20 Things You Didn't Know About From Russia With Love (1963)
7. The Birth Of The Pre-Credits Sequence
From Russia With Love introduced the Bond pre-credits sequence, which has since become a tradition in the franchise.
During this sequence, a character who appears to be James Bond is stalked by serial-killer-turned-SPECTRE-assassin, Red Grant across SPECTRE Island before he is garrotted with a length of piano wire concealed in the winding mechanism of Grant's wristwatch. Grant’s trainer, Morzeny then removes a mask resembling James Bond from the victim’s face, revealing that this was all a sadistic training exercise, as Double-0 Seven has become the organisation’s main enemy after defeating their agent, Dr. No.
Terence Young had originally filmed the sequence with an actor who closely resembled Sean Connery in the role of Grant's prey and so reshot it with actor, John Ketteringham who had a moustache at the time.
Unlike Ian Fleming’s novel, the film was originally meant to open by reintroducing James Bond but, in the editing process, it was decided to start the film with the tense stalking sequence, followed by Robert Brownjohn’s titles dramatically scored by John Barry, and then the briefing sequence aboard Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s yacht so that the plot would flow better. As the sets for Blofeld's office had already been dismantled, Lotte Lenya was seated in front of a back projection of the set to reshoot crucial scenes. Akin to Fleming’s novel, Bond was then reintroduced later.
This rearrangement of the scenes gave birth to the long-held tradition of opening each Bond film with a pre-credits sequence.