Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Casino Royale (1967)

Then One of the more surreal memories I have of primary school are the times when the class or school would be gathered in a classroom or the hall in front of television set and shown a film. On reflection it must have happened during strikes or teacher’s meetings or absences but it demonstrates how times have changed that ninety children could be kept entertained by a twenty-six inch screen in the corner of a comparatively large room. Star Wars was certainly shown to us in a version recorded from television as well as Disney films, but I have a feeling that some of the filmic choices were rather more inappropriate with items like Jaws and this version of Casino Royale. Lord knows what my immature brain thought; it perhaps explains my fragmentary approach to culture and my inability to focus on one thing.

Now A mess, but gloriously so. Originally conceived by the producers as a straight adaptation of the book (having previously licensed Fleming’s work separately to the rest) terms couldn’t be agreed with the Broccoli’s and so a spoof was conceived featuring Peter Sellars. Sellars was unhappy – he’d hoped to the play the part straight and this unhappiness increased as production continued until he eventually walked.

Left with half a film, the producers engaged David Niven and created all of the bridging footage with Ursula Andress’s Vesper as the narrative binding tissue. Which rather explains why the film has five directors, why only the Sellars’s footage seems to have any relevance to the book and is being played deadly straight in comparison to the rest of it and the work overall looks like someone’s editing together parts of much better films with a story so fragmentary its (almost) impossible to write a synopsis.

Woody, meanwhile, took on Casino Royale as a pure acting job and what sounded at first like a fun six weeks in London would drag on for six whole months. According to his career long interview with Stig Bjorkman (published in Faber) Allen busied himself with card playing and writing some plays, including Don’t Drink The Water (coming soon). He’s reputed to have also contributed to the screenplay which on the basis of the hilarious shooting gallery scene (most of which is in the above trailer) is entirely possible so close is Jimmy Bond to the hapless figure that would emerge in Bananas and Sleeper.

But the patchwork nature of this admittedly beautifully designed production (by Michael Stinger who worked on some of The Pink Panther films) doesn’t give him much room to “shop window” his skills. For my money the best sequence is one of the ones he's absent from, the Mata Bond adventure in Germany, where the décor of a “finishing school” is revealed to be influenced by German Expressionist cinema and Bernard Cribbins and Ronnie Corbett feature in tiny roles. This was also Angelica Houston’s first film. She played Agent Mimi's Hands. I wonder if Woody remembered that when he later cast her in Crimes and Misdemeanours.