There is no doubt that the impact of Dr. No on cinema audiences was a watershed moment in big screen history, but how did From Russia With Love build on this success? With the UK’s ITV network rescreening these two ‘classic’ James Bond movies (albeit in ‘edited’ form), the JBIFC takes the opportunity to look back on the first two Sean Connery 007 movies and some of the continuities between the pair.
In hindsight, although cinema audiences in Britain loved the debut of Ian Fleming’s secret agent on the big screen in 1962, some of the critical reaction to the first 007 movie had been rather mixed and opinion seemed divided.
However, two British film critics in particular, Alexander Walker and Dilys Powell, were very enthusiastic and this gave the first James Bond film a huge boost. Moreover, Dr. No’s release in Britain saw the movie take a record £700,000 at the box office, a huge sum in the early 1960s. Clearly, the UK public had fallen in love with all things Bond. America was soon to follow, when Dr. No was released in the States in 1963.
It thus became inevitable that United Artists would fully support a second James Bond film, while the EON producers Harry Saltzman and Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli were now quietly confident that they would be able to make at least (so they hoped) 3-4 Bond films before public interest waned (!). Little did they know what a cultural phenomenon they were giving to global cinema history.
Licence to Thrill
Interestingly, as Bond co-producer Cubby Broccoli later observed, ‘The huge impact of Dr. No was evident not just in its wide box-office appeal around the world, but also in the boost it gave to Fleming’s books’. Suddenly, the sales of Fleming’s 007 paperbacks soared: ‘James Bond was away and running’. It appeared that, with their new star Sean Connery, and with a formula that combined thrills, tongue-in-cheek humour, sex and exotic locations, the EON producers had found the key to cinematic success the like of which had not been seen before.
There was pressure, of course, to just repeat the same formula. Yet, as John Brosnan pointed out in his book James Bond in the Cinema (1972), From Russia With Love (FRWL) – although it had the same basic ingredients (fast action, exotic settings, violence, and sex) – ‘differed greatly from its predecessor’. In fact, it stood out from many of the other films in the 007 series, which had tended to follow the science fiction style of Dr. No. Instead, FRWL kept the ‘fantastic’ elements to a minimum and adopted more of a Hitchcock-style thriller approach, which was in fact in line with Fleming’s original novel.
Bond was Back
Nevertheless, in terms of continuities, FRWL also offered some welcome and familiar ingredients to build on the success of Dr. No. For a start, the director Terence Young, who had played an instrumental role in shaping and guiding Sean Connery’s transition to suave physicality as James Bond, agreed to return. And that was something Connery was more than happy about. After all, Young had played such a big part in helping Sean’s look and style as Fleming’s suave secret agent.
In addition, Maurice Binder’s brilliantly simple but innovative gun-barrel, introduced in Dr. No, returned in style for FRWL, as a prelude to the atmospheric pre-credits sequence (something that would become a fixture of all subsequent Bond movies until the Daniel Craig era commenced). Similarly, John Barry’s excellent rendition of Monty Norman’s James Bond theme was also retained for FRWL, played regularly at key moments in the film, such as Bond arriving at and inspecting his hotel room in Istanbul. The decision was also made to have SPECTRE, Blofeld’s ruthless criminal organisation (which had been mentioned and discussed in Dr. No), a key element again in FRWL. As Kronsteen at one points comments to Blofeld, after explaining the trap they have set for 007, the agent the British would ‘undoubtedly send’ would be 007, the man responsible for the death of SPECTRE’s operative Dr. Julius No.
Bonding with Bond
Another piece of continuity to give FRWL some familiar Bondian anchors for cinema audiences was the return of the MI6 HQ office, where Connery’s James Bond engaged in some repartee with Moneypenny (played again by Lois Maxwell) and went to be briefed by his boss ‘M’ (played again by Bernard Lee), walking through those now famous sound-proof padded double doors.
The female character Sylvia Trench, who Bond had first encountered briefly in the early stages of Dr. No, returned in FRWL, seemingly as James Bond’s regular girlfriend. We first encounter the pair enjoying a romantic interlude by a waterway, with Bond’s Bentley car nearby, until 007 has to take a call from his ‘office’. But Bond being called away again, in an echo of Dr. No, does not stop Bond engaging in pleasure before business, much to Sylvia’s delight! Indeed, the late actress Eunice Gayson, who played Trench, revealed in later interviews that Terence Young’s plan (he had started pre-production work on Goldfinger) had originally been for Sylvia Trench to be a regular character in the Bond series, and plans had been put in place for her to reappear in the third Bond movie (which, in the end, of course, went to director Guy Hamilton instead, who wanted to stamp his own brand on the series).
Cutting Edge Editing
Another major ingredient in the success of the two movies was also, arguably, the retention of Peter Hunt as editor. Indeed, Hunt’s pioneering fast-action cutting style, tested out so successfully in Dr. No, reached a new zenith in FRWL. Possibly the best example was the tough fight on the Orient Express that takes place between Bond and ‘Red’ Grant (played by Robert Shaw), a sequence which – even today – takes one’s breath away when viewed on the big screen. Imagine how it must have felt seeing the fight for the first time in the cinema.
Lastly, another piece of continuity between the first two 007 movies worth bearing in mind was the support of Bond creator Ian Fleming. Although Fleming had at first seemed doubtful about the choice of Sean Connery as Bond, he had been quickly won round. He had attended the opening screenings and parties for both movies, praised Connery’s performances, and had shown strong interest in the production of both Dr. No and FRWL, visiting the locations and sets of both films and chatting to Sean Connery. The Bond author apparently very much enjoyed these visits.
Tragically, although the Bond author had visited the set of Goldfinger at Pinewood in 1964 and chatted again to Connery, Fleming, by now dogged with serious health problems, died a few weeks later and did not get to see the third 007 film.
As with Dr. No, FRWL opened in London to high praise and huge public footfall at the box office. As one magazine, Entertainment Today, aptly put it, the film ‘proved to countless skeptics that the James Bond films were being made by people who knew what they were doing…’. In like vein, the film critic in the UK’s Observer newspaper commented: ‘The Bond films are brilliantly skilful’. Bond was very much here to stay. Moreover, as the authors of The Essential Bond, Lee Pfeiffer and Dave Worrall, pointed out in 1998, what especially pleased the film-makers was the increasingly apparent fact that Bond’s appeal was truly universal and not limited to just British audiences.
Did You Know?
Following the huge success of the third EON Bond film Goldfinger, a double-bill reissue of Dr. No and From Russia, With Love to cash in on the insatiable demand for more Bond saw huge business at the box office, and helped launch a pattern of very popular Bond double-bill reissues at regular points during the rest of the 1960s, a pattern repeated in the 1970s.
