Friday, 9 November 2012

"Let his death be a particularly unpleasant and humiliating one." - Blofeld



Movie no 2

From Russia with Love
1963 - imdb (link)

James Bond willingly falls into an assassination ploy involving a naive Russian beauty in order to retrieve a Soviet encryption device that was stolen by SPECTRE.

Cast

James Bond - Sean Connery

Villains - Ernest Stavro Blofeld - Anthony Dawson
           - Rosa Klebb - Lotte Lenya
Henchman - Grant - Robert Shaw

Bondgirl - Tatiana Romanova - Daniela Bianchi
              
M - Bernard Lee
Moneypenny - Lois Maxwell
Boothroyd - Desmond Llewelyn
Kerim Bey - Pedro Armendariz


Director - Terrence Young
Screenplay - Richard Maibaum & Johanna Harwood

Theme - "From Russia with Love" - Matt Monro

10 comments:

  1. This is my favourite of the Fleming novels.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not the most subtle of the credits.

    ReplyDelete
  3. These early Bonds really do show the extent that people smoked in the '60s.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Welcome to SPECTRE island". Why does it always take British Intelligence so long to track these guys down?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Do wonder whether Lotte Lenya had read "From Russia With Love", the novel, before taking the part of Klebb. You could imagine that Fleming's description (from Kronsteen's perspective) of Klebb could easily put actresses off...

    "Rosa Klebb would be in her late forties, he assumed, placing her by the date of the Spanish War. She was short, about five foot four, and squat, and her dumpy arms and short neck, and the calves of the thick legs in the drab khaki stockings, were very strong for a woman. The devil knows, thought Kronsteen, what her breasts were like, but the bulge of uniform that rested on the table-top looked like a badly packed sandbag, and in general her figure, with its big pear-shaped hips, could only be likened to a 'cello."

    ReplyDelete
  6. And the relatively brief casting of Walter Gotell as Morzeny, the leather jacket donned trainer of Grant, who is, of course, re-cast in the Moore era as the iconic General Gogol, M's opposite number in the KGB.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Support crew springing into action with bacon bagels.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Favourites so far...

    Film: Dr No
    Song: All awful so far
    Bond girl: Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress)
    Villain: Dr No (Joseph Wiseman)
    Henchman: Grant (From Russia With Love)
    Fight: Bond Vs Grant on the train (From Russia With Love)
    Pun: Nothing yet
    Locations: Dr No
    Gadget: Super sneaky briefcase with hidden ammo for the whacking great machine gun that sits in it in plain sight. (From Russia With Love)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm going to stray and say Tania, over Honey. But I'm not arguing with anything else.

      Delete
    2. I'll re-categorise for the next film cos I think there will be a difference between 'best' and 'hottest'!

      Delete