Retro Film Review: Casino Royale (1967)

9 months ago

(source: tmdb.org)

In contemporary Hollywood, remakes have become a disheartening trend, frequently tarnishing the legacy of esteemed classics. Regrettably, modern adaptations seldom surpass their predecessors, as evidenced by the scarcity of exceptional reinventions. There are rare exceptions when there can be more than reasonable expectations of new version being superior to the original. One such rare exception can be found in Casino Royale, 1967 action comedy directed by Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath and Robert Parrish.

Casino Royale is a James Bond film, which happens to be the least known and the least appreciated of all. It was one of two Bond films made outside regular Bond franchise (the second being Never Say Never Again, 1983 remake of Thunderball. Based on the very first Ian Fleming’s novel (itself adapted as short television play in 1954), it was supposed to rival You Only Live Twice. Although commercially successful upon release, the production eventually fell into obscurity, largely dismissed by diehard Bond enthusiasts.

While all Bond films are, to a certain extent, products of their times, few try so hard to make this clear to the audience as Casino Royale does. What was envisioned as mere parody of Bond films soon deteriorated into a desperate attempt to look “hip” or whatever average Hollywood executive thought to be “hip” in mid to late 1960s. This reflected not only on film’s content, but also on its structure and narrative techniques. Five directors were hired and worked independently from each other, often without any clue what the others were doing and with very vague idea of what the script – written by three different people – was about.

As a result, Casino Royale doesn’t have anything resembling a coherent plot. There are some bits and pieces about retired British secret agent Sir James Bond (played by David Niven), active British secret agent (played by Peter Sellers) using “James Bond” as alias, Bond’s nephew “Jimmy” Bond (played by Woody Allen), Sir James Bond’s daughter Mata Bond (played by Joanna Pettet) all being involved in something resembling joint effort by British, American, French and Soviet secret services to thwart SMERSH and its evil plans. At the end, few people will know or care of what the film was really about. This will be the aftermath of the series of spectacular but ultimately pointless scenes marked with atrocious dialogue. Casino Royale features arguably the most impressive cast in the history of Bond films, ranging from Classic Hollywood veterans like George Raft, Charles Boyer and Orson Welles to contemporary superstars like Jean-Paul Belmondo or future stars like Jacqueline Bisset, but all of them, like in so many bloated 1960s projects, are wasted on “blink and you’ll miss them” cameos.

Of course, there are few entertaining scenes, especially in the section where Ursulla Andress in a way spoofs her role in Dr. No. But most of the audience is going to be bored – only a very small minority of those acquainted with the more arcane aspects of 1960s cinema are going to have some appreciation for Casino Royale. And even they are going to use this film as a cautionary tale about the effects of psychedelic drugs. The commercial success of the film was, in most likelihood, the product of a mental state of the audience, produced by certain substances that later went out of fashion, taking the film into the path to oblivion. Some aspects of it – including the excellent musical score by Burt Bacharach – proved to be more enduring. Casino Royale gave hope that Hollywood could produce a remake better than original, and those hopes were justified with 2006 film, starring Daniel Craig and being a straight adaptation of source novel, which is now viewed as one of the more successful reboots in recent history of cinema.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

(Note: Original version of the review is available here.)