From Russia with Love

File:From-russia-with-love.jpg

"Let his death be a particularly unpleasant and humiliating one." —Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of SPECTRE

After the President of the United States announced that From Russia, With Love was his 9th favourite book, it became clear to EON which novel they were going to adapt next.

This film, the second James Bond film, involves 007 having to escort a defector from Commie Land (more specifically the USSR) to the West. Of course, she's female.

Notable scenes in this film:

• The very first appearance of Blofeld, complete with hidden face and white Persian cat.
• Tatiana's seduction of Bond by entering his hotel room and getting into his bed. Wearing only a black ribbon around her neck and a pair of black stockings.
  • The love scene used for screen-testing Bonds.
• A Cat Fight between two gypsies, sometimes removed from TV broadcasts, which serves nothing more than to have two scantily-clad women fighting each other.
• A long, drawn-out fight between Bond and Red Grant on the Orient Express. Sean Connery and Robert Shaw did most of the fight scene themselves.
• A helicopter chase.
• A boat chase that ends with a wall of fire.
• Rosa Klebb's shoe dagger.

This film and its title are so well known that variations on the title are common as newspaper headlines for articles to do with Russia. A London exhibition of pre-Red October Russian art, sponsored by the Russian government, couldn't resist a gag, calling itself From Russia.

The movie is typically considered one of the best, if not the best of the Bond franchise. One filmmaker notes that almost every Bond movie production starts out trying to make the next From Russia With Love and ends up being the next Thunderball.

The film was also adapted into a videogame for 6th-generation consoles, almost 50 years later, with Sean Connery reprising his iconic role for the first time in decades.

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This film contains examples of:

• Adapted Out:
  • The main villain of the book was General Nicholai Sergenovich Grubozaboyschikov (G). His role is taken by Blofeld.
  • The changing of the book's ending meant that Rene Mathis' re-appearance was omitted.
• Adaptational Sexuality: The film eliminates Rosa Klebb's scene from the book of outright trying to seduce Tatiana, just having a scene where she plays with a visibly uncomfortable Tatiana's hair while talking of "a labour of love".
• Adaptational Villainy: Kronsteen is not a nice man in the book, but he's still just a Soviet Colonel doing his job. The film makes him into a board member for the world's most powerful terrorism-for-hire organization and gives him about a million levels in smugness.
• Adaptation Distillation: The book is generally regarded as one of Fleming's best, but many of the changes for the film are still considered good decisions - the book's unusual format (where the entire first third is SMERSH planning their konspiratsia, following Grant, Klebb and finally Romanova before Bond ever turns up) is distilled into a much shorter sequence; events are slightly reordered so Bond plays a greater role in the action; Kerim isn't a creepy sexual predator; the sequence on the Orient Express makes Bond slightly smarter when he realises "Nash" isn't who he says he is, and the changed ending neatly resolves what happens to Klebb, Kronsteen and Tatiana.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • The "SPEKTOR" cryptography machine from the novel becomes the "LEKTOR" in the film, probably to avoid confusion with the villainous organization "SPECTRE".
  • Grant's first name is changed from Donovan to Donald.
  • Kerim's given name was changed from "Darko" to "Ali", possibly because the context of "Darko" (what you think it is) would be uncomfortable even for 1963.
• Alone with the Psycho: Bond is cornered by the psycho SPECTRE assassin, Red Grant, who was planning a sadistic fate for Bond after he got the Lector. Fortunately, he was enough of a sucker to be tricked into setting off Bond's tear gas booby trap in his attache case, allowing Bond to tackle him.
• Artistic License Gun Safety: Tatiana shoots Rosa Klebb, when she tries to murder Bond with a blade hidden in a shoe. Afterwards, Bond sits down in relief and Tatiana massages Bond's shoulders, while still holding her pistol. To be fair, Bond spots this immediately and gently takes the gun away from her before stating "She's had her kicks."
• Artistic License Physics: Bond destroys a number of attacking speedboats over a large area simply by dumping fuel in the water and lighting it; however this would have no effect if the boats were moving at high speed, since they would be cooled by the splashing water (and its evaporation) faster than they could be heated; likewise, the bow-wave of the boats would extinguish the flames immediately around them. Later movies were worse. This could work if the area of burning fuel was large enough. Depletion of atmospheric oxygen by the combustion would cause the boats' engines to stall and the humans to suffocate, leaving them stuck in the middle. Also could be justified due to the fact that Morzeny ordered the boats to slow down just before Bond lit the fuel.
• As You Know: Kronsteen's dialogue to Blofeld at the beginning is basically this, as he essentially recaps the ending of Dr. No, mentions that M is the head of British intelligence, and that they have an agent named James Bond who was responsible for killing Dr. No. All information Blofeld most certainly would have been aware of, but which viewers who may not have seen Dr. No yet might not be, especially as neither Bond nor M appear on screen until about 15 minutes into the picture.
• Assassin Outclassin': Grant is recruited by Col. Klebb to eliminate Bond and Tatiana once they deliver the Lektor. He would have succeeded were it not for his own ego. Klebb attempts to kill Bond herself, but Tatiana has a change of heart.
• Batman Gambit: Bond plays on Grant's greed and suspicion to get him to open the booby-trapped case. The bribe gets him interested, but when Bond too-quickly grabs the second suitcase, Grant insists on opening it himself in case there's a weapon there. Because the latches need to be set in an unusual manner to open the case safely, Grant naturally unlocks the case in the normal way....getting a face full of tear gas.
• Becoming the Mask: Tatiana is sent by SPECTRE (under the guise of SMERSH) to seduce him into a trap. She pretends to be a Russian cypher clerk who's fallen in love with Bond's picture, only to fall for him for real.
• Belly Dancer: In the gypsy camp.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Bond tells Moneypenny he'd never look at another woman.
  • Kerim Bey tells Bond the bomb blast didn't kill him because he was relaxing on the sofa.
• Blofeld Ploy: The original example. Blofeld kills the man he actually thinks is responsible for the mess. He is wrong, since it was Klebb's man Red Grant who actually stuffed things up, but a) Neither he, Klebb or Kronsteen knew that, b) That was still more Grant's fault personally than Klebb's, and c) Kronsteen was being an ass. Also deviates from the usual in that it's Morzeny who executes Kronsteen, on Blofeld's (implied) orders.
• Blond Guys Are Evil: Red Grant is one of the iconic ones.
  • Grant led to this trope being used over and over again in the Bond series in the form of the muscular blonde brute henchman.
• Bond One-Liner:
  • After Kerim Bey shoots Krilencu as the latter tries to escape by climbing from a hatch hidden inside the mouth of Anita Ekberg on a billboard for a movie, Bond quips, "She should have kept her mouth shut".
  • After Tatiana shoots Rosa Klebb dead after the latter had been trying to stab Bond with a poisoned dagger concealed in her shoe, Bond says of Klebb, "She's had her kicks."
  • There's also "I'd say one of their aircraft is missing", which for younger viewers falls almost nonsensically flat, but it's a reference to One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, or at least to the wartime phrase it's based on. It was still a relevant and clever reference in 1963, and that was the target audience.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Red Grant's plan is to just shoot Bond, and he actually manages to get the drop on his target and have him completely at his mercy, but he still fails because he can't resist gloating. In Red's defence, he still would have been fine if he hadn't fallen for Bond's bribe. At least he didn't leave the guy unattended. He'd also had plenty of opportunities to kill Bond before he even got on the train, but his failure to do so was his superior's fault: Red's boss' boss (Blofeld in the movie, General G in the novel) didn't just want Bond to die, he wanted him to die in a manner that would embarrass MI6 and the British government, which required a more elaborate setup then just shooting him as he walked down the street.
• Can't Kill You - Still Need You: During the fight in the Gypsy camp, a knife-wielding Bulgar rushes Bond from behind, only to get sniped by Red Grant, as it doesn't suit SPECTRE's plan to have Bond dead at that point.
• Cat Fight: Bond is taken to visit some Gypsies, who proceed to stage a formal cat fight between two half-naked young ladies over a man for his benefit. Later, he apparently sleeps with both of them. This has absolutely no relevance to the plot, by the way. It is signaled by the immortal line "It must be settled... the Gypsy Way." Averted in the original book, where this was a brutal, unarmed fight to the death between two women who are both vying for the affections of one man. That also involved both girls ripping each other's clothes off.
• Characterization Marches On: Q is quite a bit more respectful toward Bond while explaining the attache case's gadgets, as opposed to their usual banter in later films. Q's relationship with Bond is not cemented until the next movie, Goldfinger.
• Chekhov's Armoury: Practically everything in the magic attache case ends up being used. Chekhov's Sniper Rifle, Chekhov's Throwing Knife, Chekhov's Fifty Gold Sovereigns, Chekhov's Tear Gas Cartridge...which becomes standard for Bond adventures, where every blessed gadget Q gives him is going to be needed before the closing credits. About the only thing Bond doesn't use (or at least isn't seen using on camera) is the spare pistol ammo.
• Chekov's Gun:
  • In the train after telling 'Nash' (really Red Grant) and Tatiana to go to dinner, Bond searches Nash's things which includes his briefcase (with Bond carefully opening it the same way Q instructed at the beginning of the film, indicating the briefcase is the same as Bond's own). Later on when he has Bond at gunpoint, Grant forces Bond to open up his own briefcase to retrieve the gold sovereigns he offered (which Bond does without incident). Then Grant asks about the 'other' case...
  • When Bond and Tatiana get on the boat, Tatiana reports there's a "Chart, pistol, some flares..." The Chart comes in handy right away, the flares and pistol will take a little bit...
  • The lethal effects of the shoe knife are first demonstrated on Kronsteen, so the audience knows what will happen if Klebb lands a kick on Bond.
• Chekhov's Gunman: When Bond and Kerim spy on the Russian consulate, Kerim notes an agent named Benz to the right of the periscope. Benz later appears at the train station when Bond, Kerim, and Tanya board the Orient Express, and follows them onboard.
• The Chessmaster: Kronsteen, who is a literal chessmaster.
  • In the book, scenes from his point of view feature him thinking of everyone as chess pieces.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In a SPECTRE meeting, Kronsteen mentions "the killing of our operative, Dr. No"; in the book, he lists off the deaths of Le Chiffre, Mr. Big, and Hugo Drax.
  • Sylvia Trench reappears, once again denied a romance with Bond as he's called away on a mission. This was meant to be a Running Gag throughout the series, but the character was dropped after this film. One could argue that Moneypenny played out that gag, in her own way.
• Cool Guns:
  • Bond is issued an Armalite AR-7 "takedown rifle" as part of his equipment kit. When disassembled, all the parts and ammo fit inside the stock. Bond takes aim at Krilencu with it, then lets Kerim pull the trigger at the latter's insistence on wanting to settle the score personally. Later, Bond uses the rifle to wound a SPECTRE pilot, making him drop a live grenade that blows up his helicopter.
  • Sean Connery famously posed with a Walther LP-53 air pistol for the poster. Apparently, it was photographer David Hurn's own personal weapon which he provided when a prop PPK didn't turn up for the shoot.
  • SPECTRE trainees can be seen training with Armalite AR-10s.
  • Red Grant uses a Broomhandle Mauser C96 to shoot a man about to backstab Bond during the gypsy camp fight.
• Danger Room Cold Open: The pre-title sequence shows Bond getting stalked and killed by Donald "Red" Grant with his garrote wristwatch before it's revealed to be a SPECTRE training exercise for Grant, and "Bond" is actually a SPECTRE mook.
• Deadly Training Area: A villainous example:

Rosa Klebb: Training is useful, but there is no substitute for experience. Morzeny: I agree. We use live targets as well.

• Death by Adaptation:
  • Kronsteen, although it's possible his literary counterpart was also executed for his plan's failure.
  • Rosa Klebb is shot dead during her final confrontation with Bond. In the book, she is merely taken into custody by the French. The next book, Dr. No, casually mentions that "she died" (implicitly under interrogation).
• Dirty Communists: Subverted. The original Fleming story had them, but most were changed to agents of the supranational criminal union SPECTRE, running a False-Flag Operation.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • The guard at the gypsy camp is knifed because he's watching the belly dancer.
  • Bond stays focused on the mission despite Tatiana constantly hitting on him, though Kerim Bey enjoys suggesting that he's not as impervious as he's making out.
  • Fortunately Kerim falls for this trope, leaving his desk to 'relax' with his girl just when a bomb detonates on the other side of the wall.
• The Dragon: Red Grant is one for Rosa Klebb, who in turn is one for Blofeld.
• Early Installment Weirdness:
  • While this is the first of the Bond films to receive a true theme song, only the instrumental is played over the opening titles. The song itself doesn't play until the end of the film.
  • Desmond Llewelyn's character is not referred to as "Q" but as the "equipment officer" for "Q branch", and is credited as "Boothroyd". Also, Q and Bond interact with each other respectfully rather than engaging in the prickly banter they'd become famous for.
  • The footage showing Istanbul's landmarks is much more conspicious in showcasing them than later Bond films would with their foreign locations, by which point the idea of Bond visiting a famous international location was much more common.
  • The film inaugurates the Bond film tradition of the secondary villain vengefully trying to kill Bond in a final action scene after the "proper" plot is over... except in this case the character in question isn't a minion but the main villain's boss.
• Establishing Character Moment
  • Grant is introduced hunting down and killing a fake James Bond in a training exercise, demonstrating his cunning and brutality.
  • Blofeld's introduction to the franchise has him monologue about Siamese fighting fish, comparing them to SPECTRE. He's also shown giving orders to his subordinates, explicitly mentioning that Bond's death should be "a particularly unpleasant and humiliating one". His second and final scene in the film, where he has Kronsteen killed, establishes his Bad Boss tendencies, fondness for sadistic ploys, and his status as The Dreaded.
• Evil Counterpart: Red Grant and Bond. Each is a loyal agent, and a blunt instrument serving their respective espionage organizations. (SPECTRE and MI-6 respectively) Both are highly skilled, great physical combatants, and are shown with some gadgets in their respective arsenals.
• Evil Gloating: Lampshaded, by the gloater himself no less.

Grant: I don't mind talking. I get a kick out of watching the great James Bond find out what a bloody fool he's been making of himself.

• Evil Lesbian: Rosa Klebb in the book, and implied in the movie when she caresses Tatiana's hair while saying "a labour of love".
• Evil Plan: Kronsteen and Rosa Klebb want to steal a cryptographic device from the Soviets and sell it back to them, as well as take revenge on Bond for killing Dr. No. This is also a SPECTRE mission.
• The Faceless: Blofeld. According to Lucky Number Slevin, this is what makes him the best Blofeld - "That's when the villain is most effective - when you don't know what he looks like." The credits even refuse to tell us the actor's name, and simply feature a question mark. For the record, the body is Anthony Dawson (Professor Dent from the previous film) and the voice was Eric Pohlmann.
• Fake Action Prologue: The film begins with James Bond duelling with Red Grant in a hedge maze, only to be killed by Grant. It turns out that it's actually a test for Grant to determine his efficiency; the "Bond" killed is actually another man in disguise working for SPECTRE.
• Fake Defector: What Tatiana is told her mission is to be. Her mission is actually a set up to lure Bond into a situation where SMERSH can kill both of them in a manner that embarrasses the British government.
• Fake Shemp: Terence Young disliked Daniela Bianchi's legs, and used a stand-in for the scene where Bond spies on the Russian embassy in Istanbul with a periscope. Bianchi also claimed that the walk-through nude scene in the bedroom where Tatiana meets Bond was done by a body double and not her.
• False-Flag Operation: A shtick of Blofeld and SPECTRE. As part of his long-term Evil Plan to Take Over the World, Blofeld is Playing Both Sides.
  • SPECTRE pretends to be the KGB to steal the Lektor and destroy Bond.
  • SPECTRE performs one as the British early in the film, killing one of the Bulgarian drivers who work for the Soviets. This causes the Soviets to heat up the normally routine observations both sides play in Istanbul.
• Famous-Named Foreigner: Tatiana Romanova, named after the House of Romanov, the royal house of Russia, which did have a Tatiana.
• Fan Service: The catfight between the Gypsy women and the belly dance are purely for the male audience's viewing pleasure. In the book, it turns into Full-Frontal Assault.
• Fanservice Extra:
  • Lisa Guiraut's Belly Dancer character; she has no dialogue of any sort, and her sole function in the plot aside from titillating the audience for four minutes is that her performance, entirely by coincidence, provides distraction for the Russian agents sneaking up on the Romani camp.
  • Red Grant's masseuse at the SPECTRE training facility.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Kronsteen's arrogance and smugness bites him hard in the ass. When asked by Blofeld to defend his plan, he could with ease, but doesn't think it's necessary. Instead, he simply remarks, "Who is Bond, compared with Kronsteen?" That's a bunk answer and it lets Klebb off the hook. The competition wasn't between Bond and Kronsteen, it was between Bond and Grant. Kronsteen stupidly lets Klebb change the parameters of the argument and pays for it with his life.
  • Rosa Klebb's fatal flaw is not properly vetting her people. Kronsteen says that his plan went wrong when Klebb chose Grant as Bond's assassin, and he has a point. She could have investigated Grant better and possibly uncovered his fatal flaw (which happened to be Greed), even though on paper he was totally the right guy.
  • "Red" Grant's greedy nature leads to his downfall in the film. For all the Bond Villain Stupidity mentioned elsewhere, none of it would actually have mattered if Bond hadn't been able to dupe him into trying to steal the fifty gold sovereigns (little more than $1000 in 2019 terms) from one of the two field equipment briefcases, which causes him to unwittingly activate a tear gas cartridge that gives Bond the opening he needs to take it down.
• Five-Bad Band:
  • The Big Bad: Blofeld
  • The Dark Chick: Rosa Klebb
  • The Dragon: Red Grant
  • The Evil Genius: Kronsteen
  • The Brute / Mook Lieutenant: Morzeny
• A Glass of Chianti: Bond first grows suspicious of Red Grant when he orders a glass of red Chianti (nonspecific red wine in the videogame adaptation) with fish, at the time a major faux pas for wine lovers. A case of Cuisine Marches On: nowadays, it's not a faux pas to drink red wine with fish or white with meat (there's a number of white wines that go very well with some particular kinds of meat, and a number of red wines that mix perfectly with fish.)
• Grievous Bottley Harm: During the Gypsy Fight, one of the Gypsy women picks up a bottle to bludgeon her opponent, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Krilencu and his men.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Bond ends up strangling Red Grant to death with his own garrote.
  • The two SPECTRE helicopter henchmen die when Bond shoots the arm of the one who dropped grenades as he had just unpinned one, which falls into the aircraft. They don't have the time to throw it out before it explodes, ridding Bond and Tatiana of that threat.
  • Klebb is shot by Tatiana, whom she recruited, with the gun she brought.
• Honey Trap: Tatiana's purpose. Of course, because it's James Bond, she falls in love with him anyway.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Two of them. They end up together in James's bed.
• I Owe You My Life: Bond shoots a man who was about to kill a Gypsy leader. The leader declares him his honorary son. James cashes in the debt almost immediately by asking the leader to cancel a fight to the death between two young women.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: Grant pretends to be a British agent, but consumes red wine with fish, something a Brit would never do. He also says "cheero" instead of "cheerio", and "old man" instead of "old chap". Bond doesn't put two and two together until after Grant gets the drop on him, then curses himself for missing it.
• Insult Backfire: Bond actually works out SPECTRE's plan entirely by himself (once he's told it is SPECTRE, that is), but Red Grant is perfectly happy to fill in the details while he has him cornered at gunpoint.
• Just Between You and Me: Bond actually works out SPECTRE's plan entirely by himself, but Red Grant is perfectly happy to fill in the details while he has him cornered at gunpoint.
• Just Train Wrong:
  • In the establishing shot of the train leaving Beograd, the driving wheels of the locomotive are Boxpok driving wheels, which are of American design. This same shot shows a delta-style trailing truck while a Cartazzi design truck would be typical for an English locomotive.
  • The Orient Express is easily halted but real-life trains cannot stop so quickly, which is why many vehicles are wrecked on level crossings every year.
  • Some of the stock footage of the "Orient Express" clearly shows a British Railways train with red coaches in place of the blue Wagons-Lits sleeping cars.
• Kneel Before Zod: Grant orders Bond to be on his knees when he has him at his mercy.
• The Lancer: Kerim Bay, to Bond.
• Latex Perfection: A part of the opening tow show that the Bond Grant just killed was actually live practice.
• MacGuffin: The Lektor.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Grant disposes of Kerim Bey and a Russian agent by making it look like they killed each other. Bond and Tatiana's death is supposed to look like a Murder-Suicide, but (fortunately) the psychopathic Grant gets too caught up in making Bond beg for his life.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Rosa Klebb coerces Tatiana Romanova to defect to MI-6 → elaborate scheme hatched by SPECTRE to steal Lektor decoding machine from the Russians and selling it back to them while exacting revenge on Bond for killing their agent Dr. No.
• Mr. Fanservice: Bond himself, of course, appears shirtless as he prepares for a shower and has no fewer than three love scenes throughout the movie. Grant as well, who appears in a towel as he relaxes at SPECTRE's training center.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Grant's masseuse who strips down to her underwear, the Gypsy women who have a catfight and the belly dancer are purely for the male audience's viewing pleasure.
  • Plus, of course, there's Tatiana in the nightie on the train.
• Nebulous Evil Organization: SPECTRE.
• Nice to the Waiter: A porter in the hotel in Istanbul lightly coughs and asking Bond if he needs anything else, seemingly to remind him of the tip. Bond nonchalantly sticks what is apparently a rather large sum of money in the porter's pocket, saying, "No, only this." The porter is audibly grateful.
• Non-Indicative Name: None of the film is actually set in Russia. The plot itself is made to look like a Soviet one, but is actually devised by the supranational SPECTRE. Tatiana Romanova is Russian, and even then, when we meet her, she's working in Istanbul.
• Noodle Incident:
  • When M and his staff are listening to a recording of Bond and Tania while they're on a boat, Tania in particular makes references to things she and Bond did the previous night that aren't fully explained.
  • In the same recording, when Tania asks "Am I as exciting as all those Western girls?" Bond responds, "Well one time me and M were in Tokyo, we had an interesting experience..." M stops the recording at lightspeed.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Klebb gives Tatiana the choice of either participating in her honey trap of James Bond, or get shot.
• Oh Crap: The reaction of the two SPECTRE helicopter mooks when Bond shoots the arm of the one who just unpinned a grenade and dropped it inside the aircraft. Then BOOM!
• One Last Smoke: Defied - Grant's not that stupid. However, when Bond tells him he's willing to pay for it with the 50 gold sovereigns in his case, that grabs his attention.
• Orient Express: How Bond, Tatiana, and Karim Bey make their escape from Istanbul with the LEKTOR. Also features the first of several fights that Bond has on a train.
• Panty Shot: Tatiana Romanova uncrosses her legs briefly while being briefed by Rosa Kleb, letting her underwear be shown.
• Perfect Poison: Blofeld puts Kronsteen at ease by directing his anger at Rosa Klebb for their operation's failure - then having Morzenzy kick Kronsteen with a poisoned blade. He drops dead in a matter of seconds; Blofeld times it, observing they need to develop a faster-working poison.
• Pin Pulling Teeth: While dropping grenades on Bond from a helicopter, a SPECTRE mook pulls their pins with his teeth. For some reason he needs to have a grenade in each hand, even though another mook is flying the aircraft.
• Playing Both Sides: Blofeld's plan is to stage an elaborate revenge scheme against 007 for the death of Dr. No by stealing the LEKTOR cryptographic device from the Russians. Bond will be assigned to recover the device, where SPECTRE's hired assassin Red Grant, will kill Bond. They will then leak compromising photos of Bond and the Russian pawn, Tatiana Romanova, to the press and then sell the device back to the Russians, with neither the British nor the Russians knowing that this was set up by Blofeld.
• Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: Immediately prior to meeting Bond, there's a scene in which Grant dupes and kills another agent, and his dialogue is deliberately too quiet for the viewer to hear. His assumed English accent when he finally talks to Bond is thus that much more surprising. Grant is English, a criminal recruited by SPECTRE. Bond only assumes he's Russian because he doesn't know yet that SPECTRE has been playing the British and Russians off against each other so they can get the Lektor. In the original novel he's stated to be from County Armagh in Ireland, but this doesn't seem to be the case in the film.
• Pocket Protector: In the book, Bond takes Grant's bullet in his book; it still penetrates him, but not enough to disable him.
• Poisoned Weapons:
  • Rosa Klebb has a poisoned dagger in the toe of her shoe. At the end, she has a kicking fight with James Bond who pushes her against the wall with a chair until Tatiana Romanova shoots her. (Compare with the novel)
  • Morzeny has a similar shoe dagger, which he uses to execute Kronsteen for his failure.
• Prolonged Prologue: The first 25 minutes is made up entirely of exposition setting up the main story. Bond himself doesn't appear at all until 18 minutes into the film. The next 25 are spent on Bond waiting until it's time for his mission to recover the LEKTOR device and assisting his friend Kerim Bay, by the time the main story finally kicks off the film is 50 minutes in; nearly half the movie's running time.
• Psycho Lesbian: Implied with Klebb when she caresses Tatiana's hair while saying "a labour of love". Quite explicit in the novel, where Kronsteen notes that she has "overcome the sex instinct," and can have a lover tortured to death just as easily as a stranger; and her effort to seduce Tatiana sends the latter fleeing from the room.
• Ready for Lovemaking: Tania sneaks through the window of Bond's hotel room while 007 is getting ready to take a shower, and climbs into Bond's bed wearing precisely one black velvet neck ribbon and a pair of black silk stockings. (When Bond asks Tatiana if she wore anything at all when she snuck into his room, she replies, "This!", pointing to said ribbon. (Incidentally, this very scene is used to audition future Bond girls).
• Reverse Psychology: Bond makes an overly hasty grab for the second suitcase, to make Grant think he has a hidden weapon in there. This makes Grant insist on opening the suitcase himself, triggering the tear gas bomb.
• Revised Ending: The original novel had Bond struck by Rosa Klebb's poison-stained stiletto due to his Beretta jamming on him and brought to what was his death until Ian Fleming wrote Dr. No. The film has him survive and has Tatiana do away with Klebb, and ends with Bond and Tatiana riding triumphantly down Venice's Grand Canal. This was arguably for the better, to avoid a maudlin Downer Ending.
  • Besides which: Since Dr. No was the first Bond film, and M ordered Bond at the beginning of the film to replace his Beretta with the Walther PPK because of the Beretta jamming up on him (in an unseen incident that caused Bond to get injured), Bond didn't have the Beretta in the film version of From Russia with Love anyway.
• Right Under Their Noses: How Kronsteen gets the summons from SPECTRE during his chess match — printed on a paper coaster underneath a glass of water brought to him.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Cited by Kronsteen. British Intelligence will suspect they're being set up, but with the lure of getting hold of a LEKTOR won't be able to resist the challenge of outsmarting the Soviets. Bond makes several moves designed to outsmart this obvious trap (like stealing the LEKTOR a day early) but doesn't realise it's not the Soviets he needs to worry about.
  • Red Grant accepts a bribe of fifty gold sovereigns from Bond for a last cigarette, and then demands to know if he has any more. Bond makes an overly hasty grab for the other briefcase so that Grant will get suspicious, stop him and open it himself, setting off the tear gas bomb.
• Self Destructing Security: Bond's attache case has numerous built-in gadgets including a magnetically attached tear-gas canister stored inside. Opening the case without first rotating the clasps triggers the grenade and gives any would-be-snoop a face full of the gas. This turns out to be just the edge Bond needs when held at gunpoint by Red Grant, whose greed Bond uses to trick him into opening the case.
• Self-Plagiarism: The boat chase was inspired by The Red Beret, which was made by Albert R. Broccoli's Warwick Films and also directed by Terence Young and written by Richard Maibaum.
• Shoe Phone: This film is the first to have gadgets, although they are rather mundane compared to later versions. Specifically, the tear-gas bomb disguised as a tin of talcum powder, and Rosa Klebb and Morzeny's shoe-daggers. Grant has a wire garotte hidden inside his watch.
• Smart People Play Chess: Kronsteen, who is a literal chessmaster. Chess journalist George Koltanowski said that Kronsteen was based on USSR Grandmaster Paul Keres. He probably derives his name from synthesis with another Soviet Grandmaster, David Bronstein.
• Sniping the Cockpit: Downplayed. Bond shoots the co-pilot of the helicopter trying to kill him. The shot itself isn't anywhere near enough to bring it down on its own, but the fact that the co-pilot was holding a primed grenade at the time causes the helicopter to explode.
• So Much for Stealth: Grant breakS a twig during the pre-titles sequence — in a subversion, he picks up the twig and snaps it deliberately, presumably to get his target moving towards him.
• Spanner in the Works
  • Once Bond and Tania had got the Lektor, the plan was for Kerim to arrange for the train to stop so they can get into a car driven by his sons to an airport where they can get on a plane to London via Athens. Unfortunately, Grant murders Kerim, forcing Bond to send for help in finding a new escape route.
  • Col. Klebb would have killed Bond and made off with the Lektor is Tania hadn't had a sudden change of heart.
• Spotting the Thread: Red Grant is impersonating Captain Nash, Bond's MI6 contact in Yugoslavia. Bond is initially suspicious as "Nash" calls him "Old Man" rather than "Old Chap" like a Briton would, so he inspects his briefcase and finds the standard-issue MI6 equipment, allaying his fears. However, during dinner, Nash orders red wine with his seafood dish rather than white wine, something that no cultured Briton would do, he "accidentally" spills Tatiana Romanova's glass and slips some pills in while refilling it and toasts with "cheero" instead of "cheerio". Bond starts to see that Nash isn't who he seems, however, he doesn't put two and two together till after Grant gets the drop on him.
• Stand in Portrait: Some of the scenes featuring Rosa Klebb had to be reshot after the set was struck. The solution was to blow up a still frame from the existing footage and film the reshoot with Lotte Lenya standing in front of her own image.
• Spy Speak: Exchanged between Bond and one of Kerim's sons when he arrives in Istanbul.
• Stocking Filler: Daniela Bianchi (to be precise, she wasn't wearing garters, but black silk stockings rolled above the knees; this isn't clearly seen in the scene as released, but an alternate version was shot - there are several promotional photos from that version - which clearly show her exposed, stockinged legs).
  • The "alternate version" from which those photos come was actually a screen-test of Bianchi. According to 007 film lore, this scene has been used ever since to screen-test potential "Bond girls".
• Supervillain Lair: SPECTRE Island.
• Super Wrist Gadget: Long before Bond himself began wearing Omega watches with all kinds of cool functions, Red Grant wears a watch with a garrotte wire concealed in the winding mechanism.
• Surprise Checkmate: Kronsteen doesn't quite manage checkmate, but gets his opponent's king pinned down to a single square. The opponent sees that the game is hopeless and surrenders. This is partly in the interest of realism; nobody gets checkmated at the grandmaster level (and a good bit below that). A decent player always knows when to resign; to do otherwise is considered boorish.
• Terrifying Pet Store Rat: Averted. Because of difficulties getting the right reactions from tame rats, the production ended up using real wild rats — described in marketing materials as "ferocious and disease-ridden" — caught in the sewers of Madrid.
• Title Drop: Bond writes "From Russia, with love" on the photo of Tatiana that he gives to Moneypenny. The title is also heard in the song 'From Russia With Love' (sung by Matt Munro) which can be heard playing on the radio when Bond first appears in the film.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • Bond's reaction to the death of Kerim Bey. Notable in the fact that it is one of the few times we ever see Bond mad at all.
  • Bond is also angry when he sees "Nash" slip drugs into Tatiana's drink during dinner on the Orient Express. After they take her back to their cabin, Bond decides to talk to "Nash" in private, where Bond immediately takes out his gun and looks sorely tempted to kill him right then and there.
• Travel Montage: We pan over a map to show a ride with the Orient Express through Yugoslavia, with stock footage mainly of British trains in the background. A cheap method but understandable. With a budget of only 2 million USD Bond was still low budget at that time back in 1963.
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: The music in the mosque shifts up a half-step twice over 30 seconds. First it starts at G Major when Tanya leaves the map at the base of the column, shifts up to A-Flat Major when the Russian agent is killed by Grant, and then to A Major when the camera reveals Grant and as Bond finds the dead agent and the map.
• Unbuilt Trope: The film was made before the conventions of the series had become rote, and as such has a very different feel to later Bond films. The big Trope Codifier for the Bond films was the next film: Goldfinger.
• Video Inside Film Outside: during an external shot of Venice, a preemptive reference appears to the Monty Python sketch;

Tatiana: Behave yourself, James! We're being filmed...

• Villain Ball: Grant could have easily shot Bond at any point, killed Tatiana, made it look like a murder suicide and carried out the plan without a problem. Instead he chose to gloat and be greedy, letting Bond trick him. Even if he hadn't, his initial plan of shooting Bond until Bond kissed his feet would have probably put the plans in serious danger. This is what you get when you hire a semi-intelligent sadistic psychopath to be your primary assassin, KGB.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: Averted (or rather, Unbuilt Trope): Bond's gear is nothing like as outlandish as it would become in later films. The most "gadgety" equipment he has is the suitcase, containing spare ammo, hidden strips of gold coins, throwing knives, a disassembled rifle that (except for the too-small infrared sight) is available commercially, a Suicide Pill (In the novel, anyway - and Bond threw it out. No mention of it is made in the film) and a tear gas booby trap, all of which are multipurpose and could be used in nearly any mission, not just one specially written for the gadget.
• Would Not Hit a Girl: Averted: Bond is very willing to hit Tatiana when he thinks she has something to do with the death of Kerim Bay.
• You Have Failed Me: Kronsteen, who ends up becoming the first henchman killed by his boss of the series.
  • The use of this trope started out more as a subversion as it was made to look like Rosa Klebb was to be executed for her failure. Even more so, her tone made it sound like she was ready to pay the price for her failure.

• You Have Failed Me: Stated by Red Grant to Bond on the train. The only reason SPECTRE kept Bond alive up to that point was for him to get the Lektor, and with it within their grasp, Bond and Tatiana are now expendable (That and the fact that the half the point of the mission was to kill Bond in a way that would embarrass MI6, which Grant was now set up to do). Unfortunately for SPECTRE, things don't go as planned.