From Russia with love - 1963

 No, I didn’t much like this one, although it was a true spy-movie. An old-fashioned one. 

On to the story.

First of all, it is against the Spectre organization we learned about in the first, previous movie, and the Spectre doesn’t belong to any one Country, it’s a criminal organization that operates for itself, and it is huge and organized, we see a place where they train known criminals to be as efficient as they want them. 

I’m not sure how they can trust them or why these criminals obey like loyal soldiers, but so it is.

The leader’s face is never shown, we read the name Ernst Blofeld in the credits but the actor is “?” So it was left a mystery.

What we saw was the beautiful white cat he kept stroking :-)

So, chess Grandmaster Kronsteen has a perfect plan, he’s sure he’s thought of every countermove and there’s no flaw in his plan.

Rosa Klebb was once a Russin colonel, now she’s number 3 in the Soectre. She chooses the people to use, the first is Tatiana, the second is assassin Grant. The plan is: choose a beautiful girl and have her contact the British, Bond specifically, so they’ll have their revenge on him too for killing Dr No. Tatiana sends words to M, somehow, that she’ll give them an important thing, some kind of decoding machine I think, if Bond goes to get it and takes her back with him, because she read all about him in his files and fell for him. Of course they suspect it was a trap, but as Kronsteen predicted they go along with it anyway because the machine is important and to find out what the plan is, something like that. So, he’s to meet her in Instanbul, where Kerim Bey helps him a lot, keeps helping him throughout the film until he’s killed towards the end.

Insstanbul sees various factions watching each other like good spies, and assassin Grant’s task is to protect Bond rom anybody else, making it look like the factions are attacking each other.

Grant kills some violent gypsies and kills a man who is interfering in Tatiana’s task. Klebb ordered Tatiana to do it, to seduce Bond and carry out the mission. Obviously she falls for Bond, everyone does in his films, even the men. 

She’s not with Spectre though, she thinks Klebb is still a colonel who gave her an order to help her Countr. 

Bond, Kerim and Tatiana steal the machine and escape on a train. Grant kills both a Russian agent and Kerim, and later on shows himself as if he just arrived. He pretends to be an agent sent by M for help and Bond believes everything he says until Grant hits him on the head. Lightly, so that Bond can be alert and hear how astute Grant was, how sincere hte girl was and how painful his imminent death will be… Grant talks a lot, and then fallsfor the trick- greed indeed. Bond offers him 50 gold coins that I don’t remember what they’re called, Grant tells him to get them, Bond opens one case and gets them out. Are there more in the other case? Should be, standard equipment, but this time Grant open it himself like Bond knew or hoped he would do, and not knowing the secret way he gets… full of smoke. I thought it would have done more like a little explosion, but all it did was smoke. Still, it was a lot and gave Bond the opportunity to come close and fight him and, of course, win. Grant is dead.

Kronsteen blames Klepp’s choice of assassin, but the boss punishes him for the failure and gives her another chance. She enters their room, once they finally reach one, and tries to steal the machine.

Apparently this is what it was all about, Spectre already promised that machine in exchange of money… with all their resources and the grand planner and everything, they could get it themselves, in my opinion, but anyway. Bond fights Klebb but it’s Tatiana who shoots her because she ‘loves’ James :-/

And so they spend some time in Venice, together….

The ending credits warn the audience already that there will be a new Bond film titled Goldfinger.

James Bond is Sean Connery

Tatiana is Daniela Bianchi

Rosa Klebb is Lotte Lenya

Grant is Robert Shaw

M is Bernard Lee

Miss Moneypenny is Lois Maxwell

Ernst Blofeld is ?

(È scritto così)

P.s. The British received Tatiana’s picture, M showed it to Bond telling him to leave it with Miss Moneypenny, and he wrote From Russia with love on the picture.

ITA A 007, dalla Russia con amore