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“Casino Royale,” by Ian Fleming. Macmillan, 1953, 218 pages.
“Casino Royale,” directed by Martin Campbell. MGM, 2006, 144 minutes.
The Once and Future Bond by Jo Ann Skousen
“Casino Royale,” Ian Fleming’s first novel, introduced James Bond as a simple entry in the well-established genre of men’s adventure stories. Like their female counterpart, the sentimental novel, these stories had a strong sexual undercurrent, as suggested in the opening description of the Casino Royale, with its “brass rail which surrounded breast high the top table” and the cashier’s shelves “on a level . . . with your groin.” Bond is a manly man who breakfasts on “three scrambled eggs and bacon and a double portion of coffee without sugar” followed by his “first cigarette [of 70 a day], a Balkan and Turkish blend made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street” — no whole wheat muffin and Starbucks grande soy chai latte for him! He tends his 4.5 liter Bentley “with jealous care” and drives it “hard and well with an almost sensual pleasure.” (All quotations are taken from the book.) | | Jo Ann Skousen is Liberty’s entertainment editor. She lives in New York. |
| And yet — there is something just a little bit off about this original James Bond. He’s supposed to be undercover, but he registers at the hotel using his real name. He goes through an elaborate scheme to check whether his room has been compromised while he was out, but doesn’t realize that spies are listening from the room upstairs through a bug they planted in the fireplace. A cable from his “controller” uses a carefully coded message about Havana cigars to throw counterspies off Bond’s trail, but then draws attention to the secret part by emphasizing “ten million REPEAT ten million” in the middle of the message.
Outside the hotel Bond notices two suspicious looking men, but continues walking toward them and nearly gets blown up. When he and Vesper (“the girl”) are captured and tied up by LeChiffre (“the bad guy”), he looks at her “with scorn. Damn fool girl getting herself trussed up like a chicken,” when in fact he is trussed up like a chicken as well. These examples are scattered subtly throughout the book, so it isn’t immediately apparent that Bond is less than perfect. In short, the original Bond was a lot like the men who read men’s adventure novels — living in a fantasy world where he is, as the joke goes, a legend in his own mind. Fleming cagily created a spy his readers could admire and still aspire to emulate, a Bond who recognizes himself as “an actor and spectator [who] takes part in other men’s dramas and decisions.”
| | There is something just a
little bit off about the original
Bond. He’s supposed to be undercover,
but he registers at
the hotel using his real name.
|
| Perhaps most telling of all is the torture scene near the end of the book. Bond films often include a mildly erotic torture scene; who can forget the elegantly tuxedoed Sean Connery spread eagled on an operating table with a laser beam creeping toward his crotch? But in the latest version of “Casino Royale” the torture scene seems both bizarre and inappropriate — Bond is stripped naked, seated in a bottomless chair, and whipped with a knotted rope from beneath. This scene is lifted almost directly from the book, except that in the book LeChiffre uses a carpet beater underneath the chair instead of a whip — in short, in both versions Bond is being spanked.
During this spanking Bond recalls having been told by survivors of German and Japanese torture that “towards the end there came a wonderful period of warmth and languor leading into a sort of sexual twilight where pain turned to pleasure and where hatred and fear of the tortures turned to masochistic infatuation.” But Bond is spanked for about one hour — hardly enough time to be turned into a sadomasochist gaining pleasure from pain! More to the point, Fleming’s readers might have received a “period of warmth and languor” while reading the passage from the comfort of their own well-stuffed chairs, a subtle eroticism that is the staple of both masculine adventure novels and sentimental romances.
So when did Bond become the master spy, cool, detached, and flawless, engaging in athletically impossible chase scenes? Some critics believe it was a deliberate change made in deference to President Kennedy, who read the book eagerly and praised it publicly. When Fleming saw that Kennedy missed the irony and took his spy seriously, rather than embarrass the president he accepted the characterization, and a modern icon was born.
In the 1967 film version of “Casino Royale” Peter Sellers tried to play Bond the way he was originally written: supremely confident and oblivious to his faults, while stumbling his way through the caper. But Sellers went over the top, more Inspector Clouseau from “The Pink Panther” than James Bond. The film was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture, and won the Best Song award for Burt Bacharach’s “Look of Love,” but true Bond aficionados hate the film.
| This Bond makes mistakes,
but they are honest and reasonable
mistakes, the kind
members of the audience
would make.
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| For all of these reasons I was skeptical about the newest James Bond movie, a return to “Casino Royale.” Knowing the book as well as I do, I wondered whether the new screenwriters could be true to Bond’s original fallibility without turning him into a buffoon. On top of that, a controversial new actor was stepping into the role, the relatively unknown Daniel Craig, a blond who would not sport Bond’s “lock of black hair that subsided to form a thick comma above his right eyebrow.” Brown-haired Roger Moore only just managed to succeed during his stint as Bond, and all others have been tall, dark, and handsome.
I shouldn’t have worried. The new “Casino Royale” is one of the best, perfect for the 21st century. Daniel Craig seems to be channeling Steve McQueen with his piercing blue eyes and modest “gotta go save the world” approach, and I didn’t miss the black curl one bit. This Bond makes mistakes during the course of the caper, but they are honest and reasonable mistakes, the kind members of the audience would make and thus can forgive. The torture scene is a bit bizarre and out of place for fans of the film series alone, but fans of the book would have settled for nothing less than that bottomless cane chair. Most importantly, the film is thrilling and captivating from start to finish.
With the end of the Cold War against the Soviets and a war in the Middle East that Hollywood does not want to acknowledge, finding an acceptable bad guy poses a problem for the modern spy flick. Fleming’s original story solves this problem nicely, offering a caper that focuses on money laundering and high finance instead of politics. Bond’s target (now spelled Le Chiffre) is the banker for a terrorist group that has ordered him to invest its money in a safe, conservative portfolio. Le Chiffre tries to make some extra money on the side by investing the funds in a stock scheme and skimming the profits off the top. But when Bond thwarts Le Chiffre’s attempt to manipulate the stock market, the banker’s only hope is to “follow the example of most other desperate till-robbers and make good the deficit by gambling,” as Fleming writes in the original novel. Enter Bond, the cool, steady gambler whose job is to bankrupt Le Chiffre and then leave him for his underworld employers to finish off.
Pierce Brosnan’s farewell performance as Bond in “Die Another Day” (2002), with its memorial nod to nearly every icon in the series, signaled a farewell also to the promiscuous, manly Bond of Cubby Broccoli, who produced the first 16 Bond films. I loved the Bond films of the 20th century, but it’s time to move forward. And as this film demonstrates, the best way to move forward may be to move back — back to the Bond whom Fleming originally created.
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