For example, the Americans come to the rescue in the final fight at the casino, and so cowboys and Indians have to rush in. Instead, the humour limply tries in every direction. There are a couple jokes about “the other guy,” meaning Connery, but the film is not a smart or sustained satire of the spy adventure genre. And that’s saying something, since there are probably as many parodies of James Bond as there are canon films. However, in spite of the energy you might expect creative tensions to produce, the final result is probably the most boring spy movie spoof I’ve ever seen. Thus, the production was marred by both business conflicts and competing artistic directions (whether among the different writers, directors, and even the actors). Numerous screenwriters worked on various drafts over the years, and eventually the film was conceived as a sort of anthology of chapters, each made by a different director (for example, Huston directed the initial chapter with David Niven’s “original” James Bond.) To make matters worse, apparently there was also tension between Peter Sellers and Orson Welles. No, Feldman tried to collaborate on a production of Casino Royale with Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, but they couldn’t agree on the terms, and so he eventually decided to turn his adaptation into a satire, presumably as a way to put it out amid the Connery films.
Feldman acquired the rights to Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale but couldn’t bring it into production before the first Eon Productions screen adaptation of a Bond novel in 1962. The production history sheds some light on the disaster. And yet, in spite of the sheer abundance, the only things one takes away from the film are a few moments of mild amusement and lasting bewilderment. The picture boasts at least five directors (one of them being the esteemed John Huston), a star-studded ensemble cast (including Peter Sellers, David Niven, original Bond girl Ursula Andress, the great Orson Welles, and even a young Woody Allen), elaborate sets (there’s a British country manor, a Scottish castle, an Indian palace, a German Expressionist West Berlin spy school, and, of course, the deluxe casino of the title), and a variety of lavish costumes (Sellers even models a few at one point). It’s as if someone had feasted on a cornucopia of cinema and then promptly threw it all up on screen, everything disfigured yet still retaining discernable shapes. I never knew what was going on anyways.)ġ967’s Casino Royale is a majestically bad film. Spoiler alert! This review gives away the identity of the main villain.
0 kommentar(er)
