Release Year: 1964 (U.S.)

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Director: Terence Young

Writer: Richard Maibaum

Stars: Sean Connery, Pedro Armendáriz, Robert Shaw

Watching a classic James Bond film is like climbing into an Aston Martin-shaped time machine and zipping fifty years into the past.

Technology as we know it is virtually non-existent. The shorts are shorter. And Russia was probably engaging in secret global espionage.

Okay, the faces may have changed in the last half-century, but the hassles are still the same.

Agent 007's first outing, Dr. No,was a huge hit when it debuted in 1963, and U.S. audiences eagerly awaited Bond's return to U.S. shores the next year. And return he did. Bond actor Sean Connery and Dr. No director Terence Young teamed up for a second shot at spy magic with From Russia with Love. They managed to get the film released about two months after shooting ended so that they could harness the anticipation generated by the smashing international success of Dr. No (source).

The sequel had double the budget and three times the villains, replacing Dr. No (RIP, you claw-handed maniac) with a trio of shady SPECTRE malefactors—not to mention numerous assassins, goons, and crazed helicopter pilots on Bond's tail.

The SPECTRE super-assassin who's after Bond, Donald "Red" Grant, is played by Robert Shaw, who also hunted sharks in Jaws. Bond girl Tania is played by Italian actress Daniela Bianchi, who married rich and retired early. And hard-as-nails Rosa Klebb is played by Lotte Lenya, who was once a German opera singer and married the man who wrote "Mack the Knife”. (Maybe that's what she names the killer blade in the toe of her boot.)

All these characters come together to make the film's plot a complicated espionage mélange featuring a top secret decoding device, shenanigans across Istanbul, and a sultry Russian double agent who is just Bond's type (i.e. human, female).

Speaking of sexy spies, all the money must have gone to Sean Connery's salary and traveling to Turkey instead of clothes, because there's a lot of skin in this film by 1964 standards. Even though this was the swingin' 60s, the British Board of Film Classification (aka BBFC, aka "the censors") made 13 cuts to this risqué film (source). Viewers either didn't notice the censorship or didn't care. Fans made From Russia with Love the #8 top-grossing Bond film, adjusted for inflation (source.).

That's a lot of $1.00 movie tickets. (Now that's something that's really changed in the last fifty years.)

One blockbuster success could be written off as a lucky fluke, but two meant that the Bond franchise had staying power. In From Russia with Love we see the filmmakers continue to tweak and perfect the Bond formula. A little more technology here, a little more jiggle there. The censors, like SPECTRE, wouldn't be able to stand up to Bond for much longer.

From Russia with Love solidified the foundation upon which fifty years of Bond films would be built. It's a foundation that wouldn't be shaken…or stirred.

Hey, he doesn't actually say that classic line in this movie, so someone had to use it.

Spy thrillers are usually totally escapist romps, and From Russia With Love is no exception. Even so, it's important to check out the historical context in which the film was made, because real history has a way of leaking into even the most fantastical thriller films.

These days, the phrase "From Russia, with love" might make you think of the gift tag on a pile of confidential documents delivered to Julian Assange. But when this film was being produced, the threat of MAD, nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction, still hung in the air like a mushroom cloud. Soviet missiles had been massing near Cuba in 1962, and elementary school kids were being trained to "duck and cover" under their desks to protect them when the atomic bomb dropped. Seriously.

So instead risking heating up the Cold War even more, the filmmakers changed up some plot lines. Instead of making the Russians the villains like in Ian Fleming's novel, they changed the baddies to the mysterious SPECTRE, a group that was both anti-Russia and anti-Western powers (source). SPECTRE is an equal opportunity villain, betraying both Mother Russia and the English crown alike.

These plot changes show us how touchy the relationship between the UK/US and Russia was at the time. The filmmakers worried that making Bond fight the Russians might make the conflict worse. Boy, those Russians and their fragile egos. By tweaking the plot, and excusing Russia from any villainous activity on-screen, the filmmakers did their part to avoid the aforementioned Mutually Assured Destruction.

Don't get MAD…get glad.