007 Dreams: From Russia With Love

Previously I discussed the early James Bond films as oneiric kino, elevating Ian Fleming's eh books into a kind of surreal art cinema. Nothing better illustrates this point than the scene in From Russia With Love which shares a motif with Fellini's inexplicable softcore giantess fetish porn short from Boccaccio 70 (yes this is a real film), specifically a giant Anita Ekberg billboard, with a man helplessly dangling from it.

Should have drank moar milk.

Did Fellini rip off From Russia With Love? Maybe. Was based Anita considered for Doctor No because of her famous role in La Dolce Vita? The timeline fits, but then again perhaps it had more to do with her Venusian sea emergence at the opening of Screaming Mimi (which is also a real film).

I'm not really going anywhere with this, I just thought it was interesting.

Most of the film is taken up with a fairly boring story about a typewriter, a ditzy Russian defector, and a random catfight between two gypsies, and one of the most egregious cases of the "talking killer" syndrome in the movies. But there is a standout action sequence shamelessly ripped off from North By North West in which Bond fights a helicopter, followed by a pretty good boat chase.

Likes: martinis, Aston Martins, dicking Russian agents. Dislikes: helicopters.

Nonetheless the best part of this movie is a character who has about five minutes of screentime and no minutes of facetime. Ernst Blofeld is the perfect illustration of the less-is-more axiom in practice. Just using the simple trick of not showing his face creates an air of mystery and menace around the character that made him an instant icon. In fact he's such a cypher in this film he's even credited as "?". He reminds me of Michael Anderson's character in Mulholland Drive: the shadowman behind the curtain pushing everyone around the board for his own unfathomable ends.

Pictured with kitty.

This has nothing to do with the character in the books, who is a batshit crazy suicide cult leader who sits around in full samurai armour and fites Bond irl, which is retarded enough to be funny, but as usual the movies elevated the source material from the merely ridiculous to something resembling the sublime. Unfortunately this would all be ruined by the huge fuckup that was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but for now Blofeld was the best movie villain ever, all without ever getting out of his chair.