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Un-Lost on DVD: Casino Royale |
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Wednesday, 14 February 2007 |
By D. W. O'Dell
“James Bond went to Casino Royale
He won a lot of money and a gal
At Casino Royale”
The latest James Bond motion picture, Casino Royale,
is considered a major hit and is credited with reviving a franchise
that, while successful, had been flagging a bit in the creativity
department. Of course there was a previous version of Casino Royale, but that film may have been a little too creative.
I speak, of course, of the original big screen adaptation of Casino Royale
which was released in 1967. It is widely considered to have been a
major flop today, but at the time it was a huge hit, the third biggest
grossing film of the year. The fact that the real James Bond film You Only Live Twice
(my personal favorite) had a higher gross stole some of its thunder.
The film is actually a quite amusing spoof of the Bond franchise if you
don’t make too many demands of it.
The film is sort of an
incoherent mess, but having five directors will do that. According to
interview footage with director Val Guest that is on the DVD, each
director was told he could direct and have script input on his own
sequence; only afterwards did producer Charles Feldman say, “Hey, maybe
we should have a plot run through all the parts.” The film veers from
slapstick to surreal, from silly to droll, from David Niven to Woody
Allen.
The plot, such as it is: James Bond (David Niven) is
called out of retirement when M is killed by agents of SMERSH. In order
to confuse the enemy he orders that all agents be designated as “James
Bond, 007.” This includes his nephew Jaime Bond (Woody Allen), a newly
trained agent immune to feminine wiles (Terence Cooper), wealthy
businesswoman Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress in her second Bond
appearance), and James Bond’s daughter via Mata Hari, called (of
course) Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet).
There’s another “James
Bond” to account for--card expert Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) who is
recruited to beat SMERSH operative Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) at
baccarat in order to cause SMERSH to terminate him for losing company
funds. Sellers proved to be difficult on the set - he refused to share
the set with Orson Welles; their scenes together were filmed separately
and edited together - and so he disappears abruptly about two-thirds of the way
through. The film is so disjointed that his absence is hardly noticed.
One thing that distinguishes this Casino Royale
from the films in the Bond canon is the score. Burt Bacharach somehow
finds a way to make the music consistent despite the shifting tone of
the various segments. The film also is the only Bond film to produce
not one but two hit songs: the title theme played by Herb Alpert and
the Tijuana Brass, and the Oscar nominated “The Look of Love” sung by
Dusty Springfield.
For all of the problems, Niven makes an
excellent James Bond; so, oddly enough, do Terence Cooper and Peter
Sellers; the energy never flags; and Woody Allen is vintage Woody back
when he wasn’t afraid to be silly. He ghost-wrote much of his own
material with collaborator Micky Rose; it is SO obvious - no one writes
for Woody like Woody. Sellers does a wonderful job playing an average
guy asked to impersonate the legendary spy and ladies man.
There
are a lot of celebrity guest stars and cameos. George Raft and Jean
Paul Belmondo are featured prominently in the opening credits but each
has about 20 seconds of screen time in the last ten minutes of the
movie. John Huston does a turn as M, six time Oscar nominee Deborah
Kerr is a SMERSH agent who falls for Bond (that always happens), and
William Holden plays a CIA agent. And, in one of her first screen
appearances, Jacqueline Bisset (billed as Jacky Bisset) plays the aptly
named Miss Goodthighs.
At the very end of the movie the
filmmakers give up any pretense of realism and end the film with a wild
free-for-all featuring U.S. Calvary, laughing gas, Native American
paratroopers (who of course yell, “Geronimo”), performing seals, soap
bubbles, and a pill that turns a human being into a nuclear bomb.
Right.
The worst thing you can say about the original Casio Royale
is that it was very, very silly, sort of one part Monty Python, one
part Peter Sellers, and two parts Woody Allen. The DVD contains the
film, an interview with Val Guest, who was one of the directors, and a
kinescope of a live broadcast version of Casino Royale made in the
1950’s starring Barry Nelson as CIA agent Jimmy Bond and Peter Lorre as
Le Chiffre (it’s really bad but oddly fascinating). It’s worth a look.
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