Oddaptations - Casino Royale → Casino Royale

Yes, I did go to the library just to checkout a book I no longer own so that I could take this picture. 

Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that turned out. Today's Oddaptation:

Casino Royale (1953) by Ian Fleming into Casino Royale (1967) dir. Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, Val Guest, and Richard Talmadge, written by Wolf Mankowitz, John Law, and Michael Sayers

The more writers and directors a movie has, the better it is, right?

The Original: James Bond, Agent 007 of MI6 has been tasked with the very important mission of playing baccarat in Monte Carlo. "What's baccarat?" you ask. "It's nobody's favorite card game," I reply. You see, it's kind of like Blackjack, but you want your cards to add up to nine. But if they add up to more than nine, then you only worry about the rightmost digit (ie. 10=0, 15=5, &c). Anyway, Bond is apparently the only MI6 agent who's any good at it. And why does MI6 need a good baccarat player? Because the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH (a portmanteau of Smyert Shpionam,  Russian for death to spies) has been using an underground banker named Le Chiffre with a penchant for embezzling and baccarat. Anyway, Le Chiffre needs to raise funds to pay back SMERSH (what with the embezzlement), so he's holding a high stakes baccarat game at Casino Royale in fictional city of Royale-les-Eaux in the real country of France. Bond, backed up by MI6 Soviet expert Vesper Lynd and too much of England's money, enters the game and is quickly cleaned out. But don't worry, one of the other players is a CIA agent, too bad he sucks at baccarat, but he does have 32 million Francs to buy Bond back into the game. Your tax dollars at work. Oh, and somewhere in there, Bond has time to invent a cocktail with too many ingredients and name it the Vesper. And it works — the plan, not the cocktail — it sounds terrible! Le Chiffre is bankrupted and Bond and Lynd recover 80 million Francs. Fortunately Bond isn't quite good enough at being a spy to keep from being captured by Le Chiffre, who proceeds to tie Bond to chair with the bottom torn out and repeatedly smash his testicles (bet you thought they made that bit up in that other Casino Royale movie). It's all cool, though, because a SMERSH assassin kills Le Chiffre for stealing all that money and carves a Cyrillic letter into Bond's hand to identify him as a spy. Which I guess makes more sense than killing Bond outright because . . . reasons? Meanwhile, while Bond recovers from his genital-torture-related injuries, he and Lynd fall in love. At least, until she commits suicide and leaves a note explaining that she had secretly been a double agent for SMERSH the whole time.

The Remake: The intelligence chiefs of the UK (John Huston), US (William Holden), USSR (Kurt Kasznar), and France (Charles Boyer) are targeted for assassination while visiting the lavish estate/lion sanctuary of the retired agent 007, Sir James Bond (David Niven). MI6 chief, M, dies in the attack, prompting Bond to come out of retirement and take charge of MI6. But not before visiting M's ancestral home in Scotland where agents of SMERSH pose as M's widow (Deborah Kerr) and daughters in an attempt to tarnish Bond's sterling reputation for asceticism (but, you know, the kind of asceticism that allows him to live on a lavish estate). By the time Bond arrives in London, MI6 is in dire straights, as SMERSH has used their agents' penchant for sex tourism to capture, kill, or otherwise incapacitate them. Which gives Bond a brilliant idea, rename all remaining MI6 agents — male and female —  James Bond, Agent 007, while instructing Miss Moneypenny, AKA James Bond, Agent 007 (Barbara Bouchet), to train them to be completely resistant to feminine wiles, starting with Coop, AKA James Bond, Agent 007, (Terrence Cooper). Bond then enlists the aid of Vesper Lynd, AKA James Bond, Agent 007 (Ursula Andress), a former MI6 agent and current millionaire, to back an operation against SMERSH financier Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) who's frittered away SMERSH's money at the baccarat tables. She in turn recruits baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble, AKA James Bond, Agent 007 (Peter Sellers), to take on Le Chiffre in a high stakes baccarat game at Casino Royale. Le Chiffre is all to happy to face down James Bond, but just to be safe, he dispatches Miss Goodthighs (Jacqueline Bisset) to make sure Bond never makes it to the casino floor. And with good reason, how is Le Chiffre supposed to wow the gamblers at his table with magic tricks if he has to stop to actually play baccarat, AKA the only card game more boring to watch than Texas hold 'em poker? Oh, and I almost forgot there's a subplot where the original James Bond goes to Asia to retrieve his estranged daughter, Mata Bond, AKA James Bond, Agent 007 (Joanna Pettet) (Mata's mother was, of course, Mata Hari). Or the dastardly plot of Bond's nephew and the secret leader of SMERSH, Jimmy Bond, AKA Dr. Noah (Woody Allen). Jimmy's (SPOILERS), who is about to release a deadly disease that will make all women beautiful and kill all men taller than 4'6". It all comes together (?) in a raucous showdown at the titular Casino, complete with cowboys, a non sequitur George Raft cameo,  Indians, and a sea lion wearing a "007" tag on its collar. It has everything you'd expect from an overstuffed 60's comedy and more, including a score by Burt Bacharach (seriously, how did he never write the theme for a "real" Bond movie?) and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Also, a lot of racial stereotypes and accents that have aged poorly.

Fidelity to Source Material: The general outline of the book is still there in the movie. But it's sort of a ship of Theseus situation. Only instead of replacing components, they just keep adding stuff on until the original is buried under a mountain of extra characters, plotlines, and gags. And while David Niven's portrayal of the original James Bond isn't exactly like Ian Fleming's, he does nail the ways in which James Bond (despite being a man in his thirties) has the habits and preferences of a stodgy middle-aged man.

Things that Survived Intact: So yeah, core plot elements like Vesper Lynd and a James Bond (if not the James Bond) facing off against Le Chiffre a the baccarat table to ensure that SMERSH loses money survive, as does the setting at a French Casino. Even Mathis (Duncan Macrae) – the French secret policeman who I left out of my synopsis – pops up.

Smart Changes: I'm beginning to see the limitations of my "Oddaptations" template. It would be difficult to describe anything in Casino Royale as smart. If nothing else, I'd say that seeing the novel for what it is — that is to say, not very good — and mostly discarding it or playing it for laughs was the ideal choice.

Why it Works:  I read too many (maybe like five or six) of the Bond novels when I was younger and they're pretty bad. The characters are flat, the prose is boilerplate, you get the idea. Oh, and also, they're crazy racist, sexist, and homophobic. Pretty much the only thing they have going for them is pacing and suspense, and when I was younger I tricked myself into believing those things made up for their faults. But even then, I knew that — more so than most of Fleming's novels — Casino Royale is garbage. It's so boring that there's literally a chapter where Bond explains the rules of baccarat (in fairness, I do still remember the rules of baccarat). Ian Fleming was, well, as M described Bond in Goldeneye: "A sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War." So, really, the more you stray form the source material, the better. Of course, as a film, Casino Royale is a mess, but hey, at least it's got that killer soundtrack.

Links:

The SMERSH of Fleming's novels is a fictional organization that occupied roughly the same role as the actual KGB (that said, the Soviet secret police were constantly being renamed). The real Soviet SMERSH only existed from 1942 to 1946.

Heres the main theme both with and without lyrics.

Would you believe me if I said that Casino Royale was nominated for an Academy Award? Would you believe me if I said it was for Best Original Song for Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" performed by Dusty Springfield?

If you're wondering why the producers of the actual James Bond movies didn't adapt Casino Royale, it's not just because the book is terrible, it's because another producer had bought the rights and held onto them for years until trying to capitalize on the other Bond movies by making this one.

For real, though, Orson Welles insisted that Le Chiffre should do magic tricks at the baccarat table, and had enough clout that nobody could stop him.

And why, when discussing Orson Welles's career as a pitchman in the 80's does everyone focus on Paul Masson instead of Dark Tower? Is it the whole "sell no wine before its time" thing? It's the whole "sell no wine before its time" thing, isn't it?