James Bond’s licence to kill came close to expiring on his second big screen adventure.

Peter Hunt edits From Russia With Love and saves the film by reshaping the First Act making SPECTRE’s complex plan easier to follow.

1. Reorganizing the First Act

The problem of arranging the first act began with the novel itself.

The first third of the novel follows the villains as they set up their plan to humiliate British intelligence and kill James Bond. 

Bond, himself, doesn’t even appear in the novel until chapter 11. Appearing this late in the story would never work in a James Bond film. But there was one scene that had been shot that could introduce 007 in the opening minutes without jeopardizing the integrity of Ian Fleming’s original story.

The Birth of the Pre-Title Sequence

The scene involved killing James Bond in the first few minutes. The idea was the brainchild of producer Harry Saltzman, who wanted to open the film with a scene that would startle the audience. 

The scene, which never appears in the novel, follows killer Donovan “Red” Grant (Robert Shaw) as he sneaks up behind Bond in the dark and garottes him with a wire that extends from his wristwatch. Bond’s death is pure misdirection. Moments later, a face mask is removed from the corpse to reveal someone else entirely.

The whole scene has been a training exercise in killing 007!

The glimpse of Sean Connery keeps the focus on James Bond, who, despite being just another chap in a mask, is the villains’ intended target throughout the film.

The problem for director Terence Young and Hunt was how to open the movie with the scene. Young and Hunt decided to place Maurice Binder‘s Gunbarrel logo at the start, and then finish this scene with the opening credits and musical score.

The pre-title sequence was born. Separating the scene from the rest of the film made the scene impactful. The separation also decoupled the scene from the rest of the first act–the villain’s plan–which Hunt struggled to make logical.

More importantly for the rest of the Bond series, the now iconic pre-title sequence would not exist if there hadn’t been a problem with introducing James Bond earlier in From Russia With Love.

By setting Bond’s demise before the opening credits, Hunt makes the audience wonder why this mysterious group of people wants 007 dead. Then, after the opening credits,  Hunt could concentrate on bringing SPECTRE’s complicated plan for carrying out their revenge into focus.

Making SPECTRE’s Plan Clear

Four key scenes explain SPECTRE’s plan.

In the original edit, (1) Rosa Klebb visits SPECTRE island and inspects Red Grant, then (2) she recruits Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) in Istanbul. Then, we are taken to (3) Kronsteen’s chess tournament, before seeing (4) Kronsteen and Klebb meet with arch-villain Blofeld to discuss their plan to humiliate British intelligence and kill 007.

The arrangement is more like the novel, but it doesn’t work in the film and SPECTRE’s plan was difficult to follow.

Furthermore, the villains are changed from SMERSH in the novel to SPECTRE in the film, adding another layer of complexity to the plan. The plot is no longer about Russians trying to kill 007 and trick British intelligence, but an international criminal organization playing the Russians off against the British in order to kill James Bond and dupe MI6.

After much deliberation, Hunt begins with (1) the Chess tournament, then shows (2) the meeting with Blofeld so we understand why (3) Klebb visits SPECTRE island to meet Red Grant and why she needs to (4) recruit Tatiana in Istanbul as the honeypot to lure Bond.

2. Re-editing The Meeting With Blofeld

However, the new arrangement created a new problem: the meeting with Blofeld no longer made sense.

Young wanted to reshoot Blofeld’s meeting, especially with new dialogue, but the budget had already been pushed to its limit, and reshooting the scene would require rebuilding the interior set of Blofeld’s cabin, which was cost prohibitive.

Fortunately, Hunt and Young could work with the previously shot footage to match with new dialogue.

Blofeld never shows his face, so lip-syncing to new dialogue would not be a problem. Anthony Dawson, who played Professor Dent in Dr. No, sits in a chair and strokes the cat. For the dialogue, Young used an inspired voice talent: Eric Pohlmann.

Main: Blofeld’s face is never shown in From Russia With Love, allowing Terence Young to record new dialogue that reflected the final script rewrites. Top Right: Eric Pohlmann, an Austrian actor with an evocative accent gave Blofeld the most chilling voice he’s had in the series. Bottom Right: Anthony Dawson, who played Professor Dent in Dr. No, played the physical Blofeld in the scene, but went uncredited in the final film.

Pohlmann’s accent and voice inflection as Blofeld have never been matched. The duo of Dawson and Pohlmann proved so successful that they would reprise their dual role as Blofeld in Thunderball.

Recording new dialogue for Rosa Klebb and Kronsteen proved more difficult because they both face the camera for the entire scene.

Hunt employs a simple solution that requires reshoots of actress Lotte Lenya in front of a back projection shot of the interior of Blofeld’s cabin. Hunt explained the shot in the documentary Inside From Russia With Love:

“The only decent shot I had of the set background was a sort of medium shot of Lotte. And what I suggested was: ‘Why don’t we make a plate out of that, do it back projection and project the plate because she’ll be in front of herself and she’ll mask herself. Providing you keep a careful eye on it, it’ll be perfectly alright.'”

Hunt’s idea works. But Hunt is also faced with the related problem of having Lenya react to new dialogue from Blofeld as he uses his Chinese fighting fish as an analogy for how SPECTRE plays two enemies off against each other before striking when they’re both weakened. 

Hunt reverses footage of Lenya walking away from Blofeld’s fish tank so it looks like she is walking towards the tank as Blofeld speaks. Later in the same scene, Hunt plays the same footage forward to show her walking away from the tank. 

The gimmick works, allowing Terence Young to include Blofeld’s new dialogue with additional dialogue from Klebb, making the scene work as the introduction to Bond’s arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

The result is Bond’s narrative masterpiece, the most intricately plotted and assembled film of the series.