Review: "Casino Royale" (1967)

One of the weirder things to have ever emerged in cinematic culture is the 1967 movie Casino Royale. Produced at the height of James Bond mania, Casino Royale was actually the first Bond novel published by Ian Fleming. However, the producer of the original Bond films, Cubby Broccoli, had lost out on the rights to an eccentric producer named Charles Feldman. Feldman decided to produce the movie as a comic parody, with multiple James Bonds and storylines. It has a huge cast, full of the biggest stars of its era: Peter Sellars! David Niven! Ursala Andress! William Holden! John Huston! Jean-Paul Belmondo! As the villian, Orson Welles!

And so many more!

This is one of those movies where the story behind its making is more interesting than the movie itself. It was made in London during the swinging sixites, and tons of money was spent on it. It took almost six months to shoot. Along with Cleopatra, it's one of the 1960s biggest cinematic boondoggles. Truth be told, it's a long, most unfunny movie, with lots of dumb gags and pointless scenes. Everything about the movie is a mess: the production design, the length (two-and-a-half hours!), six credited directors, nearly a dozen or so credited writers. It reeks of chaos.

So why am I even reviewing it all? 

Well, because Woody Allen is in it -- and he's the only funny thing in the movie. It's clear that he wrote his own dialogue because it's actually funny, unlike everything else in the flick. Believe it or not, he plays the real villian, the true evil mastermind that each Bond film has (the bad-guy-behind-the-bad-guy). In this case, evil mastermind Woody is developing a nefarious plot to kill every man on Earth above 4 foot 6, leaving him as the tallest man alive. This will make it easier, he assume, to get chicks. In fact, at one point, evil mastermind Woody gives an inspiring speech, a speech laying out his vision for the world he seeks to dominate. In this time of a presidential election, no speech is more inspiring than when evil mastermind Woody says:

Think of it! A world free of poverty and pestilence and war! A world where all men are created equal. Where a man, no matter how short, can score with a top broad. Where each man, regardless of race, creed, color, gets free dental work. And a chance, of subscription buying, of all the good things in life.

The last part is true -- through subscription i.e. internet shopping, you can get just about all of the good things in life delivered to you these days. Free dental work? We're ... working on it! Top broads, however, are and forever shall be in short supply as the demand for them is all out of proportion.

Woody Allen made this film right after his debut in What's New, Pussycat? in 1965 and before he began his remarkable directing career with Take the Money and Run in 1969, two years after Casino Royale. He was only about thirty years old in this movie and, had he decided not to make his own films, would probably have been stuck in junk like this forever. Woody said afterwards that he knew Casino Royale would be horrible when they were making it and that he never even bothered to see it. He got paid a lot of money and was at the start of his career. That's why it's interesting to see him in it, knowing how talented he was and is, knowing the great films he would later produce, hamming it up.

Oh, and the movie has one other virtue: the funky opening credits and theme by Mr. Burt Bacharach!