From Russia with Love (1963)

From Russia with Love is the best of the Connery Bonds. It’s a spy film before the series became a machine, with a real plot, real tension and a villain who beats Bond at nearly everything.

Terence Young directed it in 1963, from Fleming’s 1957 novel. It’s a 9.

The Premise

SPECTRE wants a Soviet decoding machine and wants Bond dead for killing Dr. No. They set a trap using a young cipher clerk in Istanbul who pretends to have fallen in love with his photograph. Bond knows it’s a trap and goes anyway. Everything runs through Istanbul and then onto the Orient Express.

The Shaw Performance

Robert Shaw plays Red Grant, SPECTRE’s assassin, and he’s the best henchman in the series. He shadows Bond silently through the whole film, kills without hesitation and is physically stronger. When they finally sit opposite each other in a train compartment, Grant has already won, and the tension is unbearable.

The Orient Express Sequence

The fight in that compartment is brutal, cramped and quick, with no music and a lot of grunting. It’s the fight every later action film has copied, and it’s still better than almost all of them.

The Cold War Register

The plot is about tradecraft, not world domination. There’s a gypsy camp, a shoot-out at a mosque, a boat chase and a helicopter, and a sense that Bond could genuinely lose. Pedro Armendáriz is superb as the Turkish station chief Kerim Bey, filming while gravely ill.

Lotte Lenya plays Rosa Klebb, the SPECTRE colonel with a poisoned blade in her shoe, and the final scene with her is still tense.

The Series Firsts

This is the film that introduced the pre-title sequence, Q’s gadget briefcase, Blofeld’s cat and the idea of SPECTRE as the shadow enemy. Matt Monro sings the theme over the closing titles.

Craft Note

Does From Russia with Love still hold up?

Completely. It’s a 9 and my favorite of the Connery films. If you only watch one early Bond, make it this one.

Frequently Asked Questions