Universal Exports: From Russia With Love

"Except for one thing, they were dealing with Bond."

It’ll be a while before we get to my favorite James Bond film (Skyfall), but what I might argue is my second-favorite Bond film is the second entry in the illustrious film series, From Russia With Love. While Dr. No is obviously the first James Bond film in the series, From Russia With Love is where the form and formula becomes perfected in a way that hasn’t led to much deviation. I think the next film I’ll talk about, Goldfinger, gets credited as when the Bond franchise leveled up, but I’ve always thought From Russia With Love is the real standout. This is certainly aided by the fact that it’s adapting the best book Ian Fleming wrote as part of the Bond literary series. But From Russia With Love, directed by Terrance Young and produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli, is the launching point for our expectations and assumptions when it comes to James Bond as a film property.

The plot of this film centers on the efforts of SPECTRE to get revenge for James Bond’s foiling of Dr. No’s plans by entangling Bond and the British Secret Service in a trap involving an important Soviet coding device (the Lektor). That plan will involve a beautiful Soviet clerk, Tatiana Romanova, contacting MI6 claiming that she’s in love with Bond and willing to defect with the device. It’s a plot that strikes the perfect balance of something that feels of international importance and yet doesn’t feel so silly and over-the-top that you lose a grounding element.

One does feel like Connery, in his second portrayal of Bond, is starting to get the hang of what exactly it means to portray Bond (he’ll further refine this in Goldfinger). The action and spy craft come a bit more naturally to him in this film. It also features maybe my favorite Bond outfit:

This outfit — a glen plaid suit with a knit tie, which he wears in Istanbul — is understated but has become a look I’ve often borrowed myself. Connery’s suits through You Only Live Twice are some of the best Bond fashion until we get to Daniel Craig’s Tom Ford looks.

Speaking of Istanbul, that’s where the film primarily takes place, along with the Orient Express before ending in Venice. Though using Istanbul as the primary setting leads to some cringe-worthy stereotypes, it makes sense given the city’s unique position straddling East and West during the Cold War. The shootout in the Romani encampment is exciting and a fun set piece, but a lot of it has aged like milk. There are quite a few other strong set pieces throughout the film, such as the North by Northwest-esque duel with the SPECTRE helicopter, the boat chase, and the amazing fight with Grant on the Orient Express (more of that later). But there’s a level of action that feels much more modern and like a big leap forward from Dr. No, giving the film a degree of grandeur and excitement (while not overwhelming the story).

While Daniela Bianchi does suffer from some of the same problems as Ursula Andress playing a character with limited agency, I do think Tatiana Romanova is more appealing as a romantic interest and a character. Pedro Armendáriz, who died before the film was released and was terminally ill during its production, plays Bond’s contact and ally in Turkey and provides some humor.

Another of the things that makes From Russia With Love such a fun watch are the villains, as we get a great batch of evil-doers with which Bond must do battle. Most notably, there’s Robert Shaw’s turn as the SPECTRE assassin Red Grant. Shaw brings this sense of menace and force that’s quite shocking given that this is a film from the early 1960s. I find myself thinking about what this film would look like if it were made today and just how terrifying Grant would be. As I mentioned before, that fight between Bond and Grant in the train compartment is an all-time Bond fight and its brutality and viciousness is also quite shocking for when it was produced. Grant is a fascinating adversary: a physical force trained to be Bond’s opposite number. But it’s Bond’s craftiness — and a well-armed briefcase from Q branch — that allows him to survive.

The pre-credits sequence, which would become a Bond film hallmark, makes it clear that this Grant has been trained to be the ultimate challenge to Bond. I’d love to see a modern adaptation of From Russia With Love to see what they could do with this character now (I see elements in Silva in Skyfall and in some ways Dave Bautista’s performance as the heavy enforcer in Spectre).

There’s a moment between Bond and Grant that’s one of my favorite in the entire Bond series. Grant is posing as a member of the British Secret Service stationed in Croatia, and joins Bond and Romanova on the train to help them get back to England. They end up dining together (where Grant poisons Romanova) and they both order fish but Grant gets a chianti to go with his meal. Later, when Grant has trapped Bond and holds him at gunpoint, Bond says, “red wine with fish, well that should have told me something.” I always enjoyed the idea that this person’s culinary faux pas should reveal his maliciousness, and that something so small is what Bond should be paying attention to. One thing we’ll be talking about with later films in the franchise is how Bond turns into a kind of action hero, but here he’s still the gentleman spy who should be picking up on these sorts of things.

Though Grant gets the most screen time and is the heaviest of the villains, he’s certainly not the only one who appears in From Russia With Love. We get the chess master Kronsteen and the former SMERSH colonel turned SPECTRE operative Rosa Klebb. I do enjoy the idea of the hyper rational Kronsteen, this man who’s played out every scenario, being foiled by Bond’s craftiness and guile, though we don’t get too much time with him. Klebb, played by Lotte Lenya. There’s a lot about Klebb that doesn’t quite play well to our modern sensibilities—the poisoned-tipped shoe is a bit much and there’s a lot about her that’s coded in a very retrograde way when it comes to sexuality—but I do think having this vestige of the Soviet intelligence apparatus as part of SPECTRE works.

We also get our first proper encounter with SPECTRE’s number one, who we will come to know as Ernst Stavro Blofeld as well in this film. Though the organization was mentioned in Dr. No, SPECTRE comes front and center in From Russia With Love. While in the novel it was SMERSH (which is an element of the Soviet intelligence apparatus), the antagonist of the film is this terrorist organization. It probably made sense, when making such a broad based popular entertainment (and perhaps as tensions between East and West began their decades-long thaw), and it makes the narrative something different than just a conflict between global powers.

I think From Russia with Love is the film that a lot of people think Goldfinger is. Don’t get me wrong, Goldfinger is great in its own ways (and I’ll obviously be talking about it next), but there are many ways in which the film is an outlier of the Bond formula. From Russia With Love has the locales, the spy craft, the gadgets, and the action that we associate with James Bond film franchise. A film like From Russia With Love but with our modern sensibilities and approach is what I’d love to see the Bond film shift towards going forward.