is the squirming cat in Number One’s arms.

Klebb travels to SPECTRE’s special training headquarters in the non-extraditable country of your choice, in order to formally assign Grant the task of killing Bond. The man is an intimidating mountain of muscle, and now that his training appears to have come to a formal conclusion, he is enjoying a massage. His lack of reaction to the bikini-wearing lovely rubbing oil into his rippling body is a clear indication of his coldness, as is Klebb’s briefing that he is a dispassionate murderer and Dartmoor escapee. That’s the worst kind.

The overall atmosphere is one of an exclusive health spa. It appears notable, given Fleming’s fondness for high living and suspicion towards regular exercise and balanced diet, that such retreats should be a continued source of danger, with smock-wearing killers putting arsenic in the wheatgrass juice – enhancing the flavour in the process.

An interesting element arises when the SPECTRE functionary attempts to take Klebb’s elbow to direct her. The look on her face is one of barely-concealed disgust at the touch of another, but visually this is quickly overwhelmed by the sight of SPECTRE men running and jumping through the organisation’s training area. They seem to be well versed in avoiding flamethrowers and dodging sharp-shooters, useful additions to anyone’s skillset that still appear on the timetable at the posher private schools.

Katina Paxinou as Rosa Klebb.
"You are very fortunate to have been
chosen for such a simple, delightful duty.
A real... labour of love, as they say."

Klebb’s next stop is Istanbul, where she reassumes her old office of spymaster to recruit a beautiful but less than assertive cypher clerk from the Russian embassy. Tatiana Romanova, Tania to her friends, is the subject of some fascination for Klebb. Have read through her brief wearing the most over-the-top milk-bottle glasses outside the Bash Street Kids, she carries on the meeting with the creepy air of a predatory philanderer. At one point, she rests her hand on Tania’s knee, leaving the younger woman visibly uncomfortable.

Not for the first time, this raises the difficult question of the evolution of sexual politics. Whether or not it was acceptable for a man to act this intimidating a fashion in 1963 is not the true issue, although one does wonder how Tania would react if her superior was a man. Klebb starts the briefing with orders and threats, before adopting a softer tone and addressing Tania in more cooing terms. Under other circumstances, the scene might resemble a seduction performed by a seasoned pick-up artist, but the additional element of it being performed by a woman strongly implied to be a lesbian makes the scene a little queasy. Fleming had some odd views about homosexuality – which, remember, would be a crime for another four years – including the inability of gay people to whistle, and this strangely predatory portrayal fits with these opinions, despite already being significantly outdated. Remember also how frequently this film is shown in the daytime, when this scene passes without comment.

After all this set-up, which in the book accounts for the first 100 pages, we finally get to see what Bond is doing. He’s hanging out by the river with Sylvia, the girl he picked up at the casino at the start of Dr. No. In the previous article, the astonishing security risk of Bond handing out business cards with his unguarded home address was noted, and far from suspecting that Sylvia was a potential honey trap, Bond is still spending time with her. Which means he chose her over Ursula Andress. Let that sink in.

She mentions that it has been months since his trip to Jamaica, and seems just that little bit too patient for comfort, as Matt Munro’s rendition of the title song finally appears on the soundtrack on a passing punt. Bond gets a call on his carphone – which sadly is not the size of a warehouse – summoning him to the office, so he gives Sylvia the brush-off again. No doubt she then reports to her superiors that Bond’s behaviour, combined with her never having heard him whistle, makes him ideal for blackmail. She is never seen nor heard from again.

Bond arrives in his Bentley – his car in the books making its only appearance in the films – and performs the famous throwing-the-hat-onto-the-hatstand trick for the first time. M is less than impressed, and starts to brief Bond about what has come over the wire.

Apparently a Russian cypher clerk at the embassy in Istanbul has seen Bond’s photograph and fallen in love with it, and is offering to defect with the cypher machine, the Lecktor, if Bond acts as courier. M and Bond immediately think it’s a trap, and Bond in particular is suspicious. Teenagers fall in love with pictures of film stars, he says, “but not a Russian cypher clerk with a file photo of a British agent. Unless she’s mental”.

Sylva Koscina as Tatiana
"Tania" Romanova.
"I think my mouth is too big."

With this ringing in the audience’s ears, Bond’s reaction upon seeing a picture of Tania proves interesting, demonstrating that Wee Jimmy is probably in charge as Bond takes the assignment to see where it goes. Hopefully to underneath her counterpane, he thinks. M seems quite happy with the idea of pimping Bond out, almost acting out parts of the Profumo scandal with the plot.

Bond is also handed a new piece of field equipment in the form of a briefcase containing various handy items and a self-assembly sniper rifle. Although the character of the quartermaster had appeared in Dr. No, this scene marks the first appearance of Desmond Llewellyn in the part. He is brisk and businesslike, as he indicates that Bond can simply carry the rifle through customs inside the case, making the audience wonder why there were so few hijackings. Another sign of the times is the inclusion of concealed strings of gold sovereigns to act as international currency, all hidden inside Bond’s first true “gadget”.

On his way out, Bond stops again to flirt with Miss Moneypenny, and the atmosphere suddenly takes a turn for the heavy, as he is about to whisper “the secret of the world” in her ear when M rings through and effectively tells Bond to stop that and get a move on. Yes, it looks very like Bond is going to seduce Moneypenny at her desk while his boss is in the next room. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again. Bond is a serious security risk. He even pauses to write the film’s title on the picture of Tania before he hands it to Moneypenny and leaves. It looks rather like Klebb isn’t the only one who’s been reading tips for pick-up artists.

Bond’s plane lands in Istanbul, as the strains of the James Bond Theme fire up. This is used with irritating frequency during the film, and contrasts sharply with the more generic mood music scored by Barry. However, much is made of the melody from the theme song, written by Lionel Bart.

Bond identifies his driver with a call-and-response code phrase, which shows that he has smartened up since the last time he was picked up from an airport, and the drive to meet his contact sees an interesting discussion about how the Western and Eastern powers have their local assets constantly following each other. A neat metaphor for the Cold War in general, as Bulgarians and Turks engage in squabbles that pay off on the world stage.

Bond is taken to Kerim Bey, British Intelligence’s local contact. He is clearly going to be the inspiration for a many a boisterous ally in future films, with his womanising ways, army of sons and cheap cigarette holder. Bond continues to his hotel, followed again by the Bulgarians, except now it’s Grant behind the wheel and the Bulgarian in the back seat. Grant starts to put on black gloves...

Bond has a look at a bathroom, as his theme tune plays.

The theme gets another airing after all of ten minutes as Bond examines his hotel room. He hesitates before dropping his hat onto the bed, something modern non-hat-wearing viewers may not realise is an omen of bad luck. Having found some rather chunky hidden microphones, Bond requests another room. He gets the bridal suite. In more than one sense, the staff have seen him coming.

Grant helpfully drops off the car outside the Russian embassy, and the staff are a little concerned to find a garrotted body in the back seat. This, we are told, will lead them to suspect the British, although the reasons for this are uncertain. Tensions will mount in the city between the two powers, although one wonders in retrospect why this does not lead to increased security on the embassy building.

Nevertheless, reprisals are taken in the form of a bomb attack on Kerim Bey. Surprised at the heating up of the Cold War, he takes Bond on his secret underwater punt to spy on the embassy from beneath. The scenes shot in the cavernous underwater reservoir remind one of the travelogue scenes of Dr. No. The street scenes in the city sadly do not, focussed as they are on foreground action rather than background detail.

Kerim Bey has had a periscope fitted through the floor of the embassy, letting him spy on the secret intelligence meetings. You read that correctly. How a full size naval periscope isn’t noticed is left unexplained, but the slight masking of the scope’s point of view suggests that it is peeping through a mousehole. Their security may well be worse than ours. Kerim recognises one man in the meeting as an old adversary - a professional killer named Krilencu – and decides that he must be behind the bombing.

As a means of sidestepping the authorities for the night, Kerim takes Bond to a gypsy camp populated by old friends. The camp is vast – another sign of the production’s conspicuous wealth – but is clearly filmed on a backlot rather than on location. This is perhaps the first sign of a shift away from travelogue and into spectacle, as the gypsies engage in every possible cliché for the audience’s edification. There are belly dancers, everyone is carrying a musical instrument, old Romany caravans covered in laundry, little old ladies trying to sell Bond lucky heather and a couple of hold-blooded women fighting to the death over a man. Even Channel 4 would draw the line before this.

Rather than changing into more practical clothing, the women simply start stripping off before going one-on-one, and the resulting fight, though excitingly shot and performed, manages to be entirely irrelevant to the story, merely marking time until it is interrupted by gunshots.

Krilencu has somehow found his way to the camp and launches an attack with his men. The result is the first mass fight of the series, with Bulgarians vs. Gypsies providing plenty of opportunities for people to fall from high walkways or get set on fire. All of this is accompanied by the first sounding of the 007 theme, Barry’s alternative tune to accompany large scale action scenes. Bond meanwhile spends the fight ambling around, causing chaos wherever he goes - shoving people into ponds, cutting guy ropes on tents and seeming to pay no attention as to who wins.

"Why don't you two cool off? He he he, I'm hilarious."

As he tries to spot another opportunity for indiscriminate mischief, a Bulgarian takes aim at his back, only for him to be dropped to the ground by a shot from Grant. The attackers then withdraw, ending another thrillingly pointless sequence. Kerim wonders why Krilencu would want to kill him and the audience too is scratching its collective head at the plot’s logic. With the cat fight undecided, the gypsy chief says that Bond should decide the matter, so in time-honoured fashion he takes them to his tent. Logic evaporates with a whisper as the lead character’s reputation as a womaniser is bolstered.

Having been up all day and all night in more ways than one, Bond and Kerim depart the gypsy camp the following evening, with the less-than-sensitive stereotypes waving them off. The two men head back into town, with Kerim determined to assassinate Krilencu to end their feud. Exactly what this feud pertains to is never specified, but Bond simply goes along with it. Kerim mentions that many debts are settled by shooting a man in the back from a street away, and although Krilencu had spearheaded the attack the previous night, it seems odd that this detail is not expanded in any way, especially since it plays right into SPECTRE’s hands and makes the situation worse still.

Having had a busy few evenings, Bond arrives back at his hotel. Suspicious that someone has been waiting for him, he bursts into his bedroom to find Tania waiting for him. He immediately sleeps with her. I mean, immediately. There is less than 60 seconds between their first setting eyes on each other and Bond going in for the kill. Despite his having spent 18 hours entertaining two hot-blooded gypsy girls. This man isn’t a role model; he’s a walking public information film.

Meanwhile, it appears that the mirror over the bed is two-way glass, and Klebb is filming Bond and Tania. So it turns out to be a honey trap after all, exactly as everyone suspected and Bond apparently forgot as soon as he was within sniffing distance of an available woman. No one ever listens to me.

Bond and Tania later meet at a mosque to exchange information, with a gap in a pillar functioning as a dead drop. The scene gives another opportunity to see some of the sights of Istanbul, especially since the papers could have been handed over in the hotel room, assuming Bond wasn’t too exhausted and hadn’t gone blind. Another of the Bulgarians, having been observing the exchange, tries to get to the drop before Bond, but fails to content with a black-gloved chop to the neck.

Kerim and Bond examine the papers in the former’s office, and find a detailed map of the embassy and where the Lecktor is stored. As they compare Tania’s plan with the building’s blueprints to make sure they are real, they joke that maybe the whole thing could be a honey trap. By this point, it can’t be accidental that the main characters are acting in a deliberately ignorant manner. To go back to the Hitchcock connection, he once described a scene involving a bomb under the hero’s table in a restaurant. If the audience doesn’t know the bomb is there, there will be a moment’s shock when it detonates, but if they do know, that offers a degree of tension that can be extended for minutes.

Thus, the viewer is being allowed to see behind the curtain as Bond falls further and further into SPECTRE’s trap, but the mere fact that he keeps acknowledging that it seems an awful lot like a trap undermines the tension. He doesn’t even seem especially concerned on the subject. Probably because he’s exhausted.

Tania meets Bond again on a ferry across the Bosphorus, where they pretend to be a couple as he records her detailed description of the code room and the Lecktor’s design on a reel-to-reel tape recorder disguised as a camera. This allows a few more beauty shots of historic Constantinople, as we fade across to M and company listening to the tape on the largest tape deck in history. Tania’s descriptions keep wandering off the point to questions about their life together in England that make her sound like a deluded groupie, but this eggs Bond into starting an anecdote about a time he and M were in Hong Kong. The crusty old chief quickly shuts off the tape and dismisses Miss Moneypenny, but the damage is already done. It’s an interesting attempt to give a little background to the M-Bond relationship, but it seems somewhat out of character for him to have anything to want to keep quiet. Nevertheless, Moneypenny listens in outside on the intercom, in case there are any more exciting titbits.

Word gets back to Istanbul that M has given the go-ahead for the mission, leading Kerim to suggest the 13^th as the day for the operation. Bond instead opts for the 14^th – remember the hat on the bed? At the embassy, Bond casually drops by, somehow getting past the security at the front gate, and asks a clerk whether the clock on the wall is accurate. Assured that it is, he asks again a moment later, just as the building is rocked by a terrific explosion. There really isn’t a more effective way of announcing one’s status as a spy.

"Excuse me, I wonder if you can help me? I'm a spy."

It appears that it is in fact the 13^th after all – Tania notes the change as Bond tells her that “it’s a hell of a time to be superstitious”, the patronising sod. Together they take the Lecktor and escape into the sewers, emerging across the street from the embassy before heading for the train station. When they get there, they are in the nick of time to board the Orient Express before it leaves with Kerim already aboard. However, a Russian agent named Benz is at the station and boards the train too. Less explicably, Grant is also on the train. Exactly how he knew to be there, especially since it would have been too late for him to disembark if Bond and Tania didn’t turn up, isn’t explained – once again, logic is sacrificed for the exciting image or escalation of intrigue. Or Kronsteen is a very lucky guesser. That’s probably why he’s so good at chess.

On board the train, Kerim outfits Bond and Tania with their cover documents. Bond thus takes on his first alias in the film series, that of David Somerset accompanying his wife Caroline. Tania’s enquiry as to whether they have any imaginary children prompts Kerim to remark that “my whole life has been a crusade for larger families”. It’s hard to know where to start dissecting all the ways in which that line has problems, but let’s just stick to assuming that a Turk probably wouldn’t use the word “crusade” so casually if they knew to what it referred.

Whilst preparations for the Lecktor theft were underway, Bond appears to have also bought a new wardrobe for Tania, which consists entirely of identical nightdresses in a range of colours. Sometime later, after she’s been through a few of them for Bond’s pleasure – again, there’s a whole lot world there – Bond tells her to answer a knock at the door. It’s Kerim, who quietly tells Bond that Benz is on the train and that he will keep him busy. Meanwhile, the black gloves go on... Bond seems to still not trust Tania at all, telling her to do as she’s told and giving her a little slap for her trouble, just in case she forgets that she’s only a woman.

Bad news comes from the back of the train later on, when the bodies of Kerim and Benz are found, having apparently killed each other. The shock appears to hit Bond hard. He clearly liked the rascal, as did we. It’s an impressive and memorable performance by Pedro Armedariz, all the more with the knowledge that he was dying of cancer during shooting and forced himself to continue. From Russia with Love was his last acting job; he committed suicide before the film was released.

The train passes the planned rendezvous with one of Kerim’s sons as Bond tries to rethink their plans, and a figure is visible by the side of the tracks, watching the Express rattle by. Apparently, this is none other than Fleming himself, who regualely dropped by shooting locations and chatted to those bringing his stories to life. It also continues to demonstrate the subliminal influence of Hitchcock, as the story echoes North by Northwest use of train travel and the use of the Lecktor as the “MacGuffin”, a plot element defined by Hitchcock as the item that drives the story – for example, the top secret microfilm both superpowers are after – but the inherent nature of which is not important to the story. We know what the Lecktor does, and why it’s important. That’s all we need to know.

Back on the train, Bond tells Tania that Kerim is dead and make little secret of his suspicion that she knew about it. His interrogation of her is strangely reminiscent of Klebb’s briefing of her earlier in the film. First he tries the hard approach, then he softens his tone and tries to tease the truth out of her. Again, it’s uncomfortably like a seduction, as Tania breaks down in tears and tells Bond that she really does love him and that her defection is now for real. Bond’s response? A weary sigh as he pulls down the bedclothes. I’ve met people like him when I’ve gone speed-dating. They would creep me out almost immediately.

If women didn't like getting slapped around a little, then
they'd stand up for themselves, wouldn't they Sean?

The train travels by map as far as Belgrade, where Bond is able to briefly disembark and make a call for new back-up. He mentions that Kerim and Benz killed each other, even though Kerim died from being stabbed in the back. Maybe Bond’s still tired.

Further up the track in Zagreb – that’s in Croatia now – Grant neatly intercepts the arriving MI6 man before pulling out the black gloves. Bond dawdles on the platform, and is approached by Grant, now carrying his hapless victim’s luggage. Not only does this scene reveal that Bond’s contact, Nash, carries business cards of his own, but this is the first time that we here Grant speak. Bear in mind that the film is nearly three-quarters of the way through.

Once on their way, “Nash” outlines his plan. They will jump off the train when they get to the Yugoslav-Italian border, which would not only be the first crossing of the Iron Curtain in the series, but also raise the question of exactly how porous the border is intended to be. There is a beautiful little detail in this scene, when Grant says that he knows the country around there like the back of his hand. At that line, Robert Shaw actually manages to steal a glance at the back of his hand, as though Grant is subconsciously assuring himself.

As Grant and Tania head for the dining car, Bond has a look through Nash’s case, because he’s nosy. It’s a standard issue case like his own, but such is his lack of rigour that he fails to notice that Nash hasn’t brought any spare socks. In the dining car, the dinner companions order fish, just like in Airplane!, and like in Airplane! someone soon feels ill. Grant has drugged Tania’s wine to get her off their hands for a while, as well as referring to Bond as “oh-oh-seven” – another first.

Taking a close look at a map in their compartment, Grant knocks Bond out cold. This is a key moment. This is the point where a cliché is born. Grant could have killed Bond then and there, taken the Lecktor and got away. Instead, he decides to stick around, becoming what for him must qualify as chatty as he plans to humiliate Bond before killing him.

The Ghost of James Bond Future?

As Bond recovers, Grant explains that he and Tania are both expendable, now that the Lecktor is in their hands. This does not explain why it could not be taken earlier. Once Kerim was out of the way, there was nothing to stop Grant forcing his way into the compartment, killing both of them and taking the Lecktor. That would require little more finesse than the over-complex disguise act for which they settle.

Grant reassures Bond that Tania was just as much a pawn in the scheme that he was, and that the film of them in the bridal suite in Istanbul will be found on her body, along with a forged letter implying a blackmail plot. Bond will have been judged to have killed her and then himself, destroying his credibility and delivering a shattering blow to British intelligence. It’s almost as though the entire scheme was a honey trap. If only someone had thought of this in the first place and made some sort of contingency plan.

Grant is an interesting figure. Having been established as a cold-blooded professional killer, he is only a few rungs below Bond himself in the scheme of things. He won’t be the first of the ‘dark mirror’ versions of Bond who have appeared throughout the series, since the most effective nemesis a character can have is usually a skewed reflection of themselves. Batman has the Joker, Sherlock Holmes has Professor Moriarty, and even Harry Potter has Lord Voldemort. Think about that one, you’ll see I’m right.

Grant is the prototype of this concept in cinema, however, even going so far as to dress in similar style to Bond and having equally ruthless, hardboiled dialogue. Compare the scene in Dr. No when Bond tells Professor Dent that, “You’ve had your six”, before emptying his gun into the luckless geologist with the dialogue here. “The first won’t kill you, nor the second, not even the third...” Grant is clearly Bond gone wrong, a shadow of the man he could be, and the film’s makers are already confident enough in their characterisation to play with conventions to this extent already.

As Grant gets out the black gloves, a move that neatly shows the audience that time is running out for Bond, the latter discovers that he can still be bribed with the gold sovereigns in the case. This sudden and hitherto-unsuspected attack of greed is Grant’s undoing, as he fails to open Nash’s case correctly and the booby-trap explodes in his face. Seizing the advantage, Bond goes on the attack.

The fight sequence in the railway compartment may be another major first in almost as many minutes, prefiguring as it does the future of action movies. The set piece is shot in a close, hand-held style, using a mixture of fast cutting and the speed-up editing trick that Peter Hunt coined in Dr. No. This sequence however really lets him go to town, as he defines the forerunner of the brief fad for speed-ramping that would sully action films nearly 40 years later. This will become relevant again, trust me. The lack of music and brutal, crunching sound effects really sell the fight as two men fighting to the death, coming to an end only when Bond manages to turn Grant’s garrotte against him, wrapping it around his windpipe and snuffing him out. Then, easy as you please, he straightens his tie, buttons his jacket, pockets the film and leaves the mess for the porter to clear up.

Bond drags the semi-conscious Tania from the train as it slows for Grant’s rendezvous. This may simply be Bond taking advantage of the opportunity, but it does look as if he has managed to correctly guess the location. He catches the driver of the waiting truck and ties him up anyway, just to be on the safe side. The driver had already called out for Grant, after all, though Bond had no way of knowing that was “Nash’s” real name. In fact, since Bond never finds out “Nash”’s [trying out some punctuation variations] real name, for all he knows he’s just kidnapped an innocent man and stolen his truck.

If Bond did have any doubts on the matter, they may have been dispelled when the truck comes under attack from a helicopter. Again, the mind is cast back to North by Northwest for the sequence is which Cary Grant’s character is harassed by a malevolent crop-duster, as we as a similar set piece in The 39 Steps when Robert Donat is chased across the highlands by a biplane. These happy memories may displace the realisation that the helicopter must have been dispatched before Grant’s body was found, unless it was intended as a pick-up. This would not explain why the co-pilot starts throwing grenades as the truck winds its way through wildest Cumbria Slovenia. Bond manages to shoot the co-pilot, who drops his live grenade inside the cabin, making the helicopter go bang. “I’d say one of their aircraft is missing”, quips Bond. It’s no “They were on their way to a funeral”, is it?

He just loves pushing people into the water. I
bet he's the life of the party wherever he goes.
Probably drinks WKD when no one's looking.

Arriving at a deserted quay with a single boat tied up, which Bond assumes to be Grant’s escape route should the helicopter have accidentally crashed or something and been unable to pick him up, Bond pops on a sailor’s hat he finds their and sets off for Italian waters. As a parting gift for the Iron Curtain, he cuts the truck driver’s bonds before cheerily pushing him into the sea. What a total dick.

Meanwhile, Blofeld is livid. Kronsteen’s supposedly perfect plan has been foiled, despite Bond doing everything possible to get himself killed. The chessmaster is right to deliver the line I’ve used as a title, since he’s managed to get everyone to whistle to his tune. The weak link was Grant – who was selected for the job by Klebb. She looks like she’ll be for the chop, but a quick kick from her poisoned shoe spike means it’s curtains for Kronsteen. Vladek Sheybal’s death acting at this point is of particular note.

Blofeld has a new plan – SPECTRE will recapture the Lecktor and sell it back to the Russians. As he warns Klebb, “SPECTRE always delivers what it promises”, which certainly gives them the edge over Nick Clegg.

[NB This joke was topical when I wrote it seven months ago. By the way, I have moved house since then, settling in a converted shop on the southern fringes of Greenwich. I spent the summer in the attic room, where I would spend my time pressing my face against the window to convince passersby that it was haunted by a goblin.]

SPECTRE launches its fleet of smallish ships to catch Bond, and they open fire almost as soon as they see him. However, if they are trying to avoid hitting them, since it might damage or destroy the Lecktor, why are they shooting? Are they just overexcited? As a means of escape, Captain Bond dumps spare fuel in the water and lights it with a flare gun, setting the entire SPECTRE regatta ablaze. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire”, he says, describing things that are happening in front of him.

Later on, Bond and Tania are settling into their hotel in Venice with James on the phone making arrangements for the trip home when the maid comes in to do a little light dusting. Bond’s instincts should have been set off when the maid fails to react to Bond wearing his gun in a shoulder holster. Tania realises that it’s really a poorly-disguised Klebb. She pulls a gun on Bond, and seems to be looking forward to the prospect of shooting him. After all, she might get Tania to herself then, like the evil lesbian that she is. Tania knocks the gun out of her hand, though, leaving Klebb with her poisonous shoe as her only weapon. She and Bond struggle before a shot rings out – and Tania is holding a smoking gun. Fulfilling what appears to be a contractual obligation, Bond mutters, “She’s had her kicks.”

Before travelling back to the UK, or even doing anything at all, Bond takes Tania for a gondola ride in front of some very poorly projected footage of Venice. Bond pulls out the film, and comments that Grant was right. Exactly what it was he was right about was lost to the censor’s knife, or garden hoe if the quality of the edit is anything to go by, but it appears to have been complimentary about their “performance” in the bridal suite. Bond seems to like constructive criticism on the one subject from which he cannot take his mind. Bond and Tania hunker down in their gondola for a snog and who knows what else as James apparently forgets there’s a girl waiting for him at home who thinks he’s gay and might be a bit surprised by him bringing a beautiful Russian defector home. The title song fades up over the end credits, which reveal that Blofeld was played by a question mark and that, for the first time, James Bond Will Return.

From Russia with Love is clearly the film that creates and codifies many of the tropes most associated with the Bond films, and its status as this early example, combined with the echoes of Hitchcock’s works, its genera fidelity to Ian Fleming and its overall grounding in realistic spy fiction might explain why it remains so highly thought of, but there is already a sense of settling into routine. The dialogue is blunt and lacking in wit, there are contradictions in the characterisation and Bond himself is, by 2010s standards at least, a repulsive and patronising moron. Adding in the garbled plot that is already favouring spectacle over coherence and one gets the sense that changes need to be made to keep the series creatively on track. Perhaps something more outré, more outlandish, more appealing to Americans with their culture of gangsters and comic books would be appropriate. Yeah, how about that?