From Russia with Love

Sebastian Peill-M
11/15/15

As promised, the second James Bond film: From Russia with Love. This film was released 1963 and made 24 million dollars in the USA alone. It stars Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Robert Shaw, and Lotte Lenya.

Bianchi

Bond has returned and this time he is after a coding machine, a Lector, which would help out the British government immensely. He has been partnered up with a defected female Russian agent Tanya (Bianchi) who helps him get the device, all the while dodging Russian agents and an agent from the Criminal group SPECTRE (Shaw). Eventually they get the device onto a train and start heading to safety, although the SPECTRE agent is on the train with them. Eventually Bond dispatches of the agent, although barely and they head towards the England. In their final a stop, a hotel room, they are ambushed by the SPECTRE agent who was leading the whole operation Klebb (Lenya). Of course she doesn't stand a chance and she is dispatched by both Bond and Tanya. The film ends with them sailing away on a Venice canal.

Shaw

The camera angles in this movie are very interesting. To a person who is not paying attention they seem very simple and there. However this is not true, almost every scene that takes place in a building or outside shows Bond in the middle ground, the bigger the area the more he is present. When they are inside confined areas Bond is fore ground, on the train when Bond and Grant (the agent) fight you see Bond and Grant up close, but in the background you can see Tanya sleeping. Conversations are always portrait, up close and not many things in the background are present. Many scene that show Bond walking in buildings are shot so that there is part of an object in the way, i.e. someone peering around and object. They use a few landscape shots to help the setting. The boat scene was filmed so that you can always see Bond's face, except when the villains are talking.

The music is this film is very similar to the first with much of the music being repeated throughout the film. Although they did have a singer preform the opening song they used an instrumental and used the sung version when they first show Bond. They use a lot of music when there is a very tense situation which helps keep the adrenaline pumping and makes sure you can't fall asleep. The music is almost all done by orchestra again. The music doesn't start to change until the next film.

Opening credits

Finally the acting skill, many of the actors in this film don't appear in too many movies I have seen except Sean Connery, who is a great actor and just gets better as the franchise progresses, the actor for Klebb did a good job although a scene in which she is talking to Tanya is quite creepy. Grant doesn't talk much and is a killing machine so he fits that perfectly. Tanya does a decent job, she may have a been a Russian agent but she is very wimpy.

All in all this is a great film and one I could watch again and again. My dad calls this the romantic James Bond film and I agree with him as Tanya wasn't supposed to fall for Bond, but he is Bond so it is to be expected.

Interesting Fact: When then President John F. Kennedy listed Ian Fleming's book among his top ten favorite novels of all time, a list published in Life Magazine, March 17, 1961, the producers decided to make this the second James Bond movie. According to the book "Death of a President" (1964) by William Raymond Manchester, this was the last motion picture JFK ever saw, on a private screening in the White House, November 20, 1963.