He meets Le Chiffre ( Orson Welles) in a baccarat game. Peter Sellers is the baccarat-playing Bond. Unfortunately, the threat is never explained. He is called out of retirement to meet a terrible threat by SMERSH. The senior Bond is Sir James Bond ( David Niven). What to do?įeldman apparently decided to throw all sanity overboard instead of one Bond, he determined to have five or six. But by the time Feldman got around to making the movie, Connery was firmly fixed in the public imagination as the redoubtable 007. When Charles Feldman bought the screen rights for 'Casino Royale' from Ian Fleming back in 1953, nobody had heard of James Bond, or Sean Connery for that matter. How could they lose? They had bundles of money, because this film was blessed with the magic name of James Bond. One imagines the directors (there were five, all working independently) waking in the morning and wondering what they'd shoot today. Consistency and planning must have seemed the merest whimsy. This is possibly the most indulgent film ever made.

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