Essay

A RECIPE FOR A SPY SAGA: JAMES BOND. FILM:

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

SLST 450

FINDING THE RECIPE

• The Cuban Crisis of

1962; the Cold War brings

the great powers to the

brink of a nuclear war

• Yet precisely the time

when Hollywood finally

figures out a recipe for a

commercially successful

Cold-War spy movie

• Very different from the

blunt approach in Invasion

USA

• Combines the elements

already present in previous

films: robotic,

dehumanised enemies;

ideological conquest as

romantic conquest;

exoticising the Other

The central question: Who or what exactly is the

enemy in From Russia with Love? Also, where is

action set and why?

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Things to consider when viewing:

 Who exactly is the enemy? Who is

implicitly responsible for the Cold War?

 What are the “usual” relations with the

Russians?

 Why “from Russia”? How is this

connected to the location where the film

is actually set?

 Bulgarians, Gypsies, the Orient

Express... Orientalism?

 The portrayal of women in general

and Russian women in particular. Look

at the film poster on the right 

 Tanya’s transformation in the film –

any similarity to Ninotchka’s?

 Film budget $2 million, worldwide

receipts $79 million... Why such a

stunning commercial success?

1963: 2nd James

Bond film after Dr.

No, 2nd Bond for

Sean Connery

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE: DISCUSSION POINTS

 Enemy feminized, two types of Russian women.

What about Grant?

 Film setting: Turkey, “the Balkans,”

Constantinople/Istanbul, St. Sophia Cathedral

 Enemy defined as ethnic other, cultural superiority

of the West. Bulgarians. Gypsies? The Orient Express

on its way from Turkey passes through Bulgaria and

Yugoslavia – socialist countries in Eastern Europe

 SPECTRE, but Kronstein is from Czechoslovakia

and Rosa Klebb a (renegade) Soviet intelligence

officer

 Implicitly shifting responsibility for the Cold War

(“the Cold War will become hot in Istanbul”)

 Yet the intrigue is sustained by the Soviet military

secrets stolen by the West and the Soviet military

threat is always looming in the background

 SMERSH / SPECTRE?

 Released in October 1963 – exactly one year after

the Cuban missile crisis