The plot of From Russia With Love gets set in motion when Soviet corporal Tatiana thinks she’s being tasked with an important assignment by a Soviet colonel: she’s told the whole thing is classified far above the level of the security guy at the consulate; say anything about this to anyone, you’ll be shot.
What already got spelled out for us, at that point, is what later gets spelled out for James Bond: that, while Tatiana thinks this is an official mission, the “colonel” defected a while back and no longer works for the Soviets; this was just, uh, someone in the employ of a crime syndicate, relaying instructions from someone else in said crime syndicate, while passing it off to Tatania as something else.
Well, having just got the new 4K UHD 007 Connery Collection, I popped in the DVD to check: Nope.
In the final hotel room scene when she shoots Rosa Klepp I suppose she might have thought something strange was going on, but all Bond says about the matter was “Yes, she had her kicks.” And at the end when they’re on the boat in Venice, he repeats the earlier line “We won’t always be working on the company’s time, will we?”
From memory, when Tatiana shot Klebb, she didn’t shoot her because she was SPECTRE, but because she was trying to kill her true love, Bond. Tatiana probably doesn’t even know what SPECTRE is. I wonder how much she actually understands.
Bond should have left her on the train. She was just dead weight. Better down the road without that load.
I seem to recall a scene just before the dinner in the dining car, in which Bond treats her very badly and she remains depressed until she passes out from the drug administered by Grant.
What was their tiff about? Does he accuse her of being a fraud and threaten to expose her?
After discovering Kerim has been murdered, Bond demands the truth from Tatiana. She denies knowing about the killing. He slaps her and calls her a liar. She says she will tell him when they get to England. He say she may not know everything, but “tell me what you know”. She can only reply that she loves him.
So there was understandably a little(?) friction between them in the dining car.
The needlessly convoluted plot of the film comes from the fact that they wanted to work S.P.E.C.T.R.E. into it as the Real Bad Guys. In Fleming’s novel, there’s no SPECTRE and no such deception. It’s the Smert Spionem “SMERSH” agency that wants to “get” Bond, and he’s simply trying to steal the SPEKTOR (not “LECTOR”) decoder. Rosa Klebb is a Russian intelligence officer, not a double agent.
It’s my favourite Bond film, and one of the best novels too (although as Cal pointed out, SPECTRE aren’t in it), but I’ve never thought about that really. Does Bond just hand Tania over to the Hard Man, or the Soft Man (I think that’s what they were called in The Man With The Golden Gun??), or does he take pity and let her go? Doubt it would’ve been safe for her back in Mother Russia, as Grant would put it.
See, what gets me is: put aside what’s going to happen; what’s already happened?
Imagine, for the sake of argument, that she starts the movie as a loyal Soviet corporal who gets told to pretend she’s fallen in love with some British guy — and pretend to be willing to help him steal stuff while pretending to want to defect — and she replies oh, hell, yeah! Of COURSE I’d do that for the Soviet Union! What, you’re asking me to sleep with a handsome guy for the Soviet Union? Shit, man, that’s NOTHING; I’d gladly DIE for the Soviet Union! WOO!
(U-S-S-R! U-S-S-R!)
And, from there, well, maybe she genuinely falls in love with Bond but maybe she doesn’t. Maybe, per her instructions, she just acts like she’s in love with him.
So if Bond explains that Tania was never actually on an official mission for the USSR — because Klebb is a filthy traitor to the cause — then gunning Klebb down is what Tania would do whether she’s still a loyal Soviet who’d love to go back home or whether she’s turned her back on all of that and decided to live happily ever after with Bond.
Oh, sure, if she doesn’t know, then shooting Klebb is her mistakenly thinking that she’s choosing Bond over the USSR; but, if she does know, then, well, she’s just killing some criminal who betrayed the Soviet Union, and so what?
