Product Description

2 Disc Collector's Edition

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27375 in DVD
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Formats: NTSC, Widescreen, Closed-captioned
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Running time: 111 minutes

Customer Reviews

One of the Best James Bond Films
There is not much more that can be added to what has already been written or said about FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. It is considered to be one of the better Bond films in the series.

Before I get on to the main point of what I have to add, I do want to comment on the widescreen versions that have been issued. I am not sure what the proper aspect ratio of this film is. In a comparison of the DVD to the Laser Disc, the DVD appears to have been cropped at the top and bottom to give it a wider effect. The proportions of the prints I saw in several theaters all resembled the Laser Disc.

My more important note of curiosity however is the content of the film itself. I still have not seen any version on VHS, Laser or DVD as the ones I have seen in the theater for FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

It appears that on video two scenes contain cuts.

Cut # 1: When Red Grant has Bond on his knees at gunpoint aboard the Orient Express, he editorializes in a most graphic manner about the roll of film that was shot of Bond and Tatiana in the boudoir. For its time, this was a rather risqué piece of dialogue. By today's standards it is somewhat timid. Bond's comeback is still intact on the video, responding to Grant how it took a collection of pretty sick minds to dream up such a scheme. That was a direct response to Grant's cut line and gives us an insight into Bond's moral standards that there is a line that even he would not cross given his flare for the more amorous pursuits.

Cut # 2: This cut line is more obvious and comes at the end of the film when Bond and Tatiana are floating down the canals of Venice. Bond holds up the reel of film seized from Grant. Again, Bond makes a direct reference to Grant's cut line from the train in a droll throwaway remark to a puzzled looking Tatiana. You can actually see this cut because the music jumps. Once more, this cut line of dialogue gives us another glimpse into the James Bond mystique as it was still being formed and honed for the screen. I am sure Bond is probably saying to himself, "Take all the dirty pictures you want. I'm the one with the girl and Grant, "old boy," you're the one six feet under."

As for the film itself, it is one of the classic James Bond films and will remain so for all time. The tone of the series would be altered slightly from what director Terence Young had established in DR. NO and in this film. The next film, GOLDFINGER directed by Guy Hamilton, would retain the style established by Terence Young yet he would refine the character of James Bond with a more tongue-in-cheek approach. In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE James Bond is the dedicated civil servant with a licence to kill and he uses it in the assassination of Krilencu (Fred Haggerty) just as coldly and objectively as he had eliminated Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson) in DR. NO. For these reasons I believe there are two distinct camps in the ranks of Bond loyalists. One prefers the style or more specifically the portrayal of James Bond found in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, while the other faction favors that established in GOLDFINGER. The James Bond found in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is a much tougher fellow not to be seen again until ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and LICENCE TO KILL.

Another specific point about FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is the score composed by John Barry. Barry's score in this film is not as complex or melodically constructed as in his subsequent Bond scores. Yet, Barry's score is as old school as is Sean Connery's approach to the role and that is exactly the way it should have been. Barry's no-frills score compliments Connery's no nonsense Bond. In essence FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is a product of its time and a very good one at that.

The Best Bond Movie In The Franchise
After Dr.No's Success, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman Decided to get another Bond film on the work right away for the following year. Nowadays franchises don't usually have a movie every year (in exception of Saw) but the first 4 bond film came out every year. 1962 marked the release of Dr.No, 1963 "From Russia With Love", 1964 "Goldfinger" and 1965 "Thunderball. All these released one year after another.

Anyhow, From Russia with Love is in my opinion the best outing of Bond to this date. Only leaving Goldfinger as # 2, and Casino Royale as # 3. The reason why this movie works is because it feels like a spy movie. unlike the future Bond film that relied more on gadgets, implausible plots, and secret lairs that are so huge that I just can think how the villain got this all done in such short period of time. Well thank god this movie avoids future stupidity from the series. The movie has the most memorable fight scene in cinema history; Grant Vs 007, 2 pros going at it. And not to mention the tension and lines given by Grant in that scene.

The plot is also the most plausible in the franchise. S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is out for revenge after the death of Dr. No by 007. S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is planning to make the British steal a new LEKTOR decoding machine from the Russians. This way the Russians and British will be fighting and doubting each other...when in fact its S.P.E.C.T.R.E who's is behind it all. All of this so they can later kill Bond and obtaining it. It's not very complex, but it works extremely well as a spy/action movie, there is really no fantasy here, everything is believable. The best in the franchise is definitely worth owning on DVD re-mastered.





SPECIAL FEATURES


DISC 1:
> feature film re-mastered in high definition, using the original negative to bring the image to its best possible quality, eliminating any dirt or flickering.
> Audio Commentary featuring Terence Young and members of the cast
> Original Mono Track
> 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound
> 5.1 DTS Theater sound



DISC 2

> Ian Fleming: The CBS Interview
> Ian Fleming & Raymond Chandler Featurette
> Ian Fleming on Desert Island Discs
> Animated Storyboard Sequences
> Interactive Guide to the World Of 007
> Inside From Russia With Love
> Harry Saltzman: Showman
> Original Trailers & T.V. spots and Radio Communications



James Bond Will Return in "Goldfinger"



My PERSONAL RATING: 5 OUT OF 5

"You may know the right wines, but you're the one on your knees."
With an embryonic and not entirely successful Robert Brownjohn title sequence of credits projected onto body of belly dancer (some great spelling mistakes here, as `Monte' Norman and `Martin' Beswicke's agents probably pointed out!), Barry's first official Bond score and Blofeld's first (off-screen) appearance, the formula is clearly beginning to fall into place. This was also the first of the series to have a pre-title sequence, one of the few that relates directly to the film's plot, and it is still by far the most successful of any of them.

The gadgets that were to eventually get so out of hand make first appearance in form of Bond's ingenious attaché case, but at least here they are still entirely credible - nothing more extravagant than a well kitted-out briefcase and a breakaway sniper's rifle. Series regular Walter Gotell also makes his first appearance, though not as General Gogol but as the head of a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. training school. Unlike the cute and lovable old Russian bear at SMERSH in the Moore films, here he is cheerfully ruthless and businesslike, using live targets in training courses.

Bond's snobbery is much to the fore here. "Red wine with fish, that should have told me something," he tells Robert Shaw's working class homicidal paranoiac, the best and most genuinely threatening of the Bond heavies ("You may know the right wines, but you're the one on your knees."). It also establishes the sexual deviancy of the villains in Rosa Klebb's lesbian tendencies (very apparent as her hand wanders onto Daniella Bianchi's knee). With Bond such an amoral figure, the villains had to be even more immoral and perverse: always bastions of authority, usually millionaires they get their kicks planning global crimes, so depravity is simply foreplay to them. Even Vladek Sheybal's chess master Kronstein, looking for all the world like Vladimir Putin with mild indigestion, seems at a remove from mere mortal pleasures.

It's still the best of the series and most convincingly plotted, an excellent crane shot of the chequered setting for a chess tournament sets the scene for the chess-like nature of the plot as factions co-existing in uneasy truces are set off against each other. Indeed, directorially this is considerably more ambitious and assured than its predecessor, evident in the skilfully handled church scene and a beautifully blocked scene as Bond is followed along a train platform by Shaw inside the train.

Sadly, while pitched as the `Ultimate Edition,' the transfer is still problematic. The picture quality is certainly improved, but rather than the original British 1.66:1 ratio, it's presented in the cropped 1.85:1, but worse still, the ending is still missing footage of Bond examining the reel of compromising 8mm film in the gondola before the end title. As with Dr No there's not a huge amount of new extra material over the extras from previous release, all of which are carried over here, but it's pretty good - extracts from Ian Fleming on radio show Desert Island Discs, a TV interview with the author and a featurette on Fleming and Raymond Chandler.