Casino Royale (1967 film)

Casino Royale is a 1967 surreal comedy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring Peter Sellers and David Niven. 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 (as Bond's nephew Jimmy Bond), Joanna Pettet (as Mata Bond, the illegitimate daughter of Mata Hari and James Bond), Daliah Lavi (as The Detainer), Ursula Andress (as Vesper Lynd) and Peter Sellers (as card sharp Evelyn Tremble, impersonating Bond at Casino Royale to play baccarat against Le Chiffre).

Prior to the release, producer Charles K. Feldman had acquired the film rights and attempted to get Casino Royale made as an official James Bond movie (i.e. one made by EON Productions); 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, Feldman then adapted the novel as a spoof of not only James Bond, but also the entire spy fiction genre; the Sellers–Welles segment is the only portion based upon the novel.

Casino Royale 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's distribution rights had recently reverted to MGM (the company that is partially responsible for the official Bond series), and now once again distributed by Columbia Pictures (via the Sony/Comcast consortium's acquisition of MGM), Casino Royale is not considered an official James Bond film based on (a) the fact it was not produced by EON Productions and (b) this film is openly a parody, featuring a plot that is not even consistent with itself.

Plot summary

The story of Casino Royale is told in a disjointed, episodic form and is best outlined in 'chapters'. Some of these chapters overlap. The directors principally involved in each section are also named. Val Guest oversaw the assembly of the sections, although he turned down the credit of 'co-ordinating director'.

Chapter 1 (dir. John Huston)

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 (dir. John Huston)

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 (dir. Val Guest)

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 irresistible 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 (dir. Joseph McGrath)

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 (dir. Ken Hughes)

Proceeding on a recording of agent Mimi during Chapter 2 , 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, USSR, 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 (dirs. Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish)

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 (dirs. Val Guest, Richard Talmadge)

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 that lands where the statue of Lord Nelson stood before it was bought, 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 diminutive villain himself the "big man" who gets all the girls. Meanwhile, as a huge brawl breaks out in the casino involving secret agents, a French Legionnaire (Jean-Paul Belmondo), 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

• Sir James Bond - David Niven
• Evelyn Tremble/James Bond - Peter Sellers
• Dr. Noah/Jimmy Bond - Woody Allen
• Mata Bond - Joanna Pettet
• McTarry/M - John Huston
• Vesper Lynd - Ursula Andress
• Le Chiffre - Orson Welles
• The Detainer - Daliah Lavi
• Agent Mimi/Lady Fiona McTarry - Deborah Kerr
• Ransome - William Holden
• Le Grand - Charles Boyer
• Himself - George Raft
• French Legionnaire - Jean-Paul Belmondo
• Cooper/James Bond - Terence Cooper
• Miss Moneypenny - Barbara Bouchet
• Miss Goodthighs - Jacqueline Bisset
• Hadley - Derek Nimmo
• Polo - Ronnie Corbett
• Inspector Mathis - Duncan Macrae
• Frau Hoffner - Anna Quayle
• Smernov - Kurt Kasznar
• Buttercup - Angela Scoular
• Eliza - Gabriella Licudi
• Heather - Tracey Crisp
• Peg - Elaine Taylor
• Meg - Alexandra Bastedo
• Casino Director - Colin Gordon
• Carlton Towers - Bernard Cribbins
• Fang Leader - Tracy Reed
• Casino Doorman/M.I.5 Man - John Bluthal
• Q - Geoffrey Bayldon
• Fordyce - John Wells
• Casino Cashier - Graham Stark
• Chic - Chic Murray
• John - Rob Tanzola
• British Army Officer - Richard Wattis
• Le Chiffre's Representative - Vladek Sheybal
• Driver - Stirling Moss
• Piper - Peter O'Toole (uncredited)
• 1st Piper - Percy Herbert
• Control Girl - Penny Riley
• Captain of the Guards - Jeanne Roland
• Sir James Bond's Butler - Erik Chitty
• Dr. Noah's voice - Valentine Dyall
• Chinese General - Burt Kwouk
• Vesper Lynd's Assistant - Paul Ferris (uncredited)
• Chauffeur - John Le Mesurier
• Frankenstein's Monster - Dave Prowse (uncredited)
• Keystone Kops - Geraldine Chaplin, Richard Talmadge (uncredited)

Music

• Original music by: Burt Bacharach. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and Dusty Springfield performed some songs also. Viv Stanshall (of the Bonzo Dog Band) sang the lyrics to the title song as the credits rolled.^{[citation needed]}
  • 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.
• John Barry's song "Born Free" was also used in the film. At the time, Barry was the main composer for the official Bond series.
• With cover art by Robert McGinnis, based on the movie poster, the original stereo vinyl release of the soundtrack was — and still is — highly sought-after by audiophiles; many feel it is the finest-sounding album of all time. ^[1][2]

Soundtrack

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)

One track notable by its omission from the soundtrack is the instrumental piece 'Bond Street', heard in the film during the brawl at the military auction and Carlton Towers's and Mata Bond's subsequent escape. It bears a fair resemblance to the non-Casino Royale-related instrumental, Yakety Sax (as frequently heard on The Benny Hill Show. In fact, either accidentally or deliberately, 'Bond Street' has been used in other shows to soundtrack Benny Hill-style scenes, such as Stewie Griffin's "sexy parties" in Family Guy. 'Bond Street' itself has since appeared on the early-90s easy listening compilation CD, This Is...Easy.

Trivia

• Uncredited writers: Woody Allen, Peter Sellers, Val Guest, Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern, and Billy Wilder
• Val Guest was given the responsibility of splicing the various "chapters" together, and was offered the unique title of "Co-ordinating Director" but declined, claiming the chaotic plot would not reflect well on him if he were so credited. His extra credit was labeled "Additional Sequences" instead.
• The final sequence was principally directed by former actor and stuntman Richard Talmadge.
• Columbia Pictures produced and distributed this version of Casino Royale. In 1997, following the Columbia/MGM/Kevin McClory lawsuit on ownership of the Bond film series, the rights to the film reverted to MGM (whose sister company United Artists co-owns the Bond film franchise) as a condition of the settlement. Years later, as a result of the Sony/Comcast acquisition of MGM, Columbia once again became responsible for the distribution of this 1967 version as well as the co-distribution of the entire Bond series, including the 2006 adaptation of Casino Royale.
• The film is notable for the legendary behind-the-scenes drama involving the filming of the segments with Peter Sellers. 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 favour 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, based upon a biography by Roger Lewis, who claims that Sellers kept re-writing 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 David Niven, was invented to salvage the footage.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.
• David Niven and Peter Sellers both played James Bond in this movie. They also worked together in the Pink Panther film series.
• 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 shooting himself dead with a backwards-firing pistol, 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.
• 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 in Dr. No, Vladek Sheybal appeared as Kronsteen in From Russia with Love, Burt Kwouk featured as Mr Ling in Goldfinger and an unnamed SPECTRE operative in You Only Live Twice, Jeanne Roland plays a masseuse in You Only Live Twice, and Angela Scoular appeared as Ruby Bartlett in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. 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.
• At the Intercon science fiction convention held in Slough in 1978, Dave Prowse commented on his part in this film, apparently his big-screen debut. He claimed that he was originally asked to play "Super Pooh", a giant Winnie The Pooh in a superhero costume who attacks Tremble during the Torture Of The Mind sequence. This idea, as with many others in the film's script, was rapidly dropped, and Prowse was re-cast as Frankenstein's Monster for the closing scenes.

Notes

1. ^ Stachler, Joe. Joe Stachler on Casino Royale's Great Soundtrack. Retrieved on 2006-12-22.
2. ^ Panek, Richard. 'Casino Royale' Is an LP Bond With A Gilt Edge. Retrieved on 2006-12-22.

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