Golden II Kicker: Track 7:From Russia With Love:
The editors of this web site decided to honor the 50th anniversary of the James Bond movies (and the music) with the release of the Disk coordinator 0014 series of disks. Tracks from the "From Russia With Love" soundtrack were selected for the three CDs that make up the 0014 collection. The 007 theme was selected for the Golden II disk which consists of fast Israeli dance music.
The film version of "From Russia With Love" premiered in the fall of 1963 in England and in Spring of 1964 in most other countries. The movie is the adaption of the 1957 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming - the fifth of his James Bond thrillers. When Fleming created the character in 1952 (the first book, Casino Royale was published in 1953) he envisioned a relatively bland figure who became involved with large scale events. To emphasize this, he looked for the most non descript male name he could find and the name James Bond fit his need. But as this relatively boring, perhaps bordering on banal, individual does his job - almost a sort of international policemen even more so than a spy - he is put into action sequences - gun fights at the minimum - at least once per book.
And so it was when the pre-production of the movie version of "From Russia With Love" was in progress. It became clear that there would be a need to cover musically at least two action scenes where Bond is on the middle of large fights. In the end, because of script rewriting, there were much more than these two such events eventually filmed but this script's interests are in the Gypsy camp fight (which originally appears in the novel) and the Soviet Embassy brawl which was written specifically for the movie.
The late 1950's and early '60s were not what we would now call politically correct. Women were designated as girls and put in what we would now all agree were demeaning positions. The prelude to the gypsy fight scene that occurs between the gang of Gypsy men versus the gang of Russian operatives (in the book these attackers are claimed to be Bulgarians in the employ of the Russians) is such an example of this earlier era depiction of women in both the book and the movie. In the movie, as pictured at the top, Bond is serenaded by the same belly dancer who was used for the opening credits of the movie. In both the book and the movie it is explained that two of the younger gypsy women, Zora and Vida, are in a love triangle with the Gypsy chief's son and have sworn to kill the other in the event the son opts to marry the rival. Right below we show the result of this triangle in terms of stills from the movie.
The gypsy encampment will resolve this in a most brutal fashion. Both women will fight to the death. The actresses playing the gypsy women are Martine Beswick and Aliza Gur. The fight was tremendously scripted pictorially by the director, Terence Young and was one of two such scripted fights of this movie. Besides this staged fight (known as the Cat Fight for those studying the James Bond movies), you also had the train fight scene between Bond and Grant played by Sean Connery and Robert Shaw. Both these fights were filmed on sets at Pinewood studios and like Hitchcock's sequencing of Janet Leigh's death in a shower, they were made up of takes and retakes under the direction of Young.
Martime Beswick, playing Zora, was born to English parents in Jamaica. She could have played Honeychile Rider just from her own experiences but was told by Young, when she auditioned for a part in Dr No to gain some experience and he would cast her in the next movie. Sure enough. here she appears in the next James Bond movie, From Russia With Love. But this was not the only James Bond experience for this actress. She played one of the British agents in the bahamas, assistant to Sean Connery's James Bond, in Thunderball - the fourth of the Bond movies and the last Bond movie that Terence Young directed.
Aliza Gur, playing Vida, was a contestant in the 1960 Miss World contest representing Israel that year. At that contest she roomed with Daniela Bianchi who was the 1960 Miss Italy and runnerup in the 1960 Miss World contest. Bianchi played Titiana Romanova in From Russia With Love and one assumes that this connection got Aliza the part. Aliza's parents were German Jews who fled Hitler and settled in Palestine where Aliza (birthname of Aliza Gross) was born in 1944.
This fight between the gypsy girls comes at a critical time both in the movie and the film. In the book, a planned Russian conspired attack will occur at the Gypsy camp coincident (although this coincidence is not planned) with the girl fight and specifically with the last picture above as Vida has Zora cornered. Bond has been identified to the attackers and they are instructed not to harm him although in the book he is jumped by several attackers who then leave him rolling on the ground unharmed as they go and fight the gypsy contingent. He is able to bring his gun fire skills to bear as he kills several attackers and saves the life of Darko Kerim (better known as Kerim Bey) the British Secret Service station chief for Turkey. For movie lovers, this is a very poignant set of scenes as Darko Kerim is played by Pedro Armandariz, the famous Mexican American actor, who was literary dying of bone cancer in this, his last movie, while these scenes were being shot on the movie sets in England.
In the film Bond also survives the onslaught of the gypsy camp with the same gun battle intensity but he is guarded by Red Grant, played by Robert Shaw, who is hiding in a loft while gunning down those attackers who are threatening Bond. The bottom pictures show stills of the action of the movie.
The cat and gypsy fight, not to mention the film only invasion of the Russian Embassy, are accompanied by the music of John Barry. In the first Bond movie, Barry is called in to provide a real arrangement for the James Bond theme used as a backdrop to the beginning and ending credits of Doctor No. In that movie individual pieces of music were used by Monty Norman, in charge of the music for Dr No, for the different action scenes and the inspiration for this music was Norman's visit to Jamaica while Dr No was being filmed. A variation of "Three Blind Mice" is used for the initial scenes of that movie which include the killing of the British Secret Service personnel. Another song, Underneath the Mango Tree, serves as a backdrop to the dispensing of Professor Dent and Jump Up, Jamaica is in the background as Bond again confronts one of Dr No's agents in Pusfella's bar.
From Russia With Love's theme, used as kickers for G11 and Golden III, was written by Lionel Bart but this was the limit of his contribution to the soundtrack. Arrangement and other incidental music was created by John Barry. It is said that Barry accompanied the movie crew to Turkey to try to pick up local music that could be used in the film but did not find any appropriate music for the taking. Therefore on his return to England, he was forced to come up with his own idea of appropriate music. And he was fighting several battles: (1) How to incorporate the underlying theme of Bart's composition into the background and incidental music of the movie: (2)How to apply the James Bond theme that had been created in the prior movie, Dr No: (3)How to camaflauge his own composition of music to make it appear as gypsy and turkish based and finally (4)how to handle these action sequences, two of which - the cat fight and gypsy fight - are discussed here and occur sequentially about a third of the way through the movie.
In the case of the gypsy camp scenes prior to the attack, a set of music accompanies a belly dancer as she entertains the camp (not to mention Bond and Kerim) before the cat fight is to begin. As the cat fight begins, track 5 - Girl Trouble - plays in the background. For the first 28 seconds it sounds as if there is no music but the background does have a very soft drum beat. At 28 seconds the music explodes corresponding to the actresses fighting on the screen. The music builds because another event is about to interfere with the cat fight - the attack by the Russians on the gypsy camp.
Now there is another piece of music - track 7 - that serves as a background of music to the attack. This is the first instance of the 007 theme. One assumes that Barry would have liked to use the James Bond theme here but the Bond theme, even though Barry manipulated this theme through various movies including FRWL, is too set for scenes like this. The Bond theme would eventually be used in future action scenes in future movies where there was limited and spread points of impact such as the Helicopter fight in "You Only Live Twice". Barry needed a theme where high points could be created - allowing for quick, rapid and prominent high notes of music - when Bond is fighting up close, dirty and personal.
So, Barry created a second Bond movie theme for this purpose which we know today as the 007 theme. In this movie this theme is used as music background here and in the Russian Embassy as he steals the Lektor, the crytography machine. You can hear this theme as the kicker to the Golden II CD of the disk coordinator 0014 series and on track 7 and 18 of the "From Russia With Love" movie soundtrack. Track 18 is longer with more repetition but it works, as we suspect Barry wanted it to, by hitting the high notes at the highpoints of both melees.
By the way, the 007 theme served more than this and subsequent Bond movies. It was the theme to a type of local TV newscast that became popular in the middle 1960's known typically as Eyewitness news. It is probable that the Eyewitness newscast for KYW channel 3 in Philadelphia was the first station to go with this theme.
And that brings us to our kicker discussion here. A disappointment in the movie soundtrack was the placement of Girl trouble and the 007 theme. In the movie there is no discernable break. An explosion is heard and the 007 theme starts. On the record, the two tracks are separated. So this web site is pleased to remedy this 50 year oversight. Theoretically, you should be able to press the button and hear the two tracks consecutively as in the movie. However, we have noticed that Firefox seems better at this than Microsoft's IE.
