The most recent, because it was the film that got the literary Bond right (runner up to Living Daylights, also mostly faithful to the short story with additional supporting material), and the 1967 version because, well, Woody Allen, David Niven, Orson Wells, Peter Sellars and Ursula Andress.

I am a firm fan of both films, for different reasons.

The 2006 Martin Campbell offering, with Daniel Craig, by comparison, is much more faithful to the source, duplicating most of the scenes from the book, while adding supporting scenes to round out the story structure of a film. Now, by way of comparison, the original Casino Royale film only had one or two scenes at the most with any scrap of attachment to the source material. So, I picked up the book, and was transported away into the fictional spy antics of Bond. The black and white feature for television was only a distant memory to aficionados, since VHS and BetaMax were slugging it out at the time, the Laser Disk had just bit the commercial dust, and HBO was still relying on Fraggles and Not Necessarily the News to expand their customer base. (Allow me to moisten my throat on warm tea and polish my glasses as we reminisce…) Back then, of course, the only Casino Royale visually available was the 1967 drug-induced head trip of a comedy by the titular name, with a handful of directors headed by Val Guest and John Huston, and Bond being played by David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, and countless others popping up like whack-a-mole 007s. I worked my way sequentially through all the Bond books that summer before senior year, and Casino Royale was the first. Our public library had copies of all the books, and, after growing up with Connery, Lazenby and Moore, I mistakenly believed I was familiar with the source material. I originally picked up Fleming’s Casino Royale in high school. You’ve likely read it by now, but in case you haven’t, be warned. The subject of this essay is 68 years old.

Casino royale and the cold war