film information
Produced by Albert R. Broccoli & Harry Saltzman
Directed by Terence Young
Screenplay by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood
World Premiere 10th October 1963 (London, England)
US Release Date 8th April 1964
Worldwide Box Office $78,900,000 US
Budget $2,000,000 US
Running Time 116 Minutes
james bond
bond girls
Daniela Bianchi (Tatiana Romanova)
q-branch
posters
vehicles
bond villains
Robert Shaw (Donald ‘Red’ Grant)
Anthony Dawson (Ernst Stavro Blofeld)
bond allies
locations
SPECTRE Island; London; Venice and Istanbul plus a number of locations on the Orient Express through Yugoslavia that include Belgrade and Zagreb heading for Trieste.
bond james bond
Bond does not use his trademark introduction in From Russia With Love.
behind the scenes
Once again Bob Simmons is James Bond in the gunbarrel sequence, not Sean Connery.
In the original shoot of the pre-title sequence when Donald ‘Red’ Grant had killed the ‘impostor’ 007 and took his mask off, the man underneath still looked remarkably like Sean Connery. To avoid this a distinctive moustache was added.
Bond is never seen gambling in From Russia With Love, he never orders a "Medium dry, Vodka Martini, Shaken not Stirred" but instead drinks medium sweet coffee.
The actor intended to play Captain Nash, whose place Grant takes at the Zagreb train station, didn’t actually show up for filming. Location manager Bill Hill performed the role instead.
The wife of producer Harry Saltzman is leaning out the window of the Orient Express next to the window containing Robert Shaw as it leaves the station.
The scene in the sewers where Bond, Kerim Bey and Tatiana Romanova are chased by hundreds of rats was quite a challenge. English law stated that wild rats could not be used in film production. White tame rats were used, instead, but coated in coca powder! However, the rats didn't last this way for long, as they licked each other clean. The scenes were finally shot in Madrid, where the rats were gathered by a local rodent collector. §
