Red Wine With Fish? (James Bond - From Russia With Love (Ultimate Edition, 2 DVDs))

Member Name: Brett Bligh

Product:	James Bond - From Russia With Love (Ultimate Edition, 2 DVDs)
Date:	26/08/01 (183 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovingly remastered anamorphic print, excellent array of extras, aesthetically very well designed interactive menus.

Disadvantages: Mono soundtrack, compilation audio commentary, occasionally irritating menus.

MGM DVD started well with their James Bond DVD collection releasing the first and most recent titles in the film series (‘Dr. No’ and ‘The World is Not Enough’ respectively) to much acclaim. Both discs contained an excellent array of extras together with stunningly mastered prints of the films themselves, an achievement especially in the case of the first film due to its vintage. The next release in the series was, logically enough, to be the second ever James Bond film, ‘From Russia With Love’, and here, once again, MGM pulled out all the stops to produce a DVD which is a credit to the film’s name.


THE FILM
The international criminal organisation SPECTRE plan to steal a top-secret Soviet encryption device, the Lektor decoder. In order to do this SPECTRE’s leader, Blofeld, enlists the aid of world chess champion Kronsteen to create the perfect plan in which the British and Russians will be pitted against each other, each believing the other to be responsible for actions actually carried out by SPECTRE.

The person SPECTRE assigns to enact the plan is Rosa Klebb, a former Soviet security chief who has defected to SPECTRE, the defection having not been reported widely in Russia for obvious reasons. Klebb dons her old uniform and convinces Tatiana Romanova, a loyal Soviet embassy operative in Istanbul, to offer the Lektor to the British in what the British will know is an obvious trap. SPECTRE plan to help the British steal the Lektor, and then seize it from the British agent, James Bond, en route back to England, and it is also planned to kill Bond in a particularly unpleasant manner, due to his involvement in the death of SPECTRE agent Dr. No. Bond enters the fray, aware that he is walking into a trap but completely unaware *whose* trap, and the web of conspiracy begins to close.

By modern standards From Russia With Love is quite an unusual James Bond film. Firstly, it does not feature
any major plot for world domination, taking in its stead a rather more low-key plot to steal an encryption device from a Russian embassy which is perhaps more believable since I would imagine that at many points during the Cold War this is exactly what British intelligence and the CIA planned to do. Secondly, it features Bond in a slightly different role to usual, a role somewhat smaller and more reactive than is traditional in the film series.

The acting is serviceable throughout, marred by the occasionally poor dubbing, with many of the characters taking on a genuinely menacing character which perhaps the Bond series would do well to look back at nowadays for inspiration. The real strength of the film, however, is in the plotting and the action sequences — in terms of action, from the famous fight in the train cabin between Bond and SPECTRE agent Grant to the utter chaos of the gypsy camp, From Russia With Love arguably contains some of the best-loved set-piece sequences of all the Bond films. Combining this with a reluctance to follow the prevalent Sixties trend of setting the Russians in moustache-twirling villain mode allows the film to remain much fresher today than many of its contemporaries, and in fact From Russia With Love is an enjoyable, relaxing experience for its 115-minute duration.


THE DISC

· Distributor: MGM [16175DVD Z1].
Although the James Bond collection of DVDs is nothing short of excellent both in terms of presentation and content, be warned that the MGM label is, in itself, no great guarantee of quality. Outside the James Bond series, MGM’s releases of several films have been found to be somewhat lacking.

· Rating: PG.
From Russia With Love is a classic 1960s action film suitable both for film buffs and family audiences alike. Even the political issues of the time are handled with some sensitivity and, with the possible exception of how easily Tatiana seems to defect at the end, I t
hink it would be very difficult to find anything offensive about this film at all; this is, therefore, a sensible rating. Much of the action is gritty, especially the fist fight between Bond and Grant in the train cabin, but it stops short of actually being gratuitous.

· Region: 2 (PAL encoding).
Region 2 is intended for Europe (including the UK) and Japan, whilst PAL is a system used by the UK and Australia, among others. Essentially, this disc will play on any region 2, multi-region or region-free player which is compatible with PAL playback — if you bought your player in the UK there should be no worries whatsoever.

· Type and case: DVD9 with black Amaray keepcase.
A DVD9 is a 12cm, single-sided but dual data-layered disc. No flipping of the disc will be required. The black Amaray keepcase is a DVD standard case, the inlay card in this case seeming to have been specifically designed for this DVD release rather than simply ripped from some old poster artwork for the film. The spine of the disc is intended to fit together with all other James Bond Special 007 Edition DVDs in MGM’s range to form the 007 gun logo symbol. Altogether, this is an attractive package.

· Running time: feature 1 hour 55 minutes approx.
The print contained herein is that of the theatrical release. No cuts have been made, although this is, in this case, to be expected.

· Picture format: 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.
According to the IMDb, From Russia With Love was originally filmed on a 1.37:1 negative so that it could later be framed differently according to the standard formats of the different markets at the time (1.85:1 for the US and 1.66:1 for Europe). Hence, since there is no ‘original’ exhibition ratio — apart, I suppose, from full framing the film at 1.37:1, something which I, personally, would rather dislike — the disc producers have opted for the most sensible option of cropping the film to fit th
e modern widescreen TV exactly at 16:9 (1.78:1).

Given the film’s age the print is stunningly presented, the colours vibrant, lively and realistic and the contrast spot on. Blacks are black, fleshtones are good-to-superb throughout, and the film’s opening credit sequence, in which coloured credits are projected onto the writhing form of a belly dancer, are a joy to watch. The film is presented anamorphically, hence increasing the screen resolution by a third over a non-anamorphic print on a widescreen TV — this is, for me, quite simply the only way to go for DVD, and adds the icing to the cake on a print which is wonderfully presented throughout.

· Audio: mono.
This, perhaps, is a slight disappointment, and I am sure that it would have been possible to remix the soundtrack in order to have presented, on the disc, surround (or at least stereo) sound. Of course, given the age of the film the mono soundtrack is not entirely unexpected, and the actual quality is pretty good throughout, with only a couple of transition crackles throughout marring an otherwise perfectly rendered soundtrack.

· Subtitles: English and English HOH.
Both sets of subtitles are removable and the wording of dialogue on both identical, with the usual level of simplifications made for reading purposes. HOH (Hard Of Hearing) subtitles, of course, describe sounds as well as dialogue.

· Extras: ‘Inside From Russia With Love’ documentary, ‘Harry Saltzman: Showman’ documentary, Audio Commentary, Theatrical Trailers, Television Adverts, Radio Adverts, The From Russia With Love Gallery.

Inside From Russia With Love is a 33-minute documentary presented in 4:3 aspect ratio, narrated by Patrick Macnee. It charts the creation of development of the second James Bond film, taking as its starting point the reason Saltzman and Broccoli chose to film this book as their next film (it had recently been listed by US Preside
nt Kennedy as one of his 10 favourite books, making it an instant bestseller in the US; the producers hoped this publicity would rub off on their film adaptation). The documentary overall is very interesting and covers a wide variety of matters relating to the film, including problems with adapting the book into a script, accidents during filming including setting off a huge explosion at the wrong time and director Terence Young’s helicopter crashing into a lake while he was filming, to the very grave situation which developed when an absolutely key member of the cast, Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz, discovered mid-way through filming that he was terminally ill. Clips from interviews with a wide range of people are used, including both the actors who appeared in the film and the crew behind it, and altogether this is an excellent look at this enduring film and the fascinating story behind it.

Harry Saltzman: Showman is a 26-minute long documentary covering the life of the James Bond film series’ OTHER producer, narrated by Marie Clairu and presented in 4:3. Saltzman was, it seems, a larger-than-life kind of person who loved spectacle and theatrics and who, for the first nine films, brought his flair and creativity onto the James Bond set. Once again, this is an engaging and well produced look at a facet of the James Bond film mythos, although this documentary suffers in comparison to the one above due to its less able narrator.

The Audio Commentary is, as with the Dr. No release, a collection of audio clips culled from a myriad of sources and featuring comments from a wide range of people. These commentaries show a very large amount of commitment from MGM to these James Bond DVDs, and this is, of course, to be commended. Personally, however, I prefer to be led through a film by one person (or perhaps a group of people) who is actually watching the film as they make their comments, and consequently I am not actually much of a fan of thes
e compilation commentaries, especially since very often what is being discussed on the commentary is not actually something happening at that moment on the screen. Still, audio commentaries are always welcome, and many Bond fans will doubtless find a couple of hours of solid entertainment herein.

Three theatrical trailers are included: the original theatrical trailer, the Dr. No/From Russia With Love double bill trailer and the From Russia With Love/Thunderball double bill trailer. These are in excellent condition given their age and the general lack of consideration given to the storage of trailers. Even better, they are presented in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen for optimum effect!

Three television advertisements are included, all three for the From Russia With Love/Thunderball double bill. These adverts are presented in 4:3 ratio and are in somewhat worse condition than the theatrical trailers with the sound particularly depthless, but they are all perfectly watchable and a commendable addition to the disc.

The radio adverts also number three and are also all related to the From Russia With Love/Thunderball double bill. Each plays as an accompaniment to a still screen on which a stylised depiction of Sean Connery’s Bond carrying a gun appears, and each is in reasonable condition, with hiss and crackles to a bare minimum for something of this vintage and nature.

The From Russia With Love Gallery consists of the usual format of still images through which the user navigates by the use of a ‘Next’ button. The gallery is separated into 8 sections: ‘The Filmmakers’, ‘Ian Fleming’, ‘Portraits’, ‘Pinewood’, ‘Dressed To Kill’, ‘Lovely … Lovely’, ‘Tatiana Meets Rosa Klebb’ and ‘Istanbul’. I have never made any secret of not being a fan of photo galleries on DVDs, but in this case the selection of images is interesting and
varied and as such galleries go this is an interesting addition to the disc, rounding off the release nicely.


· Menus: the menus are very attractively designed indeed. As the disc loads an abstract interpretation of a chess set appears onscreen, together with the opening chords of the James Bond theme. Selecting ‘Activate’ in the screen centre loads the main menu, featuring a red-based design including a five-point star, Sean Connery looking suave with a gun and a selection of clips from the film itself, all occasionally baptised by a glowing fire and accompanied by an instrumental rendition of the From Russia With Love theme. Transition between menus is also animated well, and though the other menus themselves (for scene selection, special features, etc.) are static they are designed to the same aesthetic standard using the same motif. Perhaps the only quibble I might raise is with the main menu — its animation runs on a cycle of exactly thirty seconds, which is fine, but it also returns the cursor to a default location (upper left, ‘Play’) at the start of each cycle, no matter where else the user may have moved it. This, however, is a minor complaint, and in general this is a solid job well done.


CONCLUSION
From Russia With Love is, quite simply, an excellent DVD release. The film itself is one of the best of the entire James Bond series, and the first in the series to include such Bond trademarks as Q’s gadgets and an elaborate opening credits sequence. As for the disc, the print of the film is an excellent one, remastered beautifully and presented anamorphically, and the extras, especially the documentaries created specifically for the release, are generally top-notch. Altogether, despite my reservations about the audio commentary and the mono soundtrack to the film itself, I have no qualms about giving this release full marks and wishing that more DVD releases of 1960s films could meet this hig
h standard.

Summary: