CASINO ROYALE (1967)

CASINO ROYALE
Directed by Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, and Richard Talmadge
Starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, Woody Allen, Joanna Pettet, and Orson Welles

I watched “Casino Royale” to the very end, hoping with all my heart that something would happen that would make it all make sense. Alas, nothing did, and all that I was left with was a terrible mess of a movie. As the story goes, Charles K. Feldman acquired the rights to make Ian Flemming's first novel, “Casino Royale” into a movie in 1961. It was the only Flemming novel that was not sold to Eon Productions for use in the Bond Franchise. In 1962 “Dr. No” was released and made James Bond a household name. Feldman tried desperately to get his film made. He even tried to get Sean Connery to play Agent 007, but all his efforts failed. With the success of subsequent Bond films “From Russia With Love”, “Goldfinger”, and “Thunderball” Feldman realized that the only way he could make “Casino Royale” was to make it into a spoof of the James Bond films.

He would have been better off if he'd cut his losses and ran, because the film that wound up being “Casino Royale” was plagued by delayed production, fights amongst the actors, and a seemingly never ending line-up of writers and directors. Six directors were finally listed in the credits for this film. That's never a good sign. How can you hope for your film to have any kind of continuity if you've got a different director for virtually every scene? The final film can't seem to decide what type of film it wants to be. It alternates between 60's mod film, spy drama, spoof, romance, slapstick, and a host of other sub-genres.

The plot, what little of it there is, is about James Bond (David Niven) being pulled out of retirement. The REAL James Bond retired before the movie “Dr. No”, but British Intelligence thought that the idea of James Bond was too important. To keep the spy world at bay there would always be an agent named James Bond, 007. Anyway, agents across the world are being killed. SMERSH, the bad guys, have begun using only female spies and luring all English spies to their deaths with their feminine charms. When the real James Bond comes out of retirement, one of the first things that he does is find an agent who is irresistible to women and train him to resist their charms. The choosing of said agent and his training are a couple of very funny scenes, but then this character inexplicably disappears and doesn't come back until the very last scenes, when he isn't needed at all.

There's also a bit where we find out that the bad girls are being trained by an organization that uses a nanny and au pair service as a front. To infiltrate, James Bond finds his daughter (Joanna Pettet). But she winds up going to a training academy for spies in West Berlin, and manages to foil the plot of Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) to sell very incriminating photos of international leaders.
Le Chiffre still needs the money, because he told the people at SMERSH that he could get it for them. So he decides that he's gonna win it by playing baccarat. James Bond hires another secret agent, baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) to pose as James Bond and beat Le Chiffre at his own game.

Even beyond all of this, there's a plot involving Woody Allen playing Jimmy Bond, James Bond's nephew. I won't go into details, because frankly it's not worth it. Needless to say, it makes little sense, so it fits in well with the style of this film, or lack thereof.

“Casino Royale” is random, and it jumps through time horribly. In one cut, Peter Sellers is jumping into a race car to chase after Le Chiffre. In the next scene, Sellers has been caught. Who knows how?

“Casino Royale” was nominated for one Oscar for Best Song for the song 'The Look of Love' by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song was sung by Dusty Springfield and went to #4 on the pop charts, but that doesn't mean it's any good. It feels horribly tacked on to this film, and I feel like it only got it's nomination because Bacharach and David had been nominated the previous two years and not won. They were enormously popular. It's very like how Disney films routinely get nominations for best song. The songs may not be the greatest, but they've got notoriety!

The song that won the Oscar that year was 'Talk to the Animals' from “Doctor Doolittle” by Leslie Bricusse. It's not a great song either, but it certainly fits better in “Doctor Doolittle” than 'The Look of Love' fits in “Casino Royale”. Come to think of it, 'Talk to the Animals' might fit better in “Casino Royale” than 'The Look of Love' did.

The other nominated songs were 'The Eyes of Love' from “Banning”, 'The Bare Necessities' from “The Jungle Book”, and 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' from “Thoroughly Modern Millie”.

This review was written on July 8, 2008