The depiction of sex and violence in From Russia With Love proved a
huge challenge for EON Productions as they sought to ensure an ‘A’
certificate in Britain for the second Bond film. Drawing on archive
material from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC),
LUKE G.
WILLIAMS takes an in-depth look at the censorship process surrounding the
film and examines how the James Bond films helped push the boundaries of
the ‘permissive society’ that was emerging during the 1960s.
The 1960s was a decade in which British society and popular culture
underwent a series of fundamental changes. Attitudes towards the depiction
of sex and violence within popular culture had been pretty puritanical
prior to 1960, but one event largely changed that – the trial of
Penguin Books under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act for publishing a
full and unedited edition of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's
Lover. The ‘not guilty’ verdict delivered by a jury of three women and
nine men on November 2, 1960 validated the clause in the 1959 Act that
‘obscene’ material could be published if it could be justified on the
grounds of the “public good” (i.e. artistic merit).
ABOVE: (left) The
cover of the 1960 Penguin Books paperback edition of Lady
Chatterley's Lover (1928). The trial of PenguinBooks under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 was a
high-profile public event and a test of the new obscenity law.(centre left) Following the ‘not guilty’ verdict on November
2, 1960 the book was free to be published for the first time in
the United Kingdom unedited, and sold its first print run of
200,000 copies on the first day of publication, going on to sell
over three-million copies in the next three months. Lady
Chatterley's Lover was only the second book ever to sell
in excess of one-million paperback copies in the UK (centre right)
The account of the historic trial was documented in APenguin
Special
paperback The Trial of Lady Chatterley: Regina V. Penguin Books
Limited: The Transcript of the Trial published in 1961.
(right) Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors, John
Trevelyan, holding a copy of his own 1973 book What the Censor
Saw.
One man who watched the
progress of the ‘Lady Chatterley trial’ with particular interest was John
Trevelyan (1903-1986) – then Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors (as the BBFC was then known) since 1958 and a BBFC ‘examiner’ since 1951. In the
wake of the trial, Trevelyan, under whose leadership the BBFC had become
gradually more liberal, reflected: “The British Board of Film Censors
cannot assume responsibility for the guardianship of public morality. It
cannot refuse for exhibition to adults films that show behaviour that
contravenes the accepted moral code, and it does not demand that ‘the
wicked’ should also be punished. It cannot legitimately refuse to pass
films which criticise ‘the Establishment’ and films which express minority
opinions.”
Trevelyan's attitude represented an important shift in the BBFC's
philosophy. The Board had been established on January 1, 1913 as an
independent censorship body with a mandate from the film industry and Home
Office to protect the moral sensibilities of the public by preventing the
classification of films which were “likely to be injurious to morality”.
But by the 1960s, as Bob Dylan sang, the times were ‘a-changin’ – and so
were the boundaries and definitions of what was considered art. The
old-fashioned notion that art should be morally elevating, or that
artists, whether they be novelists, filmmakers or whatever, should shy
away from controversial subjects, was being swept away. It wasn't a case
of moral standards necessarily changing, more a case of many of the
hypocritical double standards that governed perceptions of what was or
wasn't morally acceptable being removed. Trevelyan argued exactly this
point in his fascinating memoirs What the Censor Saw (1973): “The
phrase ‘permissive society’, which we have heard so often in recent years,
is misleading,” he wrote. “Human beings are much the same as they always
have been, and behaviour is no more wicked or licentious now than it was a
hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. The difference is that there
is now increasing honesty, and an increasing maturity of young people.”
ABOVE: (left)
Quad-crown poster for Look Back In Anger (1959) directed by
Tony Richardson, and executive-produced by Harry Saltzman. Based
on John Osborne's 1956 play, Look Back In Anger was part of
what became known as the ‘Kitchen Sink/Angry Young Man’ movement
that took the theatrical, cinematic and literary world by storm in
the late Fifties, with frank dialogue and realistic portrayals of
working class characters. Many of the early films that defined the
‘British New Wave’ were made by Woodfall Productions - a company
co-founded in 1958 by British director Tony Richardson (1928-1991)
and writer
John Osborne (1929-1994), with Canadian producer Harry Saltzman
(1915-1994), who would later team up with American Albert R.
Broccoli (1909-1996) to make the James Bond films. Most of these
films were granted an ‘X’ certificate on their original release,
but still went on to be commercially successful at the British
box-office. (right) The quad-crown poster for Peeping Tom
(1960) directed by Michael Powell (1905-1990). The film's
controversial subject matter and harsh reception by British
critics had a negative impact on Powell's career as a director in
the United Kingdom. Re-discovered and re-released in the USA by
American ‘New Wave’ director Martin Scorsese in 1979, Peeping
Tom attracted a cult following; and in later years has been
re-evaluated, and now widely considered a masterpiece of British
cinema. Peeping Tom (1960) was photographed by respected
Czech-born cinematographer Otto Heller (1896-1970), who would
serve as the uncredited second-unit director of photography on
Dr. No (1962). Otto Heller would later photograph all three of
the 1960s Harry Palmer films starring Michael Caine, and produced
by Harry Saltzman, from the novels of Len Deighton (who had
written a draft of the From Russia With Love screenplay in
1963).
It was against this more
liberal backdrop that the James Bond films entered into public
consciousness. Given the moral hand-wringing which had greeted the
increasing popularity of Ian Fleming's original Bond novels (most famously
expressed by Paul Johnson in his review of DR. NO, appearing in the New
Statesman on April 5, 1958 under the headline ‘Sex, snobbery and
sadism’), it was inevitable that some measure of moral controversy would
surround the Bond movies, based as they were on the exploits of a central
character conceived by Fleming as a trained killer with a liking for
casual sexual encounters. Producers Albert R. Broccoli & Harry Saltzman
were well aware that they would have to carefully gauge and control the
representations of violence and sex in the films if they were to avoid a
dreaded ‘X’ certificate, which would prevent the films from becoming a
mainstream box-office success. To cite a precedent, Michael Powell's
Peeping Tom had, in 1960, received an ‘X’ certificate and been greeted
with widespread criticism and moral revulsion, effectively ending Powell's
hitherto glittering and critically acclaimed career. Such a response to
the first Bond movie, Dr. No, could have wrecked Saltzman &
Broccoli's plans for a lucrative series of 007 films.
All of which explains why Saltzman met with the BBFC ahead of the
classification of Dr. No; as Trevelyan himself later recalled: “I
had a discussion with Harry Saltzman and we agreed that since he intended
to make a series of these films we should aim to get them all suitable for
the ‘A’ category since ‘X’ certificates would reduce his viewing
audiences.” A key factor in ensuring an ‘A’ certificate (which allowed
children under the age of 16 to watch a film, if accompanied by an adult)
was the insertion of humour into the Bond films, an element largely
missing from Fleming's original novels. Dr. No director Terence
Young is regarded by many Bond scholars as the man who insisted on this
change in approach, as he explained in an interview with
Richard Schenkman
in 1981: “The main thing is that one had to persuade Sean [Connery] and
everybody on the first picture that this picture was going to have a
certain style… Tongue-in-cheek, but no more than that. You had to play it
with a straight face, but the audience had to realise that there was a
little sense of humour lying around… An awful lot of funny bits in Dr.
No were knocked up on the set.”
ABOVE: (left) Sean
Connery, James Bond author Ian Fleming and co-producer Harry
Saltzman look at maps of Jamaica during pre-production on Dr.
No (1962). (right) Co-producer Albert R. Broccoli with Dr.
No director Terence Young at the Morgan's Harbour Hotel at
Port Royal in Kingston, Jamaica, which served as the location of
Puss-Feller’s bar over three days beginning Monday January 22,
1962.
Whether such humour was a
conscious attempt, from the start, to disarm the censor is unclear, but
Young's tongue-in-cheek approach certainly helped placate Trevelyan. “The
only reason I used to get away with a lot of it was because I always used
to try and make a laugh at the end of a violent scene,” Young later
admitted. “That was one of the traditions I set up … He [the censor]
giggled and laughed and he let us get away with it.” Editor Peter Hunt
recalled a further tactic that was used to sweeten up Trevelyan. “I got to
know him very well,” Hunt confessed. “He was a very reasonable man really… a very nice man. I got to be quite friendly with him. He liked to have a
couple of martinis, [so] the producers used to say to me: ‘Go on, Peter,
you take him out to lunch and [then] show him the picture.’ And I used to
enjoy showing him the picture and having lunch with him, putting a few
martinis in him and making him mellow!”
Nevertheless, when Dr. No was released in the UK in October 1962,
several critics were unimpressed by its ‘A’ certificate classification and
by the BBFC's perceived leniency and liberal attitude towards cinema's
newest ‘hero’. Richard Whitehall, writing in influential monthly magazine
Films and Filming, was particularly vituperative: “Oh, Trevelyan,
art thou sleeping in Soho?” he complained. “This is surely one of the
X'iest films imaginable, a monstrously over-blown sex fantasy of
nightmarish proportions. Morally the film is indefensible with its
lovingly detailed excesses, the contemporary equivalent of watching
Christians being fed to lions, and yet its lascivious dedication to
violence is genuinely hypnotic.” Whitehall went on to call Dr. No
“the perfect film for a sadomasochist society" although he admitted that
it lacked “the unrestrained nastiness of that other British mutation,
Peeping Tom”.
ABOVE: (left) Editor Peter Hunt watched
by director Terence Young in the Pinewood Studios cutting room.
(right) James Bond (Sean Connery) seduces Miss Taro (Zena
Marshall) in one of several scenes in Dr. No (1962) where
the lead character is shown to be morally ambiguous. Many of the
‘kitchen sink’ dramas of the late Fifties and early Sixties had
been awarded an ‘X’ certificate by the BBFC for this reason. Even
Woodfall's Oscar-winning British period comedy Tom Jones
(1963) starring Albert Finney, was rated ‘X’ when first released,
but subsequently re-rated ‘AA’ in 1971. Whilst the ‘X’ rating
(introduced by the BBFC in 1951) usually meant a restricted
audience, and routinely applied to horror films, Tom Jones
was another early Sixties film that broke the mould and was a
substantial hit for distributor United Artists. Tom Jones played
for a staggering 54-week unbroken run at the London Pavilion from June
26, 1963 to July 5, 1964 - going on to win four Academy Awards including
Best Film and Best Director.
Several other critics
echoed Whitehall's analysis; Penelope Gilliat, in The Observer,
called Bond “a vile man to be given as a hero”, while Thomas Wiseman, in
the Sunday Express, found it “disturbing that we should be offered
as a hero – as someone we are supposed to admire – a man whose methods and
morals are indistinguishable from those of the villains”. Nina Hibbin, in
the communist Daily Worker, advanced a more sophisticated point,
taking issue with the ‘humorous’ approach advocated by Young by arguing
that Dr. No “doesn't wallow, as horror films do, in blood and
torture and slow death. It goes a stage further – by asking you to take
such things for granted, playing for a laugh whenever the sardonic Mr.
Bond makes a new joke”.
Despite the moral reservations of some critics, Dr. No was a smash
hit in the UK, securing the continuation of the 007 series and ensuring
that the cocktail of fantasy, humour, sex and violence, which secured an
‘A’ certificate, would remain in place for the second film in the series –
From Russia With Love. Interestingly, Trevelyan later recalled that
the violence in the Bond films was more of a concern to him than the sex.
“These films were essentially fantasies,” he argued. “Bond being the
‘Superman’ of the 1960s who could not only get all the girls to bed
without any difficulty but could escape from any perilous situation, using
violence and being quite callous about it even to the point of joking
about it. The agreement [reached with Saltzman] resulted in keeping the
sex to a reasonable level, but we had some problems with the violence and
in most of the films we asked for some modifications.” This recollection
does not, however, square with the BBFC file for From Russia With Love,
which details that of the “thirteen cuts” required to ensure the film
received an ‘A’ certificate, the majority concerned sexual imagery and
sexually charged dialogue rather than violence, including seven cuts of
“double entendre dialogue”. For example, as early as the second reel,
dialogue had to be removed from a scene which referred to “lovers” and
“physical enjoyment”. The Tatiana/Klebb scene in reel 2 of the From Russia With
Love cutting continuity
script in which Klebb quizzes the young Russian woman
about her romantic past, clearly shows additional lines were present when
the film was originally edited.
Other sequences examined
in forensic detail by the BBFC were the belly dancing and gypsy girl fight
scenes during reel 5, as Hunt recalled: “We had a great censor problem
with the gypsy fight, with the two girls fighting. It was considered to be
rather amoral … I had to appease the British censors certainly, and I
think various other censors, because they thought it was far too sexy and
amoral, the whole fight. And at one point, I remember the British censor
telling me that he could see the girls’ pubic hairs. I said to him, ‘I've
been watching it frame by frame on the Moviola and I can't! If you like
I'll show it to you on the Moviola frame by frame and if you can see
anything like that anywhere, I'll cut it out right in front of you!’”
Ultimately, the BBFC insisted that the gypsy belly dance was shortened
“removing as many of the shots as possible where she is wriggling her
stomach or bending backwards” and also specified that the fight between
Zora (Martine Beswicke) and Vida (Aliza Gur) was shortened “very
considerably”. Hunt later recalled that the cuts made little difference to
the sequence as a whole. “There were a great deal of problems about the
gypsy girls fighting, there was a certain amount of displeasure over that.
They thought it was very near the knuckle. We had to play around with it.
But in the end it resolved itself, I took a few frames out here and there
but it didn't make any difference really.” Interestingly, Young
recollected that the sequence ended up disappointing its originator, Ian
Fleming, who found it too mild! “Ian was very disappointed because in the
book I believe they're stark naked or very nearly naked and one of them
bites the other's breast, her nipple or something. I said: ‘Ian what kind
of a picture do you think we're making? How did you think we'd get away
with that?’”
The love scene between
Bond and Tatiana in an Istanbul hotel room was another scene to be trimmed
to satisfy the BBFC. The shot of Tatiana walking towards the bed nude was
removed. This shot (actually not of Daniela Bianchi herself, but of a
double clad in a body stocking), was later restored to video and DVD editions – the
only original cut to be restored to From Russia With Love in the 49
years since the film's original classification. Also excised were
references in the scene's dialogue [present
in the cutting continuity script] to Bond “searching” her and Tatiana's
line “I hope I came up to expectations”. Additionally, the BBFC insisted
that the shots of Bond and Tatiana kissing should be shortened and that
the shot of cameramen behind the double mirror secretly filming Bond and
Tatiana's love-making should be “shortened and darkened”.
Young, speaking in the early 1990s in typically candid and forthright
fashion, remembered this sequence as a particular challenge to get past
the BBFC. “We had a lot of censorship problems with this sequence. She was
naked and they said: ‘oh, you can't do that!’ In those days they didn't
like the idea of people screwing on the screen. You'd normally be expected
to pan away to the fireplace to the embers [of a fire] or to something
else. There were a lot of nice clichés we used to have in the cinema…
waves breaking, white stallions… Today you could show it in a Sunday
school! When you analyse it, it's only in the last five years that the
floodgates have opened. I mean, take a film like White Palace [a
1990 erotic drama, starring Susan Sarandon and James Spader], I mean [in
that film] the physical act is performed about four or five times!” Young
also recalled that the censor interpreted the shot of the cameraman
mopping his forehead as a witty comment on the lovemaking (“They laughed
and said that's not dirty”) and that was the reason why they let the shot
through, albeit in the aforementioned “shortened and darkened” form.
ABOVE: (left)
Terence Young directs Sean Connery and Daniela Bianchi on the
Istanbul hotel bridal suite set at Pinewood Studios. The sequence was first
filmed on April 8-9, 1963, and re-shot at the end of filming in
late July/early August 1963, after the director was dissatisfied
with the original version. The re-shot version (with Bianchi's
hair up) had dialogue polished by an uncredited
Berkely Mather, one
of the three credited screenwriters on Dr. No (1962).
Mather also suggested adding Grant (Robert Shaw) watching behind
Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) to the shot of Bond and Tania being
filmed, thereby setting up his comments on the film reel later during
the Orient Express sequence, although this was ultimately not
used. (right) The shot of Bond and Tania
being filmed behind a two-way mirror was one that
gave the BBFC examiners cause for concern, and they ordered it to
be “shortened and darkened” for the finished film.
BELOW: During their
journey on the Orient Express Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi
re-voiced by Barbara Jefford) wears a blue negligee and says:
“Oh. I will wear this one... in Piccadilly.”, to which Bond
replies: “You won't. They've just passed some new laws there.” Bond
is referring to the Street Offences Act 1959, which criminalized
soliciting by prostitutes across England and Wales, and aimed to
regulate and control street prostitution by making it illegal for
sex workers to solicit clients in public spaces. Shepherd’s
Market, located in the Piccadilly area of central London, was
known for its nightlife and entertainment. It was also a place
where sex workers offered their services on the streets. Bond's
reference to the 1959 Act was one of only a few instances in the
early films that related directly to real life society and
culture, and anchored them in the time they were made.
One of the more subtle
changes requested by the BBFC occurred during the Orient Express sequence
when Tatiana asks Bond: “Am I as exciting as all those western girls?”
Originally, she asked: “Was I as exciting as all those western girls?” The
change of the verb from the past to present tense served to change the
implication of the line from Tania asking about her sexual technique to a
more general comment about her looks and personality. Another line to hit
the cutting room floor due to its sexual connotation was Connery's comment
“two hours should straighten this out” as he lowered the blind in the
train carriage.
Perhaps the most violent section in the film, and the one that you would
have thought would cause the BBFC most concern, was the vicious and
jarringly realistic fight between Robert Shaw's Donald ‘Red’ Grant and Connery's Bond. Brilliantly choreographed by stunt arranger Peter Perkins,
the sequence stands alone as easily the best fight scene in 007 history –
and one of the few times in the series that you feel Bond is in serious
jeopardy. Frustratingly, the BBFC files are short of detail concerning
exactly what footage (and how much!) was cut from this scene, only stating
that EON should “shorten the fight between Bond and Grant”. However,
Young's recollection was that only one minor cut was made to the scene:
“We got away with this fight because of one thing,” he explained. “And it
was a pure fluke. I added it at the end of the scene, [Grant] has made him
cough up his money at one stage and Sean says to him: ‘You won't be
needing this, old man,’ and he takes it. The censor laughed and, on the
strength of that, they only made one cut in the fight. In those days it
was considered a very violent fight.”
The final cuts made to
From Russia With Love are the most noticeable and jarring. Originally,
during the Orient Express sequence, Grant was meant to remark “what a
performance!” when referring to the filmed footage of Bond and Tatiana
having sex in the Istanbul hotel room. However, the BBFC insisted on
removing this line. Similarly, at the end of the film when Bond is in a
gondola with Tatiana he was meant to say to her “He was right, you know. What a performance!” while examining the film reel before disposing of it
overboard. However, the BBFC also insisted on removing Bond's repetition
of Grant's line, leaving the line “He was right, you know” isolated and
making little sense. This cut also created an uncomfortable jump in the
film's soundtrack and visuals that still looks clumsy and unsatisfactory
even to this day, ensuring one of the best Bond films ends on something of
a sour note.
Despite the 13 cuts made to the film by the BBFC, several critics still
slammed the organisation for granting From Russia With Love an ‘A’
certificate. “What I find extraordinary,” complained Philip Oakes in the
Sunday Telegraph, “is that quasi-pornography (which seems to me a
fairly clinical description of the Bond dossier) can now be presented as
run-of-the-mill entertainment”. Films and Filming also maintained
their opposition to the Bond films, with Peter G. Baker writing: “I
dislike the hypocrisy in British cinema today. A few weeks ago John Davis,
the chairman of ODEON, on which circuit From Russia With Love is
generally released, complained that producers are making too many ‘X’
certificate pictures because cinemas need more pictures that are ‘family
entertainment’. (I don't know what vice – or virtue? – has to be filmed
for the British Board of Film Censors to give such pictures an ‘X’.) If
ODEON cinemas really think the new Bond film is nice clean fun for all the
family, then Britain has some pretty kinky families… or soon will have.”
ABOVE: When From
Russia With Love was released in the United States in April
1964 it was promoted with the same trailer seen for the UK
release, but with British actor Tim Turner’s voiceover narration
replaced by an un-named American voice artiste. The trailer therefore includes the brief snatch of
dialogue from Sean Connery speaking the line “Well, I'll tell you
something Kulturny...” which was deleted from the final release
version as part of the BBFC cuts in the UK. It remains a mystery
why Sean Connery’s name is entirely missing from both trailers!
BELOW: Ahead of the US release, a letter from US censor Geoffrey
Shurlock (1894-1976) was sent to United Artists executive Robert Blumofe
(1909-2003),
detailing the cuts made to From Russia With Love by the
British Board of Film Censors. The same cuts were then applied to
the US release of the film, although this was not always the case
with later films in the series.
Films and Filming raised
this criticism with Trevelyan himself in an interview, asking: “When you
have a British film, like, say, From Russia With Love, do you not think
that if the film had been French it would have been awarded an ‘X’
certificate rather than an ‘A’?” Trevelyan's reply was admittedly a little
unconvincing: “Oh, no. This kind of really good ‘hokum’ picture is seldom
made in France, if ever. If you take From Russia With Love seriously,
you've probably got to give it a double-X.” This led Films and Filming to
ponder: “So, provided all kinds of abnormality and perversion are not
taken seriously, the Board will award an ‘A’ and not ‘X' certificate?”
By the time the 1960s ended, the moral panic that had greeted the Bond
novels in the 1950s and first Bond films in the early 1960s had largely
subsided. Cinema critics and audiences had become more accustomed to
graphic representations of sex and violence while the Bond movies had
become a much-loved British institution. In 1970, the BBFC amended their
certifications by making the guidance attached to ‘A’ certificates more
open to interpretation and advisory (cautioning parents that the film
might be unsuitable for young children, but removing the requirement for
children to be accompanied to such films by adults). Meanwhile, a new ‘AA’
certification was also introduced, for which only children of 14 or over
could be admitted.
ABOVE: (left) The
BBFC certification card attached to the start of all 35mm film
prints of From Russia With Love in 1973 when the
film was re-released in the UK on a double-bill with Diamonds Are Forever
(1971). The card shows the names of BBFC President Lord Harlech
[William David Ormsby-Gore (1918-1985)] who served from 1965-1985,
and Stephen Murphy, who succeeded John Trevelyan as Board
Secretary in July 1971. (right) Murphy [pictured left with Lord Harlech
leaving Bow Street Court in 1975] would preside over one of the most turbulent periods in
the Board's history, passing such films as Ken Russell's The
Devils (1971), Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange
(1971) and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris
(1973). Murphy had to deal not only with far more graphically
explicit films, but also the increasing public and media backlash
that accompanied their release.
In 1975 the BBFC was taken to
court over the certification of the 1969 Swedish sex education
film Language of Love [original title Ur kärlekens
språk],and accused of approving a “grossly indecent”
film. The private prosecution was brought by disgraced former
Labour M.P. turned moralist campaignerRaymond
Blackburn [working closely with anti-pornography campaigner Lord
Longford (1905-2001)], after pressure from several local
authorities who had the power to overrule the BBFC
classifications, and ban films from being exhibited in certain
circumstances, or in this case allow the film to be shown in
cinemas licenced by them. The Greater London
Council had originally awarded the film an ‘X’ certificate in
1970, and the BBFC followed suit in 1973, despite John
Trevelyan originally refusing to certify the film, leaving the
decision up to local authorities. Blackburn lost the
case after magistrate Mr. Kenneth Barraclough could not find any evidence in law to
support his accusations, and
cleared Lord Harlech and Stephen Murphy of aiding and abetting
Cannon Cinemas in the exhibition of Language of Love.
Cannon Cinemas were committed to trial at The Old
Bailey in 1976, but they too were cleared. The high profile case (and
another surrounding the classification of Last Tango in Paris)
ultimately led to Stephen Murphy's decision to retire from the
BBFC in June 1975.
Diamonds Are Forever
was another film which came under criticism for its original
‘A’ rating during Stephen Murphy's tenure at the BBFC.
Throughout the 1970s, the Bond films were granted
‘A’ certificates,
ensuring that families could attend them as a whole, with only the
occasional minor cut requested by the BBFC to avoid an ‘AA’ certification.
In 1982, the ‘A’ certificate was replaced by ‘PG’ (“some scenes may be
unsuitable for young children”), while ‘AA’ was replaced by ‘15’ (“no
person under the age of 15 to be admitted”). Although the Bond films were
now established in the public's eyes as ‘family entertainment’, in
private, at the BBFC's Soho Square headquarters, several examiners
believed the Bond movies were not ‘A’ or ‘PG’ material and that the BBFC
were wrong to routinely classify them as such. This argument was regularly
re-hashed with the release of each new James Bond movie and the anti-Bond BBFC
contingent termed this perceived leniency towards the series the ‘Bond
allowance’.
It was against this context that From Russia With Love had to be
reclassified for video release in 1984. The Video Recording Act of that
year (a response to the ‘video nasties’ controversy in the UK) was the
first piece of legislation to make it mandatory for all video releases to
receive a BBFC certification. As such, all films in circulation, even
those that had been classified already for cinema release, had to be
re-viewed and re-certified. The BBFC files concerning the 1984
re-certification of From Russia With Love for its Warner Home Video
release make for fascinating reading and show how, since the 1960s, the
level of violence and sexual references that were considered ‘acceptable’
for a family audience had dramatically changed.
The first BBFC examiner who viewed the video version of
From Russia With
Love wrote: “Passed ‘A’ in 1963 with some thirteen cuts, this video
tape appears to be the cut version, although most of the cuts – seven of
them were in dialogue – could be reinstated. Although my memory of the
film, particularly of the opening strangling and the fight on the train,
was that it was fairly strong, it now appears to be quite acceptable for
the ‘PG’.”
A second BBFC examiner concurred with this assessment, stating: “It
surprised me, looking at the file, that this second Bond movie was subject
to thirteen cuts, mostly removing sexual innuendo… These cuts look very
silly now and the last one is very clear as the line “what a performance”
is practically the last line of the film… These cuts could now be
reinstated and it is a little disappointing that Warner should have sent
in the cut version on video.” In truth, it is unlikely that Warner Home
Video, or EON Productions, possessed an uncut print of the film. However,
despite their desire to see the sexual innuendo reinstated, the second BBFC examiner did harbour some reservations about the violence in
From
Russia With Love, assessing that it was on the ‘PG’/‘15’ certificate
boundary, while also dryly noting, “the main issue, though apparently less
of a problem than belly dancing in 1963, is violence”. Of particular
concern to this examiner were the following moments in the film:
“
1.
2 mins 50 secs. Man
in James Bond mask is garrotted.
2.
28 1/3 mins. Close-up
of corpse with bloody face in back of car.
3.
39.58 mins. Knife is
thrown into man in long shot.
4.
1 hr 26 mins. Lengthy
fight in train between Shaw and Connery includes kicks, and a stomp on
back. Shaw attempts to garrotte Connery and Connery garrottes him.
Unlike the later Bonds, this is played earnestly and is all the more
exciting for that.
5.
1 hr 41 1/2 mins. Close up of Rosa
Klebb's knife coming out of her shoe.”
ABOVE: THE TIMES
THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ - When reclassified for home video in 1984,
the British Board of Film Classification were less worried than
the 1963 examiners with regard to the overtly sexual content in
From Russia With Love, but harboured reservations about
allowing some of the more violent scenes to go uncut. (left)
Daniela Bianchi in a provocative publicity shot for From Russia
With Love (1963). (top right) Grant (Robert Shaw) garrottes a
SPECTRE agent in a James Bond mask (Sean Connery) in the
pre-credit sequence filmed in Pinewood Studios’ gardens. (bottom
centre) Close-up of the driver murdered by Grant in Istanbul
(played by Stunt Arranger Peter Perkins). (bottom right) Close up
of the ‘poisoned’ blade flicking out from the toe of Rosa Klebb's
shoe (Lotte Lenya). The
knife mechanism was devised by special effects supervisor
John Stears
and engineered by
Bert Luxford.
This examiner went on to refer to the
‘Bond allowance’ debate within the BBFC, writing: “Whether this violence
would be acceptable in another context is one of those imponderables about
which we regularly ponder at the Board. In this context, a very famous
film shown repeatedly in the early evening (and during bank holiday
afternoons by the ITV network in an attempt to get their money back for
the Bond series), I would judge this [violence] acceptable. To up the
category now would make us look punitive towards video and, in any case,
this is a far less sadistic movie than Diamonds Are Forever. It's
just a pity we couldn't reinstate the film cuts.”
ABOVE: (right)
Original Rank Organisation publicity material distributed to
principal ODEON and Gaumont cinemas before the release of From
Russia With Love (1963). (right) John Trevelyan photographed in 1971
as he came to the end of his tenure as Secretary of the British
Board of Film Censors.
In hindsight, perhaps the most important role the Bond movies played
within the context of screen censorship was establishing a new barometer
of what level of sex and violence was and wasn't acceptable within a
‘family’ movie. Had Saltzman & Broccoli not had an understanding and
liberal advocate for their work in the form of John Trevelyan then the
early Bond movies, and From Russia With Love in particular, might have
been far less violent and sexually adventurous, and possibly far less
successful than they ultimately were. One of the factors that attracted a
younger audience to the early Bond films was that their attitudes to sex
and violence seemed so much more modern than in their stuffy and mild
contemporary competitors. Although the cuts Trevelyan insisted on being
made to From Russia With Love might appear pernickety and inexplicable to
a post-millennial audience, his refusal to bow to the self-appointed
moralists of his day helped the Bond series gain crucial commercial
momentum. As critic Alexander Walker once wrote, Trevelyan “was the super
go-between… generous to the artists and patient with the businessmen”.
By the 1980s, with ultra-violent American action thrillers such as Rambo,
Beverley Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon breaking box-office records, Bond
movies were no longer seen as boundary-pushing cinema but as ‘safe’ family
entertainment. When the Bond series next caused a censorship furore, with
1989's Licence To Kill, it was because the filmmakers decided to
consciously increase the level of violence in response to their more
violent American competitors. But that's a whole other story…
