From Russia with Love (soundtrack)
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| From Russia with Love | ||||||||||||||
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| Soundtrack by John Barry | ||||||||||||||
| Released | 1963 | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | March 1963 | |||||||||||||
| Length | 34:20 | |||||||||||||
| Label | United Artists, reissues by Liberty and Capitol | |||||||||||||
| Producer | Frank Collura (Reissue) | |||||||||||||
| Professional reviews | ||||||||||||||
| John Barry chronology | ||||||||||||||
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From Russia with Love is the soundtrack for the 2nd James Bond film of the same name.
This is the first series film with John Barry as the primary soundtrack composer. The theme song was composed by Lionel Bart of Oliver! fame and sung by Matt Monro, although the title credit music is a lively instrumental version of the tune (segueing into the "James Bond Theme"). Monro's vocal version is later played during the film (as source music on a radio) and properly over the film's end titles.
John Barry, arranger of Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme" for Dr. No, would be the dominant Bond series composer for most of its history and the inspiration for the current lead Bond movie composer, David Arnold (who uses cues from this soundtrack in his own for Tomorrow Never Dies). In this film, Barry introduced the percussive theme "007" – action music that came to be considered the 'secondary James Bond Theme' and is used in various of the Bond films of Sean Connery, and also Roger Moore's Moonraker. The arrangement appears twice on this soundtrack album; the second version, entitled "007 Takes the Lektor", is the one used during the gunfight at the gypsy camp and also during Bond's theft of the Lektor decoding machine.
The completed film features a holdover from the Monty Norman-supervised Dr. No music – the post-rocket-launch music from No (after Bond disrupts No's attempts to jam the takeoff) appears in Russia at the conclusion of the helicopter attack, and also at the attempt of SPECTRE to intercept Bond's speedboat. This cue, incidentally lifted by Arnold for Tomorrow Never Dies, is naturally absent from the Russia soundtrack album.
As Barry himself notes, 1964's Goldfinger would be the first Bond film in which he had total creative control over the soundtrack, including the music of the theme song (Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley would contribute the theme's lyrics).
The original recordings of the soundtrack are thought to be lost and did not appear when the soundtracks were issued in remastered form on CD. The album is different from the film with the album's recording of the main titles not featuring an organ and sounds slower. Several tracks do not appear in the completed film.
Barry's "Stalking" - the haunting track from the pre-credit sequence between Bond and Grant - is echoed on the 1977 film version of The Spy Who Loved Me. It's in the scene which Bond (Roger Moore) and Anya 'Agent XXX' Amasova (Barbara Bach) try to hunt down Jaws (Richard Kiel) at an Egyptian restoration site. Ironically, the Spy soundtrack was not composed by Barry but by Marvin Hamlisch.
[edit] Track listing
- Opening Titles: James Bond Is Back/From Russia With Love/James Bond Theme
- Tania Meets Klebb
- Meeting In St. Sophia
- The Golden Horn
- Girl Trouble
- Bond Meets Tania
- 007
- Gypsy Camp
- Death Of Grant
- From Russia With Love – Matt Monro
- Spectre Island
- Guitar Lament
- Man Overboard/SMERSH In Action
- James Bond With Bongos
- Stalking
- Leila Dances
- Death Of Kerim
- 007 Takes The Lektor
