The Poker of Casino Royale--Meadowlark Lemon?!?

It's no surprise that they decided to go with Texas Hold 'Em instead of baccarat in Casino Royale (2006). It didn't hurt that poker was booming in popularity. But poker is also a more accessible game for the general public than baccarat, and a game requiring more skill and strategy. So when re-introducing James Bond to a 21st century audience, Texas Hold' Em was an appropriate way to go.

But how good was the film's portrayal of poker? Well, after I spent far too long analyzing Kronsteen's chess game in From Russia With Love, you know I can't resist droning on for far too long about the poker scenes in CR06.

So how are they? Well, let's just say that, in a world a car can flip 7 times and the driver survive, and where parkour chases through construction sites are apparently an everyday occurrence, the poker we see played in CR isn't out of place.

Which is to say "heightened reality," exaggerated, melodramatic. As expected in a movie, They want to hype things up, make them more exciting. So you see people playing hands in ways that generally wouldn't be played that way, and you see showdowns that probably wouldn't happen. Two words best describe it--Harlem Globetrotters.

A couple of things to note. First of all, we never see the beginnings of hands..we never see any bets before the flop, and very few on third or fourth street. This makes it really tough to analyze how the hands are being played. Poker is a game of imperfect information, and one of the primary sources of information is looking at your opponents' betting patterns--how often they bet before the flop, what types of hands they're likely to stay in with, are they playing conservatively or aggressively. Frankly, this kind of observation is usually far more important than any physical tells, no matter what the movie tells us, and so we're not given a critical component needed to analyze the hands.

The other factor to consider is that, in Texas Hold 'Em, the average winning hand is in the one-pair to two-pair range. Such smaller hands aren't sexy, but they're what win hand after hand, and ultimately tournaments. Of course, players do get higher hands--but those hands are very often not played to completion, as the board or the betting pattern scares people away. Compare that with CR, where of all the poker hands where we see the cards, the lowest winning hand is three of a kind (three aces, no less). That, my friends, is heightened reality.

The first hand we see played is LeChiffre against the "dear general." We can't see most of the cards...all we can make out is the King turned up on the river. The Asian woman folds after that card is turned up, but before anyone has bet...that's wrong! You never fold until somebody bets, because it's possible everyone will check and you'll get a free look at the river!!

Meanwhile, LeChiffre goes all in, telling the general he has two pair while the general has a 17.4% chance of making his straight. The percentage is right...of course, LeChiffre might have been bluffing at having two pair, too, just psyching the guy out. But going all in? This is the first of several times that CR displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what "all in" means. Every single time it happens, both parties put 100% of their chips into the pot. But that would never happen unless those two players had exactly the same number of chips!! One player never has to risk more chips than the other. So if Player A had 10,000 and Player B had 7,000...even if Player A called all in, he wouldn't commit more than 7,000 to the pot. So if the player who was ahead loses, he would still have some chips left. Yet even though he seems to have a lot more than chip than the general, LeChiffre pushes his whole stack into the middle. Dramatic, perhaps, but inaccurate. Yet every single time he hit an all in situation in this movie, both parties push in all their chips. That ain't how it works.

The next hand we see is Dimtrios vs. Bond, when Bond beats his trip kings with trip aces. And again, we're supposed to believe that Dimitrios' $5,000 plus his car just happens to precisely equal what Bond has in his stack. Plus, Bond splashes the pot, which is incredibly rude.

Then we come to the big tournament. The first hand we see is the one where Bond discovers LeChiffre's tell, the physical gesture he makes when he's bluffing (to get picky, you wouldn't be able to figure that out just from one instance...maybe it was just a random gesture. You'd have to see him bluff multiple times because you could say for certain that was his tell). Now, after the hand, Bond explains to us that LeChiffre didn't have the best hand until "the last card. The odds against were 23-1, and he'd know that. When he did his first raise he had nothing. Winning was blind luck."

Man, there are so many things wrong with that statement. First of all, when LeChiffre first raised he had a a pair of deuces in the pocket...not the greatest hand, surely, but not nothing...it was a semi-bluff, at best. After the river, LeChiffre had two pair, deuces and nines, most certainly not nothing (except in this movie, where winning with anything less than 3 aces is apparently considered unmanly). And when Bond says the odds against were 23-1, he's just plain wrong. The odds against turning two pair into a full house on the river are only 10.5-1, not 23-1 (the writers obviously were mixed it up with the odds of turning a single pair into 3 of a kind on the river, which are 22-1). We don't know what hand Bond hand, because he mucked after LeChiffre turned over his full house (Three 9s? A flush?). But based on Bond's claim to have discovered LeChiffre's tell, and his explanation of what went on in the hand, I can't say I'm too confident in his understanding of hold 'em.

The next hand we see is the one where LeChiffre busts Bond. Once again, we see the all-in confusion, with both Bond and LeChiffre putting the entirety of their stacks into the pot. And Bond splashes the pot again, that rude little bugger. And a KKKAA full house being beaten by four Jacks? Heightened reality, my friends, just like jumping from crane to crane. Sure, it could happen...

The next hand we see (but only the end of) is actually a real poker hand, as LeChiffre's two pair aces and sevens with a queen quicker beats Leiter's same two pair with a jack kicker. I guess Felix isn't important enough to require an nearly impossible hand to beat him....

Than comes the final hand, the hands that is so over the top that it is to poker as the Harlem Globetrotters are to basketball. Again, they don't show us any betting aside from after the final card is turned up, but let's work backwards an reconstruct what we do know.

Four players left...Bond and LeChiffre have a hefty chip lead over the other two. The blinds are at at least one million dollars. Since Bond bets first, he must have been the small blind, so Fukutu was the big blind blind.

What they're deal (with chances of winning in parentheses after):
Dude 8h 8c (30.9%)
LeChiffre Ac 6h (21.3%)
Bond 7s 5s (12.6%)
Fukutu Ks Qs (35.2%)

Now, 7s 5s isn't the best hand, but it isn't as terrible as it seems, and can be quite dangerous with the right flop. Also remember, Bond doesn't know what the others have, so a 7s 5s against 3 random hands is roughly 23-26% to win. And since he was already partially committed to the pot as the small blind, calling the $500,000 while getting 7-1 pot odds wasn't a bad play. Problem: there was more betting, that put the pot up to $24 million, and we don't know if that betting was here (which probably would mean Bond was insane for calling a huge raise here...unless he raised?!?), or after the flop (everyone checked on the turn).

The flop: Ah 8s 6s

Presumably, at this point there's a spurt of betting, because during the turn, Mathes tells Vesper that there is $24 million in the pot already, which means each player has put in another $5 million worth. This is especially significant, because it means Fukutu and Dude have already put in at least half their stacks (they've committed $6 million this hand, and their all-ins are 6 and 5 million, respectively). At this point, one has to wonder why they aren't all in already. By waiting until 5th street to go all in, they allow anyone playing a draw to make their hand, instead of forcing them to make a decision earlier. Fukutu has 4 spades, but he can't be sure his will be the top flush, as the Ace of spaces is unaccounted for yet. So if he's already committed half his stack now, why not just go all in to encourage the others to fold? It's an in-between, wait and see strategy that is guaranteed to lose in the long run, as it does here. If you don't get your flush, you've wasted your six million. If you do and still get beaten by a higher hand, as happens here, same result. Dude has trip 8's, but with straight and flush possibilities on the board, he has an even stronger reason for trying to discourage the other players from taking more cards.

LeChiffe has two pair, including top pair, so it's reasonable for him to say in (even though, unbeknownst to him, he has the lowest odds of winning at this point). And Bond? He's in pretty decent shape...he has four to a flush, and an open-ended straight draw, not to mention the 2 shots at a straight flush. A couple of warning signs, though...even if he draws the flush, there's a pretty good possibility that his high spade of 7 wouldn't make it the highest flush, so it could still be a loser. Ditto with the straight...it's fully possible you could get the straight and lose to a higher straight, or a flush. But he's a chip leader, he has a 50% chance of winning against 3 random hands (and a 28% chance against these actual hands) and the implied odds of later rounds of betting make putting $5 million into the pot justified for an aggressive player.

The turn: 4s.

That's it, game over. Bond has his straight flush, no one else can have one based on that board, it's game over. Everyone else is drawing dead. All 007 needs to do now is suck as much money out of everybody as possible. He wisely leads with a check...but the others? Fukutu has made his flush. It's very likely it's the highest flush, so why check? Why let everyone see a free card, which might beat you? Since the board hasn't been paired yet, no one can have a full house--yet. Here's where you go all in, to protect yourself from getting beaten by a later card. But he passively checks, allowing Dude and LeChiffre to make their boats (yeah, he still would have lost to Bond...but the odds were against it, and when you have a possible nut flush and are low on chips, you have to protect it!!). Dude and LeChiffre wisely check--they have to consider that someone might have a straight or flush based on that board, and if they're going to give you a free card when you've already got trips or two pair, don't argue.

The river: As

Fukutu has the nut flush, but now the board is paired, so there's a chance of a full house. He should have gone all in two rounds ago, and definitely last round. Dude has a boat 8's full of aces, and he already has committed over half his chips, he has no choice but to call. LeChiffre's decision is interesting. He has the big boat, aces full of sixes...but it is conceivable that someone has a higher full house (if someone held A8). And you can tell he never really considers the unlikely chance that Bond held 5s 7s for the straight flush.

His decision to raise is interesting, though...since $6 million covered the bets of the other two, he was essentially wagering a $6 million side pot with James. Which is odd. In higher poker circles, you don't keep raising after the small stack has gone all in. Why give him a chance to increase his pile when he's on the verge of dropping out? Because everyone called Fukutu, for example, if he had happened to win he would have pulled down $47 million in chips and become the new chip leader, instead of being out. Realistically, in a situation like this, there's usually "implicit collusion" to just call, so as to eliminate another player.

And given Bonds' re-raise to all-in, warning bells should have gone off for LeChiffre. Remember, LeChiffre didn't know Bond had the straight flush, but he should have suspected the possibility that Bond might have that or a higher full house. Did he really think that Bond would go all-in at that point with just a straight or a flush?

So once again we have an all in situation where everybody throws all their chips in the middle, although either Bond of LeChiffre would have had some left after matching the others' stack. Once again Bond splashes the pot, the rude bastard--but LeChiffre does a little bit too.

And after we have the unbelievable spectacle of the final four players all going all in on one hand (it would never happen), it turns out that they reveal an ace high flush, a full house, a higher full house, and a straight flush. And it just happens that these hands are revealed in ascending order. Folks, it's possible to play Hold 'Em for decades and never see a straight flush. But to see four hands this high, all in one deal, conveniently in dramatic order...well, that's like getting hit with lightning while winning the lotto 5 times in a row. I'm certain the writers had to spend days coming up with a scenario where this could happen and not have everyone folding after the turn. Sheesh.

It's so overly melodramatic that, frankly,, it kills some of the tension from the game, which was very well-directed. And after Bond's lecture to Vesper that it's not the best hand that wins, that it's not a game of luck, and that you have to play your opponent, and not the hand--well, we never see Bond play a hand lower than trip Aces, and he wins the tournament by being dealt a straight flush. So Bond never got to show off these supposed poker skills, because he was always dealt these freakin' incredible hands that my grandmother could have won with!!

Worst of all...Bond tips the dealer with one of the chips at the end---it's worthless!! It's a tournament chip, which has no value outside of the tournament!! The money's not held by the casino, it's held by the Swiss bank!! James. you basically flipped off the dealer by giving him a worthless trinket!!

So, I like my Harlem Globetrotters analogy...yes, it's recognizable as basketball, and yes, it's as entertaining as heck...but don't try that stuff in the NBA, because it ain't gonna work, and someone's gonna get hurt. Same here...fun to watch, thrilling...but I wouldn't reserve James a seat at the World Series of Poker anytime soon....

Odds provided by the Poker Stove desktop application and this Wikipedia page.

Casino Royale (1967)

Peter Sellers. David Niven. Orson Welles. Woody Allen. William Holden. Deborah Kerr. John Huston. Charles Boyer. George Raft. Jacqueline Bisset. Peter O'Toole. Ursula Andress.

How in the name of all that is holy could this film be such a disaster??

Internet movie critic James Berardinelli recently wrote:

The thing about comedies is that you can't trust anyone's recommendations unless you have a thorough understanding of how their sense of humor is constructed. Everyone laughs at different things. Of all movie types, comedies are the most subjective. The equation is simple: Unless the movie offers something else (like the love story of a romantic comedy), those who laugh during a movie will like it and those who don't laugh will think it's a dud. The term "unfunny" means little if taken out of context...

Even the "best" comedies (This Is Spinal Tap, the Monty Python movies) have their detractors and the "worst" (Freddy Got Fingered, The Hottie and the Nottie) have their supporters, indicating that humor truly comes in all flavors.

Which is all a way to delay my having to say: Casino Royale (1967) isn't funny. In fact, it's aggressively non-funny. Re-watching this movie has probably been the most painful thing I have done this year (which, I guess, means I've had a pretty good year so far...but still...).

Which isn't to say that, if you like it, there's something wrong with you. I know people who like this film, and I know of people who love it to pieces. And just as with someone who rates Moonraker higher than I do, or Thunderball lower, I don't question their taste, or intelligence. I simply say, "More power to you. Glad you enjoyed it."

But honestly compels me to also say, "I just don't get it." And as I explain how and why I really, really, really disliked this movie, I want to emphasize that I'm not calling anyone who does like it nuts or stupid or tasteless. But I also don't want to have to append "In my opinion" or "Of course, you may feel differently" at the front of each paragraph. So please, just assume I've got those qualifiers liberally peppered throughout this essay, as I examine the pathetic failure of this dungheap of a movie (of course, you may feel differently).

As Berardinelli notes, nothing fails quite as completely as a failed comedy. In other genres, even if the movie is a complete turd, you usually have some semblance of plot, perhaps some action or special effects, maybe even a performance or two to admire. And as fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 know, even when a non-comedy completely fails even on those levels, at least you can laugh at those failures. But when a comedy fails, you don't even have that refuge, because how can you laugh at something that was trying to be funny but wasn't??

And the kind of things I'd normally critique in a Bond film--the plot, the editing, the production values--well, the producers and writers and directors just didn't give a freakin' rip about that kind of thing. So how valid is my criticism that nothing in the movie makes sense, when the people who made the movie didn't care if it made sense?!?

How did this happen? After CBS made the TV version of Casino Royale back in 1954, the rights passed from person until they came into the possession of producer Charles Feldman. And suddenly, after Goldfinger and Thunderball, anything James Bond was a hot property. And after the Thunderball lawsuit was settled, Casino Royale was the only Bond property whose rights didn't belong to Eon.

Feldman tried to sell those right to Broccoli & Saltzman, but rejected their offer of half a million as too low. So Feldman decided to make the film himself. But without Sean Connery and the Eon team, he didn't think a "straight" competitor could succeed. So he decided instead to make a Bond spoof.

But wait--that's not all. He decided to have 4 different directors--each of whom would direct their own section of the film, giving that section their own "tone." I know, it sounds like a brilliant idea...but wait, it gets better.

There was no communication between the directors--some say that they were deliberately kept in the dark about what the others were working on--so there was absolutely no uniformity or cohesion between the various sections. With people leaving the project abruptly, and other misfortunes, the list grew to 6 different directors. Val Guest was specifically brought in to try and film "splicing" sequences to try to somehow connect everything together.

There were 3 writers credited with the screenplay, but unconfirmed reports have as many as 7 others contributing to the script. And again, none of these people were apparently communicating with each other. Many of the actors were aggressively ad-libbing and adding their own material, resulting in more radical tone-shifting. Some actors refused to work with others, and some either left the production or were fired midway through, so entire character arcs (such as they were) vanish.

The result of this chaos?? I think even the movie's most ardent defenders have to admit that what resulted was an incoherent mess. If I gave you an infinite supply of dry-erase markers and a galaxy-sized white board, you couldn't hope to diagram what happens to whom or why in CR 1967. Characters die off-screen, other characters disappear from the movie for hours at a time, only to turn up with different haircuts later in places where they couldn't possibly be and with no explanation. Spies change sides at random...entire plot lines simply vanish into the ether. Despite the noblest efforts, nothing in one section of the movie links to anything else. Actors who got top billing turn up in 20-second cameos. There are no plot holes, because that phrase suggests that there was an actual plot to have a hole. This movie is all hole, with strands of plot strewn about it haphazardly.

It's unclear how much of the insensibility comes from inept editing, and how much from unfinished segments that were just impossible to link together. There's no bonus or deleted footage on the most recent DVD, and no commentary tracks, so we're left to ponder how something so Bizarro could have happened.

For those who haven't seen this, let me attempt some synopsis. Someone is killing all of the top agents for all of the superpowers. So M and the head of the French, Russian and U.S. intelligence agencies go to find the one, true James Bond. The original Bond (David Niven) had retired after WWI, but MI-6 didn't want to let the world know their best agent was out of action, so they passed the title onto others. Well, this Bond, dedicated to a life of purity and contemplation at his own personal Xanadu, refuses to come out of retirement. So M orders the British army to blow up Bond's house, to force him out of retirement.

Which works, except that M himself is somehow killed in the attack (even though no one else gets a scratch). So Bond takes M's remains to his estate where 12 sexy SMERSH agents (no, this has nothing to do with the SMERSH from the real Bond stories...these guys aren't Russian) are posing as M's widow and daughters. Their goal...seduce James, and thus end the myth of his purity and virtue. Why? Look, questions aren't going to get you anywhere with this movie. So after about a half an hour of tediously unfunny non-titillating smirkfest, Bond causes Deborah Kerr to fall in love with him by acts of manliness, so she helps him kill off the other SMERSH ladies, and then joins a nunnery.

So M goes back to London town to take over MI-6, and decides that henceforth, ALL MI-6 agents will be called James Bond--yes, the females as well--to confuse the enemy. Furthermore, because the enemy is using so many female agents, Bond-Niven sets Bond-Moneypenny on the task of finding an agent who is irresistible to women yet can completely resist them himself. We spend more than 10 minutes finding and training Terence-Cooper Bond, only to have him vanish AND NEVER HAVE ANOTHER LINE OF DIALOGUE IN THE WHOLE MOVIE!! He shows up somehow in captivity at the movie's climax, with no explanation...

The next random plot thread has Niven-Bond seeking out Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress). He recruits her by offering her a plea bargain on a tax default charge...there's the James Bond we want, Her Majesty's tax collector!! Anyway, her job is to recruit Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers), baccarat expert, to take down Le Chiffre (why? Because, dammit!!). To the sultry tune of "The Look of Love," she seduces him to undertake this dangerous mission. For reasons completely unclear, this includes about 5 minutes of her watching Peter Sellers put on funny costumes and do funny voices, which is nowhere near as amusing as it sounds. She sends Tremble-Bond to Q and his assistant, who, in this movie, are gay haberdashers, which probably wasn't even funny in 1967.

Meanwhile, the next pinball plot development sends Niven-Bond to India to recruit Mata Bond, his illegitimate daughter from Mata Hari (which would have to make her at least 50, even though Joanna Pettet was 23 when this was filmed...STOP ASKING QUESTIONS, DAMMIT!!). After a 5-minute Busby Berkeley dance number (why? WHY?!?), he sends her to Berlin, to break up Le Chiffre's auction of various incriminating photographs to various military groups. I won't say how silly this sequence is...but at one point we break into Benny Hill music. Really.



Given that the credits say the film was "suggested by" the Ian Fleming novel, we do eventually get Tremble-Bond to Monte Carlo, were, after being seduced by Miss Goodthighs (Jacqueline Bisset!!), she drugs him. The result...an crazy dream sequence, and the disappearance of Miss Goodthighs from the rest of the movie. We get to the casino, where Orson Welles plays Le Chiffre. And I've got to say, it's too damn bad the Orson never got to play the villain in a real Bond movie, because he's really, really good here. Yeah, it's overly indulgent, as he forced the director to let him do all sorts of magic tricks on screen(!!!), but this piece is the best thing in the movie. You might almost say that Sellers and Welles had a great chemistry....

...Except they didn't. There are many versions of the story, and I'm not here to say which is right. But Sellers and Welles apparently couldn't stand each other, and one (or both?) refused to appear on camera together, so almost the whole baccarat showdown is shot showing only one at a time (although there are 3 wide shots that show them both). Because of his antipathy for Welles (or maybe for some other reason, as I say there are many versions of this tale), Sellers walked off the set and/or was fired. Regardless, I give a few of my sparse plaudits to this scene. It's tense, it's well directed given the ridiculous circumstances, and I actually laughed.

And it plays almost like the book. Bond wins, Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper, Bond pursues. Then, with no explanation or transition, he's suddenly in Le Chiffe's captivity...missing footage, or just not filmed because Sellers was gone?? We then get a scene with Le Chiffre torturing Tremble-Bond with some funky mind machine, resulting in a crazy 60's psychedelic mind-freak scene, turning into a bizarre scene with Bond menaced by a band of Scottish bagpipers, when Vesper Lynd shows up in Scottish drag and shoots them all with her machine-gun bagpipes, and then she shoots Tremble-Bond. Oy, my head hurts...

Then a flying saucer lands in Trafalgar Square (really) to kidnap Mata, and whatever sanity there was goes straight out the window. After a lot of doodling around and a surprise reveal of the real villain, we end the way most 60s comedies did (and Blazing Saddles, too--shame on you, Mel Brooks), with a nonsenseical melee involving laughing gas, flying roulette wheels, skydiving native Americans who yell "Geronimo", the French Foreign Legion, and a nuclear explosion.

Did I mention that this move makes no sense?

So what, exactly, was wrong with this movie? The first problem was too little, too late. Feldman
was way behind everybody else in the spy spoof/pastiche department. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had already been running for years, as had Get Smart. He was behind the Matt Helm movies, and the Flint movies. The idea to spoof Bond wasn't terribly new or innovative at this point.

And the bizarre decision to make the movie in the way they did resulted in a film with no through-line, no structure. Even a spoof movie needs some kind of plot thread the audience can hang onto. The Helm movies, Austin Powers...they were spoofs, but were still legitimate movies in their own right, too, with stories and characters. Casino Royale '67 is just "throw as many things at the wall as you can and we'll sort it out in the editing room." That's not a movie. That's a 2 hour plus episode of Laugh-In without as high a quality of jokes. It's one of those damn Meet the Spartans or Scary Movie IX joints, not worried about being about anything contest just to be.

And finally, on the level of parody, this movie fails as well. Not to sound catty, but there's not a lot of evidence that anybody involved with this picture had actually SEEN a James Bond movie. It's as if they had a tenuous idea of what a spy movie was, and they knew the names Q and M and Moneypenny, and just decided to tell a lot of generic jokes in that framework. By contrast, whatever you think of Austin Powers, there's no doubt that Mike Meyers and Jay Roach have seen and worshipped every Bond film. I could spend a week annotating all of the Bond references in those films (hmmm). Plus, they actually parody the Bond movies. The ridiculous plans, the ludicrous outfits, the insane death traps...Austin Powers actually mocks them, explains why they're ridiculous, and, you know, parodies the Bond films. Casino Royale, never really tries to actually parody the Bond films. It merely apes the same set pieces and expects you to laugh because, well, because the filmmakers tell you how wacky they are.

There are some good things in this film. The actors, by and large, give good performances within the constraints of this type of thing. Peters Sellers vacillates being playing it straight and going off-the-wall nuts (gee, Peter Sellers?!?! Who would have thought that??). Ursula Andress is actually fairly good, far outdoing her Honey Rider performance in Dr. No. Deborah Kerr makes something out of the Agent Mimi role. Everyone is trying their best, and no one seems to be sleepwalking (although that doesn't mean they weren't out of control at times).

The music, written by Burt Bacharach and largely performed by Herp Alpert, provides a pretty fun and memorable score. It would be completely wrong for a serious Bond movie, but in this context it works pretty well.

The art direction is surprisingly good, as well. Despite the incompetence of much of the writing and directing, most of the sets are actually pretty cool, although obviously not Ken Adam level. The costumes are all outrageously mod in an early-late-60s way. This movie actually had a larger budget than Thunderball, and a lot of it does turn up on screen.

In summary, even for a Bond completist, it's tough for me to recommend this film, because it almost completely fails even on the level of a Bond take-off. As a cultural artifact of the 60's it has some interest. I won't tell you not to see it, but I will warn you: if this doesn't happen to hit your funny bone, you're in for a long, 2 hour and eleven minute slog.

Charles Feldman had a fairly distinguished career, both as an agent and as a producer. Hell, in one stretch in the 50's he produced The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Seven Year Itch consecutively. But after this disaster, he never produced another movie, and died only a year later. If only he had sold the Casino Royale rights to Eon, we might have gotten a serious, hard-hitting movie version. But now, we'll never know...

Next week, off to Japan!!

Casino Royale (1954)

It could have been worse. Much worse.

I don't mean the 1954 American television version of Casino Royale. It was actually kind of decent, grading on the 1954 television live performance curve. And especially on the American curve.

No, what I mean is, thank the heavens that Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman ended up with the movie rights to rest of the Bond series. Because if the rights had ended up permanently with American producers...well, on the basis of this production, I shudder.

This was a live broadcast on CBS's CLIMAX! Mystery Theater, in October 1954. The video quality is fairly horrendous, because this is from before the days of video tape. The process they used then was kinescope...literally, a film movie camera mounted in front of a video monitor, filming the live broadcast off the screen. That's how they did it back in those days, kids. And they liked it!!

Interestingly enough, the opening of CLIMAX! showed the credits moving down a movie camera lens, making it look not entirely unlike the gun barrel sequence we've all grown to love (see the opening scene below).

We know right off that this isn't quite the James Bond we've come to know and love because our first shot of him...before we've even seen his face...is Bond hiding behind a tree while bullets fly.

Well, what does Bond actually look like?

American actor Barry Nelson played Bond. But not our James Bond. No, for purposes of this program, he was an American agent, working for "Combined Intelligence." And every one called him "Jimmy." Leiter even says he's well-known by his nickname--"Cardsense Jimmy Bond." Because I guess they just didn't trust American audiences to take to a British hero.

Cardsense?!?

Oh, and Leiter? He's not Felix Leiter, CIA...nope, he's now British, and renamed Clarence Leiter. Sigh.

Vesper Lynd is also not in this...instead we have Valerie Mathis (not Rene!!), played by Linda Christian. And again, because we Americans just can't handle toughness or tragedy in our entertainment, they a) didn't have her betray Bond...instead, she was betraying LeChiffre for the French Secret Service; and b) she doesn't die at the end.

Nelson is game, but he plays the part more like a noir gumshoe than a dashing secret agent. He comes across as Humphrey Bogart-in-Casablanca-Lite. Instead of being poised and confident in the world of Monte Carlo, he seems ill at ease in his tuxedo. At the end he seems more panicked and uncertain than we like our hero to be, as if he's in over his head.

So if Ian Fleming had sold off the rights to the rest of his works to Americans, is this what we could have expected? An American tough guy traveling amongst Eurotrash toughs, using his fists instead of his wits? Where Bonds comrades never die, and never betray him?

Ah, but I'm too harsh. Fleming sold off the rights to Casino Royale before any other Bond novels had been published, so we can't say for certain that even he knew what he had in his hands, let alone the poor hapless American TV producers in the dawn of the mass video age.

They do keep the plot largely intact--LeChiffre has been playing around with communist party money, and they're coming to check up on him. He has to make a huge score at the baccarat tables to save himself. And MI6--oops, I mean American "Combined Intelligence"--sends Bond in to clean him out. Bond wins, LeChiffre comes after him to recover the money, there's torture.

But in this version, Bond shoots LeChiffre dead, not his communist masters. Vesper (or Valerie) doesn't betray him, doesn't try to steal the money, isn't being blackmailed thanks to a captive brother/lover. Here, she's just a former lover of Bond's, and she helps him win, and that's the end.

In many ways it's an oddly tepid affair. Everybody knows from the beginning who everybody else is. The bad guys know Bond's mission before he does. There's never any question of who's working for whom. And while they try to keep us guessing about Valerie, well, again this was 1950's American television, and they can't have the hero falling in love with an evil woman, can they? So there's very little tension in the narrative, no undercurrents or guessing.

By far the best thing about this production? Peter Lorre as LeChiffre.

He's such an old hand at this point he could probably play this role in his sleep. And maybe he is. But he brings his trademark sophistication combined with subtle menace here, and it works miracles. He's just heads and shoulders above everyone else in the show.

Oh, yes, torture. No, there's no carpet beater to the gonads (thank you).

But, as you can see in this shot, there are pliers to toes....The actual toe-twisting is done off-screen, but you can watch Bond's face...ouch.

Really, you have to be forgiving of this production. Can you imagine how tough it is to pull off a live broadcast of a show like this? As a result, you get some flaws. Lots of long lingering scenes that go on too long as our stars get to their next positions off-screen; flubbed dialogue (although not as much as you might imagine) and plenty of umms and repeated lines while actors search for their next lines; stumbles and trips; spotlights in the wrong position and moving quickly to get back on the actors. So you have to applaud the effort, and bow in respect at the game attempt.

Sadly, the lack of the ability to do multiple takes, multiple camera angles, and modern editing drained all the tension out of the baccarat game, which comes across as a pretty listless affair. At least they kept it baccarat, which surprised me, considering how much else they changed to try and cater to an American audience.

The 1954 Casino Royale isn't in print in solo form right now, although you can find it without much effort. It is included as a bonus feature in the 2001 DVD of the 1968 "comedy" version of Casino Royale. There's a new "40th anniverssary" version being released in October (although it's actually the 41st anniversary??), but I can seem to find out whether that new DVD will still have the 1954 Casino Royale on it.

You can also find the whole thing, chopped up into 7 parts, on YouTube. At the bottom of this post I've embedded the first part for your viewing pleasure. Also, every commercially available version for some reason truncates off the last minute of the show!! It's not terribly consequential...LeChiffre makes one last desperate attempt to get away, Bond kills him for good this time. I've embedded that for you, too.

So the final verdict? Hey, it's the first attempt at Bond...you've gotta watch it for that, if nothing else. And it's a look at how a different team, a different medium, and a different culture would have approached our hero.

At one point, Bond tells LeChiffre, "Pain and killing's part of my job." They got that part right.