Casino Royale (1967 film)

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Casino Royale
Caption: IMDB 5.1/10 (5.340 votes)
Bond: David Niven
Writer: Ian Fleming (original story)
Screenplay: Wolf Mankowitz,
John Law,
Michael Sayers
Director: John Huston
Val Guest
Ken Hughes
Joseph McGrath
Robert Parrish
Music: Burt Bacharach
Composer: —
Performer: Herb Alpert
and the Tijuana Brass
Cinematography: Jack Hildyard
Nicolas Roeg
John Wilcox
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Released: 13 April, 1967 (UK)
Runtime: 131 min.
Preceded by:
Followed by:
Budget: $12,000,000
Worldgross: $44,000,000
Admissions: 36.1 million
Imdb id: 0061452


Casino Royale is a 1967 comedy film. Ostensibly a spoof of the James Bond film series and the spy genre, it is very lightly based on Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, which was published in 1953. It features Orson Welles, as the villain Le Chiffre, battling James Bond in the guises of Sir James Bond (David Niven) and six other James Bonds: Terence Cooper (nick-named Coop), Woody Allen (Bond's nephew Jimmy Bond), Joanna Pettet (Mata Bond, illegitimate daughter of Mata Hari and James Bond), Daliah Lavi (The Detainer), Ursula Andress (Vesper Lynd) and Peter Sellers (card-sharp Evelyn Tremble impersonating Bond at Casino Royale to play baccarat against Le Chiffre).

Prior to the release, Charles K. Feldman, the producer, had acquired the film rights and attempted to get Casino Royale made as an official (made by EON Productions) James Bond movie; however, the producers of the official series, Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, turned him down. Believing he couldn't compete with the official series, the novel was then adapted as a spoof of not only of James Bond, but of the entire spy fiction genre. The Sellers–Welles segment is the only portion based upon the novel.

It was the first of two non-EON Bond films produced (the second was 1983's Never Say Never Again). Despite being based (albeit loosely) upon a Fleming novel, and the fact that the film is now distributed by MGM, the company that distributes the official Bond series, Casino Royale is not considered an official James Bond film based on a) the fact it was not produced by EON Productions and b) the obvious stylistic differences between this film and the official series.

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler The story of Casino Royale is told in a disjointed, episodic form and is best outlined in "chapters". Some of these chapters overlap.

Chapter 1

M (here referred to by his family name, McTarry, and played by John Huston) accompanies representatives of the CIA, KGB and French secret service to the massive country estate of Sir James Bond (David Niven), an eccentric First World War hero who resigned from the secret service after luring the love of his life, Mata Hari, to her death in front of a firing squad. Sir James' name has become symbolic of the spirit of the secret service, to the extent that another individual has been given his name and his number, 007, to keep the legend going.

M and the others beg Bond to lend his leadership to a mission investigating the disappearance and deaths of secret agents around the world. When Bond refuses, M orders a military strike on Bond's mansion; the mansion is destroyed, but M is killed in the attack.

This chapter references Sean Connery's Bond, who Sir James decries as being oversexed. It also has the first of the film's many anachronistic non-sequiturs -- Mata Hari was executed in 1917, 50 years prior. This would put Sir James as a 70 year old who retired when he was 20. Later scenes in the film have similar anachronisms.

Chapter 2

Sir James travels to McTarry Castle in Scotland in order to return McTarry's remains to his ancestral home. The "remains" of M is his toupee, which is promptly dubbed a "hairloom" by Lady Fiona (Deborah Kerr), his grieving widow. Sir James soon finds himself fending off the advances of McTarry's many young daughters.

Unbeknownst to him, McTarry's wife and family have been replaced by agents of the mysterious Dr. Noah, and they have been assigned to either discredit or kill Sir James. Lady Fiona is actually Agent Mimi, who has been chosen to impersonate the widow since she has the best Scots accent. Sir James is invited to a ceremonial grouse shoot the next day, even though grouse are out of season. Lady Fiona tells him "Whenever a McTarry dies, the grouse come into season".

That night, after Sir James handily defeats a gang of thugs in a sport involving the players throwing heavy stone cannonballs at each other, Fiona is so impressed with his actions she starts clapping and telling him in French that he's magnificent and a real man. As he leaves for bed, she is then imprisoned in an upstairs room by her fake daughters, so their mission can be completed. The next day, the grouse turn out to be disguised flying bombs that look like huge puffins. With some creative acrobatics, Lady Fiona escapes out of her window and then helps Sir James to foil the attack. Sir James has a button that is being used to track him as a target. Using his suspenders, Agent Mimi launches the button into the truck launching the bird-bombs, and it is destroyed. She leaves to join a convent over the hill.

On the way back to London, he survives another attempt on his life involving a remote-controlled dairy truck filled with explosives. This fatally backfires on the female agent luring him into the trap, after he passes her. The truck loses contact with the remote controller staff during the chase, and is put on auto-pilot. It ends up blowing up the female agent and her car after Sir James drives into a compound and the automatic gates close, trapping her car in front of the dairy truck.

Chapter 3

Sir James, now "promoted" to the position of M, settles into McTarry's old office and finds his secretary is Miss Moneypenny's daughter Miss Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet). His first order is to rename all remaining MI6 agents "James Bond 007" in order to confuse the enemy. He also orders that an irresistable male agent be found who has enough self-control to resist the charms of opposing female enemy agents.

Such an agent is found in "Coop" (played by one-time Bond-film candidate Terence Cooper). He seduces Miss Moneypenny and she becomes smitten with him, so he is picked to enter the anti-seduction by females training. This new James Bond 007 is even able to resist the charms of M/Sir James' "secret weapon" - an exotic agent known as The Detainer (Daliah Lavi), herself another James Bond 007 - this makes Coop want to have his head examined.

Chapter 4

File:Casinoroyale11.jpg
Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress in Casino Royale

Sir James uses a discount for her past due taxes to bribe millionaire spy Vesper Lynd (Bond film veteran Ursula Andress) to become another James Bond 007 and to recruit baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers).

After a brief fling with Vesper involving her photography and his dressing up as historical figures, Tremble receives a whirlwind indoctrination into the ways of spying thanks to Q. This has now become a mission to undermine the finances of Le Chiffre, who is trying to win back the money owed to SMERSH by playing baccarat at Casino Royale.

It should be noted that this chapter happens out of order, and would be much more logical after the Mata Bond sequence that comes next. It is actually also the second time we see Evelyn Tremble; in a pre-credit sequence, he is seen meeting with Inspector Mathis, who will not be introduced until Chapter 6.

Chapter 5

Proceeding on a note provided by now-nun ex-agent Mimi during her visit "for charity donations" at M's office, Sir James reconciles with his long-estranged daughter Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet) who looks just like her mother. Mata spends her time smoking from hookahs, going to analysts, and giving what Sir James says are poor dance recitals. Recruited into MI6, she becomes another James Bond 007 and is then sent to East Berlin via taxi to infiltrate "International Mother's Help," a school for nannies. It is in reality a front for the same spy school that her mother attended, and is where Mimi and the others had received the orders to intercept Sir James in Scotland.

Mata Bond encounters her mother's teachers and also finds a plan to sell compromising photographs of military leaders from the United States, China and Great Britain at an "art auction." She is told to not let the auction succeed. The pictures are being sold by Le Chiffre in order to make money to pay back SMERSH after he squandered the organization's money gambling. Mata grabs the 35mm slides, outwits the staff, and throws the artwork away. The taxi driver, an agent of the British Foreign Office, helps her to escape. Upon hearing the news, Le Chiffre realizes he'll have to raise the money by gambling in the casino.

The East Berlin scenery has an anachronistic feel including features germane to both World War II and the Cold War. The set design is a clear parody of German Expressionist cinema. However, a lot of the school's decor and some of the references are to World War I. This is another mixture of time periods, with Mata Hari's teachers looking no older than 50. Also, as Mata Bond only appears to be in her mid-20s, that would put her being born 23 years after her mother's death.

Chapter 6

In the only section of the film remotely connected to the novel, James Bond 007 (aka Evelyn Tremble) arrives in France for his encounter with Le Chiffre at the Casino Royale. Le Chiffre, however, would rather amuse the crowd with elaborate magic tricks and illusions than play cards, which he is cheating at anyway. Tremble is experienced enough to notice the cheating through one-way mirrors but not experienced enough to know about one-way mirrors. Vesper replaces the trick sunglasses Le Chiffre was using to cheat. After losing and having more funds credited to him, Tremble beats Le Chiffre at baccarat and takes it all. While leaving Casino Royale, Vesper is kidnapped, and Tremble chases the kidnappers in a Lotus Formula Three.

We next see Tremble himself kidnapped and being tortured by Le Chiffre. During a hallucinogenic torture sequence (which involves a huge group of bagpipers and Peter O'Toole asking Tremble if Tremble is Richard Burton, a reference to a joke in 'What's New, Pussycat'), Vesper arrives in the hallucination and, with a bagpipe, machine-guns all the bagpipe players. Tremble alone is still standing. Vesper then faces him and says, "Never trust a rich spy" and fires again. Le Chiffre, meanwhile, turns out to actually be an agent of Dr. Noah and is killed in a suitably bizarre fashion as punishment for failing: a gun smashes out of his monitor screen and shoots him in the head.

This is one of the least coherent parts of the film, and the Lotus scene was usually cut out when played on network television. Besides inexplicably jumping from Tremble driving off to his being in Le Chiffre's clutches, Vesper arriving in the hallucination is never explained nor do we know if it's a real event. In addition, Tremble is never actually seen being shot or falling down; when the establishing shot is revisited, he simply isn't standing in the shot anymore.

Chapter 7

File:Casinoroyale4.jpg
Casino Royale: Daliah Lavi and Woody Allen

After Mata Bond is kidnapped from the heart of London by a palace guard on a horse and taken away in a giant flying saucer, Sir James and the rest of the surviving James Bond 007s head to Casino Royale to rescue her. They discover that the casino is located atop a giant underground base run by Dr. Noah. He turns out to be Sir James' weak-kneed nephew, Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen), last seen escaping a firing squad in Central America earlier in the film. Unable to speak in Sir James' presence, Jimmy's plan is to kill all men over 4 foot 6 inches tall, leaving the diminuative villain himself the "big man" who gets all the girls. Meanwhile, as a huge brawl breaks out in the casino involving secret agents, French police, stereotypical movie cowboys and Indians, George Raft, William Holden, and a seal with the name tag "James Bond 007", "The Detainer" tricks Jimmy into swallowing a miniature nuclear bomb, leading to an explosive finale in which Casino Royale is destroyed. As the film ends, the seven Bonds are seen in Heaven, including Jimmy Bond -- a fact quickly rectified as the ghost-like angel of Evelyn Tremble still in a kilt (all the rest are in angel clothes playing harps) sends Jimmy "to a place where it's terribly...hot."

This version of Casino Royale is notable as the only legally authorized (albeit unofficial) Bond story in any venue in which the main character (all "versions" of him, in fact) is killed off. The only "James Bond" that doesn't die in this movie is the one that Sir James calls an oversexed, joke shop spy, a pretender; the James Bond who's taken his name and is in the other movies. As George Lazenby says in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, "This never happened to the other fella."

Cast and characters

Crew

Soundtrack

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Casino Royale
Type: Soundtrack
Artist: Burt Bacharach, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and Dusty Springfield
Background: gainsboro
Released: 1967
Recorded: 1967
Genre:
Length: 34:27
Label:
Producer:
Reviews: *All Music Guide link

Track listing

  1. Casino Royale Theme - Herb Alpert And Tijuana Brass
  2. The Look Of Love - Dusty Springfield
  3. Money Penny Goes For Broke
  4. Le Chiffre's Torture Of The Mind
  5. Home James, Don't Spare The Horses
  6. Sir James' Trip To Find Mata
  7. The Look Of Love (Instrumental)
  8. Hi There Miss Goodthighs
  9. Little French Boy
  10. Flying Saucer - First Stop Berlin
  11. The Venerable Sir James Bond
  12. Dream On James, You're Winning
  13. The Big Cowboys And Indians Fight At Casino Royale / Casino Royale Theme (reprise)


Trivia

  • The musical theme of the segment that takes place in Mata Hari's East Berlin studio was "reprised" by Pink Floyd in the MUCH later epic "The Wall", in "The Trial" -- Pink Floyd added lyrics, but the musical theme is identical. The segment is not included on the soundtrack album of Casino Royale (it is on the DVD).
  • Columbia Pictures produced and distributed this version of Casino Royale. Due to the Sony/Comcast acquisition of MGM, Columbia is now responsible for the co-distribution of the Bond series, and will act as distributor for the 2006 remake of Royale.
  • The film is notable for the legendary behind-the-scenes drama involving the filming of the Peter Sellers segments. Supposedly Sellers felt intimidated by Orson Welles to the extent that, except for a couple of shots, neither were in the studio simultaneously. Other versions of the legend depict the drama stemming from Sellers being slighted in favor of Welles by Princess Margaret (whom Sellers knew) during her visit to the set. Welles also insisted on performing magic tricks as Le Chiffre, and the director obliged. Sellers ultimately walked off the film before he completed all his scenes, which is why Tremble is so abruptly captured. Some biographies of Sellers suggest that he took the role of Bond to heart, and was annoyed at the decision to make Casino Royale a comedy as he wanted to play Bond straight; this is illustrated (in somewhat fictionalized form) in the film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. In the Roger Lewis biography upon which the Life and Death film is based, Lewis claims that Sellers kept rewriting and improvising scenes himself to make them play seriously. The original film was intended to just be about the Sellers character - 'chapters 4 and 6' of the film.Template:Fact Eventually, Sellers walked off the set, and left the film-makers without a beginning or an ending, and missing much of the linking footage. The framing device of the rest of the film with the David Niven character was invented to salvage the footage.Template:Fact
  • Signs of missing footage from the Sellers segment are evident at various points. The entire Evelyn Tremble kidnap scene is missing - instead, an out-take of Sellers messing about on set with a racing car was substituted.Template:Fact Out-takes of Sellers were also used for Tremble's dream sequence (pretending to play the piano on Ursula Andress' torso), and in the finale (blowing out the candles whilst in highland dress). Tremble's death is also very abruptly inserted: It consists of pre-existing footage of Sellers being rescued by Vesper Lynd, followed by a later-filmed shot of Ursula Andress abruptly deciding to shoot Tremble, followed by a freeze-frame over some of the previous footage of Lynd surrounded by bodies (noticeably a zoom-in on the previous shot, or else the still-alive Tremble would be in view). Quite why Vesper Lynd shoots Tremble is never explained in the modified film.
  • The single most successful element of the film was the song "The Look of Love", performed by Dusty Springfield and heard during a Peter Sellers segment. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song, it has become a standard for its era, with the biggest-selling version recorded by Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 (#4 on the Billboard pop charts in 1968). It was heard again in the first Austin Powers film, which was to a degree inspired by Casino Royale.
  • Jean Paul Belmondo and George Raft received major billing, even though both actors appear only briefly. Both appear during the climactic brawl at the end, Raft flipping his trademark coin and promptly getting shot, while Belmondo appears wearing a fake moustache as the French Foreign Legion officer who requires an English phrase book to say "ooch!" when he punches people.
  • Orson Welles attributed the success of the film to a marketing strategy that featured a naked tattooed lady on the film's posters and print ads, while eFilmcritic's Stephen Thanabalan noted that Casino Royale was the very first 'spy spoof film' to father an official genre that directly utilised the notion of 'sex selling satire' for promotional media.
  • Casino Royale also takes credit for the greatest number of actors in a Bond movie either to have appeared or to go on to appear in the rest of the 'official' series. Besides Ursula Andress, Vladek Sheybal appeared as 'Kronsteen' in From Russia with Love, Angela Scoular appeared as 'Ruby Bartlett' in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Burt Kwouk featured as Goldfinger's Chinese technical liaison Mr Ling in Goldfinger and (since Ling is apparently machine-gunned to death during the Fort Knox siege by Goldfinger) a probably unrelated SPECTRE operative in You Only Live Twice, Jeanne Roland appeared in the same film as a masseuse. Finally Caroline Munro, who was an extra, took a much larger role as 'Naomi' in The Spy Who Loved Me.
  • So many sequences from the film ended on the cutting room floor that several well-known actors were cut from the movie altogether, including Mona Washbourne and Arthur Mullard.

External links


The James Bond films
Official films
Dr. No | From Russia with Love | Goldfinger | Thunderball | You Only Live Twice | On Her Majesty's Secret Service | Diamonds Are Forever | Live and Let Die | The Man with the Golden Gun | The Spy Who Loved Me | Moonraker | For Your Eyes Only | Octopussy | A View to a Kill | The Living Daylights | Licence to Kill | GoldenEye | Tomorrow Never Dies | The World Is Not Enough | Die Another Day | Casino Royale | Quantum of Solace
Unofficial films
Casino Royale (1954 TV) | Casino Royale (1967 spoof) | Never Say Never Again
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