From Russia With Love Still Leaves You Shaken And Stirred
Just one year after the world of cinema was introduced to James Bond in Dr No, we got its follow up in the form of From Russia With Love.
It's often Goldfinger that gets all the Bond glory as setting the standard, Dr No may have been the starter but Love is the main course, with Goldfinger the fancy dessert.
Not only did the film see the birth of the pre-title sequence, we got the first time John Barry scored a Bond film (he'd previously just arranged the Bond theme). We also get the first use of Barry's 007 theme, which would become as synonymous as the James Bond theme over the years. We also get the first glimpse of Blofield and his white cat and the first of 17 appearances of Desmond Llewelyn as Q - here referred to as Major Boothroyd. And it woukd be he who gives Bond his first proper gadget, which will of course become crucial in a pivotal scene.
It was a hugh evolutionary step up from Dr No, it had twice the budget of that first film and you could see that it was all up there on the screen. It's a real espionage adventure complete with code breaking device and defections.
Also up there on the screen is Robert Shaw, as Donald 'Red' Grant, which is why The Daily Jaws is looking back at this Bond film.
We first meet Shaw in that pre-title sequence as he stalks James Bond through a maze of garden at night, garotting the spy. Except of course it isn't Bond, just someone wearing a mask. But that is his intended victim.
Shaw's Grant is a constant presence in the corner of a scene, or watching events unfoldike the assassin he is. And he brings new meaning to the word silent assassin as we never hear Shaw utter a line of dialogue until he is on board the Orient Express and talking to Bond under his guise, so we never get to hear his actual voice until one hour and 19 minutes into the film. All of which gives Shaw - and his black leather gloves - a greater mystery and comes across almost like a 1960s T-1000. It's a masterstroke of script, acting and editing.
Being Robert Shaw he just exudes a huge presence, but Shaw was actually four inches shorter than Sean Connery, so in scenes they shared together Shaw stood on a small box.
There is a wonderfully shot scene where Bond has come off the train at the station and is walking down the platform only to be shadowed by Grant still on the train, skulking in the shadows. It is beautifully shot by Terence Young and wouldn't look out of place in anything directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He really cranks the tension.
There would also be a nod to the crop dusting sequence from Hitch's North By Northwest, this time Connery trying to out dive and shoot a swooping helicopter. It was no secret that Cary Grant had been the first choice for 007, but he would only commit to a single film deal and wasn't interested in a film series.
The standout moment in From Russia With Love, and after almost six decades still one of the most exhilerating Bond scenes ever, is the build up to and the fight between Grant and Bond. By now we realise that Grant isn't just Bond's equal, Shaw would have made a bloody good Bond, so when it comes to the invetible showdown there really is every chance that Bond could lose. Until now it has been like a huge game of chess, with Bond essentially being Grant's and SPECTRE's pawn - a chess game being an earlier moment in the film - with the train fight being checkmate for Red Grant.
It's almost nine minutes from build up to fight's end and the tension and claustrophobia is almost palpable. The scene is just as powerful today and is a pure masterstroke of cinema, with no music and the only sounds being the grunting and punching of two men and the rythmic noise of the Orient Express.
The fight scene itself took two days to film, originally it was going to be largely done with doubles but Connery and Shaw insisted they block it out with the stunt coordinator. And when was it filmed? June 20 and 21, the former being the date that Jaws was released across the US 12 years later.
In the end there was just one shot in the final sequence that wasn't Connery or Shaw and nearly 60 years later it still holds its power with its close quarter filming, exciting editing, claustropbic setting and use off sound. Make no mistake, From Russia With Love is to cinematic fisticuffs what Bullit is to car chases.
It's such an iconic fight scene that Bond has kept returning to fight scenes on trains, step forward Roger Moore in Live and Let Die and The Spy Who Loved Me and Daniel Craig in Spectre. Connery revisited the claustrophobic fight scene in the confines of a lift in Diamonds Are Forever and both Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan were pitted against henchmen with blonde hair - like Grant -. And had fight scenes with them - in The Living Daylights and Tomorrow Never Dies. The shadow of Red Grant still looms large.
It's brutality and use of a garotting wire was also firmly echoed in Marathon Man in 1976, on the receiving end this time was Roy Scheider, fresh from his success in Jaws.
That same year Sean Connery and Robert Shaw would go onto face each other once again, this time as Robin Hood and The Sheriff of Nottingham. But Bond and Grant woukd meet one final time, in the video game of From Russia With Love, which saw both their character likenesses return - and in the case of Connery - he also leant voice duties.
