It boasts so much élan that this second James Bond film should be the best
but somehow isn't quite. A tall, muscular Sean Connery is at his most dourly authoritative, Robert Shaw and Lotte Lenya are heavyweight villains, Daniela Bianchi is a beautiful and vulnerable heroine, and the 'Hitchcockian' plot - based on Ian Fleming's best novel is appropriately Byzantine.
Yet it's probably the most dated of the Bond series. With its Balkan intrigue, gypsy-girl fights and Orient Express setting this is the one Bond film that might have been made in the 50s except its violence and sexual charge could only belong to the permissive 60s.
The vicious fight between Connery and Shaw in the cramped train compartment is a tour de force of editing (Peter Hunt) and still one of the best fight-sequences in the entire series (and in cinema). The first encounter between a near-naked Connery and Bianchi in Bond's hotel-room has a cool but electric daring, with a hint of kinkiness when we find Lenya filming them via a two-way mirror.
It's certainly director Terence Young's best film. Ted Moore's Technicolor photography is as anonymously superb as always, making almost every camera set-up count in establishing the Istanbul location. Look how creatively Young, Moore (and Hunt) use light and space in staging the rendezvous in the St Sophia mosque, for example.
John Barry took over as composer here and the music is so much more wittier, really making the action more three-dimensional, from the damp, sinister piano chords that warn of SPECTRE, to the mocking trumpet that underscores Shaw on the train stalking Connery on the station platform.
Unlike later Bonds, From Russia with Love is a real film; the makers aren't yet spoofing themselves. Even the small parts here SPECTRE's reptilian planner Kronsteen, Bulgarian hit-man Crilencu, gypsy-chief Vavra - are played with real conviction.
Apart from 007's exploding attaché-case (the first of Q's gadgets), it's the only Connery-Bond to be uninterested in technology. Perhaps that's what stops it being the definitive one.
Never mind; the producers got the balance perfect in Goldfinger the following year.
Yet it's probably the most dated of the Bond series. With its Balkan intrigue, gypsy-girl fights and Orient Express setting this is the one Bond film that might have been made in the 50s except its violence and sexual charge could only belong to the permissive 60s.
The vicious fight between Connery and Shaw in the cramped train compartment is a tour de force of editing (Peter Hunt) and still one of the best fight-sequences in the entire series (and in cinema). The first encounter between a near-naked Connery and Bianchi in Bond's hotel-room has a cool but electric daring, with a hint of kinkiness when we find Lenya filming them via a two-way mirror.
It's certainly director Terence Young's best film. Ted Moore's Technicolor photography is as anonymously superb as always, making almost every camera set-up count in establishing the Istanbul location. Look how creatively Young, Moore (and Hunt) use light and space in staging the rendezvous in the St Sophia mosque, for example.
John Barry took over as composer here and the music is so much more wittier, really making the action more three-dimensional, from the damp, sinister piano chords that warn of SPECTRE, to the mocking trumpet that underscores Shaw on the train stalking Connery on the station platform.
Unlike later Bonds, From Russia with Love is a real film; the makers aren't yet spoofing themselves. Even the small parts here SPECTRE's reptilian planner Kronsteen, Bulgarian hit-man Crilencu, gypsy-chief Vavra - are played with real conviction.
Apart from 007's exploding attaché-case (the first of Q's gadgets), it's the only Connery-Bond to be uninterested in technology. Perhaps that's what stops it being the definitive one.
Never mind; the producers got the balance perfect in Goldfinger the following year.