In the second James Bond film, we encounter the other big Cold War bogeyman: the Russians™. Along the way, we stop by Venice, Istanbul, and some underground canals that would be cool except for the footage of swarms of rats running through the crevices.
In 007’s second film, the sex gets dialed up a few notches, we see the official debut of Q with some handy gadgets (we’ve all had that moment where we needed a magnetized canister of tear gas attached to our briefcase, right?), and the James Bond theme song becomes a complete ear-worm with multiple uses throughout the film. The opening credits in the second movie look and function a bit more like what we’re used to – a short opening (usually tense) scene, the credits, and then Bond being dialed up for his mission. And the credits incorporate cool music with lots of sexy lady parts in silhouette.
Plot in twenty words or less: The evil SPECTRE organization is playing the Russians and the Brits off each other over a stupid cipher machine.
How it’s aged: I’m on the fence with this one. It’s much less campy than Dr. No. However, it’s very hard for me to get past 007 slapping Tatiana like it’s no thing. On the other hand, I felt like all the women had (slightly) more agency than we saw in Dr. No. Everyone smokes like chimneys, but I feel like pointing that out about any pre-1970s movie is just a big Duh. Everything in the Gypsy scene is godawful, but I don’t have a lot of faith that the current movie industry would deal with this much better today. Apparently this is quite a highly-ranked Bond film, which surprised me, since I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to. Gentle readers, what do you think about how this one stands the test of time?
Something that was just weird and/or WTF y’all: What in the hell was happening with the camera perspective whenever Evil SPECTRE #1 was in the scene? The first time it kept shifting around, I thought I was having balance issues (yes, while sitting on my butt on the couch…), but then it kept happening and I just thought “You guys, cut it out, we know you’re evil because of the white cat, you don’t need to keep moving the camera around too.”
Obligatory feminist commentary: Oh boy, we have a lot of material to work with here. So much so that it spilled over into the next section. As I mentioned earlier, I think the women in this movie had slightly more agency than in the first Bond movie. And by “slightly” more agency, I mean vocalizing their desires for Bond, as opposed to the desire being uni-directional from Bond. Sylvia Trench got on the phone with 007’s office to say no, he’d be busy with her a bit longer. Moneypenny seemed a bit more sassy in this movie (I agree with Blog, James Blog’s take on one of the scenes with Moneypenny). Bond girl Tatiana Romanova was not quite as annoyingly helpless as Honey Ryder from Dr. No, but still not fulfilling any kind of full-length bad-ass potential (in all fairness, she did save Bond’s life at the end from SPECTRE #3 aka Rosa Klebb). Tatiana was also not reserved in telling Bond how much she wanted to bring sexy back with him.
I’m having difficulty sorting out my feelings on the scene between Rosa Klebb and Tatiana. Rosa Klebb is a pretty hardcore female villian – she socks a dude in the gut with brass knuckles, after all. Also, poison-dagger shoes, WHAAAAT. And a large part of me feels that feminism can check a big to-do off its list when we have evil lady villains as low, down, mean, and dirty as the guys. But given that female villainy and gender performance does not exactly exist within a vacuum, the portrayal of Klebb recruiting Tatiana was laden with something that felt borderline homophobic. Portraying an unattractive, tough as nails woman (they might as well have added the subtitle clearly a lesbian!!! in case you weren’t getting the hint) touching Tatiana and speaking to her in a suggestive manner made me wonder if back then, this portrayal had more to do with the Russians™, or the fact that a female villain really had to fit a certain mold.
I’m super curious about this dynamic. Some cursory searching of the Bond-fandom and academic intertubes suggests that Bond films have a complicated (should I say ‘evolving’?) relationship with gay characters, particularly in their frequent role as villains. Sam Mendes (director of Skyfall with Javier Bardem as the most recent gay villain) stated that “I think there’s a huge homoerotic undertow in a lot of Bond movies.” I’ll try to pay attention to this in future viewings. (Side note: Has anyone read Catching Bullets? After reading this interview it’s going on my to-read list)
Completely hypothetical cultural reference points: Two things about this movie brought to mind the Godfather (which came out in 1972, about 10 years after From Russia with Love). First, the white cat being petted by a big dude in a bigger chair (to be fair, the Don’s cat was a gray stripey one). Second, the main character using physical violence against a woman in the second movie, and therefore pretty much putting a real damper on that whole suave gentleman thing. In the second Bond movie, 007 gets pissed when Bond girl Tatiana Romanova won’t give him information on who she is working for after Kerim Bey is killed. In the second Godfather, Michael Corleone hits his wife Kay after she discloses her abortion to him. I really loved Michael Corleone’s character in the first Godfather and seeing him lash out at Kay didn’t make me think “Oh well, he’s just a human being with flaws”, it made me think “Wow, you really suck and I don’t like your character as much anymore.” I had a similar reaction with Bond slapping Tatiana. It was totally unnecessary, and left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m all too familiar with the fact that violence against women in movies back then (and today, for that matter) is very common, but it’s something that, despite its preponderance, always makes me distinctly uncomfortable to watch.
Superficial Thing that did not Amuse Me: Why do people always pull grenade pins out with their teeth? Is this actually a thing people have ever been taught to do? Apparently I am not the only one who is wondering about this.
Superficial Thing that highly Amused Me: I love the way Bond inspects a room, and am only half-joking when I say I could see myself doing the same thing on a future trip.
Interesting and possibly dubious thing I learned from Wikipedia: Apparently there was a lot of DRAMA while filming: a helicopter crash, a car crash, and a sunken boat. Also, the Brits didn’t allow live filming of rats (what a bunch of boring nanny-state party poopers), which explains the awful separate footage of rats.
Martini rating: Three martinis 
Administrative information concerning this viewing:
Drinks consumed: 
In my quest to start quasi-matching my viewing food and beverage consumption to the themes/locations of the movies, I set out to find a Russian beer (caviar is not my thang, and vodka turns me into an evil wildebeest). Thank you, Dorignac’s (the best is better!), for delivering on this one. This Russian wheat beer from Baltika was totally acceptable (and tasted faintly of bananas).
Food eaten: Homemade pierogies with mashed ‘taters, caramelized onions and cottage cheese filling. Girl Scout shortbread cookies.
Viewed on: March 31, 2013
Viewing Partner: The dudes of the house kinda-sorta watched it with me. Dudes here meaning my boyfriend and my cat.
Ah, Q. Much as I like Daniel Craig’s Bond, I lament that Desmond Llewelyn and John Cleese no longer are there for the quartermastery.
RE: How it’s aged: Bond slapping Tatiana around is cringe inducing, for sure. You’re right that other films of the 1960s and 1970s have such scenes, though. and I’m not sure why. I don’t think that you see this sort of thing nearly as much in movies made before say, the late 1950s. Perhaps, it’s some sort of cultural impact of World War II. Certainly, male anti-heroes became more prominent in the 1960s, and one could argue that this results from post-war cynicism. Regardless, it would be an interesting topic for a student of film and/or gender.
Back to FRWL: The movie is still highly regarded despite such scenes, because…well, it has razzle dazzle to spare. There are truly colorful – and wonderfully evil- villains, a thrilling Cold War plot, lots of action, beautiful women, memorable gadgets and a tough, cynical hero. As you noted, FRWL is less campy than in DR. NO, and the plot is more believable and less outlandish than in some subsequent Bond films. This was all fresh in 1963, and I think that the movie still has a sense of awe and excitement that couldn’t really be duplicated later, when both the filmmakers and the audience had seen all this stuff many times before. That’s my two cents, anyway.
One of the things I try to keep in my mind is the impact the early Bond movies must have had in the early sixties when they first came out. I’d like to hear more perspectives of people who saw the early films as they were released, and what that experience was like.
That WOULD be nice. If I find any older Bond fans, I’ll certainly send them your way.
My parents wouldn’t let me watch Bond movies until my teen years, and I think that OCTOPUSSY (1983) was the first one that I saw in the theater. I had probably seen all of the earlier ones on tv by then (One network – ABC, I think – used to show them constantly.).
Hi, I’m glad I’ve stumbled across this blog at an early point, so I can follow your journey through the Bond mythos. I’m an older British man (although not so old that I remember the Connery Bond’s first time around!) and I am interested to hear what a younger, female American(? I am assuming here) makes of the films. I recently completed my degree, taking film and television history as a module towards the end of my course; the Connery Bond films formed part of a unit on British genre films.
There is much to comment on here. With regard to the attitudes towards women in these films, it was noted that there were only 2 possible plots for women in the Bond films, they either end up “in his bed or dead, and sometimes both”. However the use of sex is more nuanced than pure titillation, as in the first 3 Bond films ‘villainous’ women are transformed into heroines after a sexual encounter with Bond – perhaps the most striking example being Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, who is also implied to be lesbian until her roll in the hay with Bond. Neither is it as straightforward to assume that violence against women, or its cinematic portrayal, was unproblematic at the film’s first release. Thomas Wiseman of the Sunday Express wrote of ‘Dr. No’ “I find it disturbing that we should be offered as a hero – as someone we are supposed to admire – a man whose methods and morals are indistinguishable from those of the villains” while another critic described it as “the perfect film for a sado-masochistic society”. Any discussion of British cinema, certainly of the 20th Century, must give some consideration to the British Board of Film Censors, or BBFC (the C now stands for ‘Classification’), which is our equivalent of the MPAA. The BBFC have traditionally preferred to work alongside film-makers during production, seeking to influence controversial content matter before the film is completed. BBFC secretary at the time of these films, John Trevelyan, later wrote:
“When we had the first of these films, Dr No , I had a discussion with Harry Saltzman and we agreed that since he intended to make a series of these films we should aim to get them all suitable for the ‘A’ category since ‘X’ certificates would reduce his viewing audiences. These films were essentially fantasies, Bond being the ‘Superman’ of the 1960s who could not only get all the girls to bed without any difficulty but could escape from any perilous situation, using violence and being quite callous about it even to the point of joking about it. The agreement resulted in keeping the sex to a reasonable level, but we had some problem with the violence and in most of the films we asked for some modifications. We were anxious to avoid anything that was realistic or nasty. It is of course arguable that by doing this we were encouraging people to avoid facing up to the realities of violence by making them laugh when Bond killed an enemy and made a joke about it. However, although I have some sympathy with this argument, I think our category decision was right.”
So, according to Trevelyan the violence was ‘acceptable’ because these are clearly fantasies, and not realistic depictions of espionage (I highly recommend comparing these films against ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ as an example of a ‘realistic’ 1960s British Spy film). The violence against women is, in the film’s patriarchal terms, ‘justified’ by the plot’s conclusion – Bond (and therefore Britain) has to triumph over evil, even if it means resorting to unsavoury means.
I am aware that this reply is becoming too long, so I’ll call a halt for now, after all there are plenty more opportunities for comment coming up!
Hi Vic! Thanks for your input – especially the part about the BBFC. I’ve read similar remarks about Dr. No – how the violence at the time was so shocking they had to play it for humor. Yup, I’m an American – glad you’ve joined in for the journey!
OK I’ve caught up with you. I seriously missed the camp of Dr. No here, though I remember it comes back with considerable strength later when the series tries to one-up its own cliches. Despite that, I remember being impressed by lack of blue-screened vehicle sequences in Dr. No, then found them rampant in this one. Weird, especially considering how there was considerably more sight-seeing in this.
I was thinking about how I wanted to inspect all future hotel rooms too. Though last time I did the bugs I found were not the type spies are looking for.