66 replies to this topic

[Harmsway]

It would be useful to see rougher cuts of the torture scene to see what it had originally been like before the ratings board was appeased.

Campbell said that the USA cut of the film features the originally-intended torture scene without any edits.

But I think that just by eliminating the humor, and showing Bond blacking out once or twice, with a very quickly glimpsed (i.e. shock cut) of blood, one could have stayed within the PG-13 rating.

I don't think so. The scene is pretty much an R-rated scene as is (no other PG-13 scene even comes close), with humor and lack of blood. Throw in blood, remove the humor... then the scene's WAY beyond the limits of the PG-13 rating. It's amazing it got through as is.

[00Twelve]

Balls and babies are issues wherein neither of the sexes can truly say "I feel your pain." If you've never had either, you can't say how bad they are.

So true.

I thought the setup in M's apartment and the tie-in during the torture scene made a clear point about his assuming he was more valuable and effective than he really is to his superiors.

The set-up in M's apartment is more about having Bond get the drop on M, a time-honored and rather stupid tradition in the Bond movies. It says that Bond can still go behind the backs of and outfox his superiors by putting them off-balance. When Bond quits later on in the movie, the filmmakers don't bother implying that Bond has been lastingly angered by the perfidy of the service. In other words, they don't stress the most Le Carre-ian aspect.

Well, we know that historically, yes, that is the point of the scene itself. But the point of the less flimsy dialogue about Bond being blind to the bigger picture in espionage and counter-terrorism is to put that in the back of his mind so that Le Chiffre's line about being able to kill Bond and get away with it will remind him that M was right and he was wrong, and there may be no chance of his outliving Le Chiffre, after all.

I'm just glad that the tone was much closer to the literary mark than any Bond adaptation's yet.

It wasn't. Both Goldfinger and On Her Majesty's Secret Service do a far better job of adapting Fleming.

We differ on that one. Granted, GF and OHMSS were lighter as novels to begin with, but no film in EON's canon has been as non-superspy in its depiction of Bond. That's partly due to circumstance, but partly due to an all-time low in rimshot-worthy cheekiness. All I know is that I've never come as close to believing the cinematic character as much as I believe the literary one. Personally, I lament GF and OHMSS' departure from their novels much more than I do with CR. It's all pretty subjective I suppose.

There's scant a movie in history that has reached the bar set by it's source book in terms of the script.

Nonsense: plenty of movies have--Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Big Sleep and Out of the Past all match their sources, and within the Bond series GF and OHMSS were even better than the original novels. As long as it's not Henry James or something like that, movies can do very well in adapting "lower" literary genres.

Yeah, I definitely over-stepped with this comment in my haste!

He was dead sure that Le Chiffre would be dead before him.

So in other words, it is about clairvoyance. If he's sure that LeChiffre would be dead before he finished with Bond, then I applaud his psychic powers.

Now, now. We're talking confident (characteristically overconfident, in all truth) assumption. Not clairvoyance as you appear to be defining it.

That's a major difference from the novel; literary Bond didn't have as much insight into Le Chiffre's peril. Literary Le Chiffre wasn't as vulnerable, and EON Le Chiffre's vulnerablility was a welcome change, IMO.

I don't see much to welcome. Why should LeChiffre feel vulnerable if it decreases the power and intimidation so vital to the character and cuts him down to size? Fleming's LeChiffre was enigmatic, frequently silent, and as Fleming put, moved with the ominousness of a large deep-sea monster. Again, were the filmmakers to have improved on Fleming or substituted a suitable equivalent (Telly Savalas' Blofeld is in no way Fleming's, but he serves the story equally well) there would be no reason to be dissatisfied.

Yes, it was a departure from the original character. But now that we've had all the other derivatives of Le Chiffre before the man himself, it's not original anymore, and very tricky to try and depict him as the archetype from which the other twisted older villains derived without just making him unoriginal (quite the paradox!). As a villain who's more obviously on the run, which is something we haven't had in Bond (IIRC), he was just really interesting and fresh to me. (I'm really sucking it up in my objectivity and profundity...)For the first time, they've finally made the cinematic version less cartoonish than the literary version. More of a real person, a believable human being, easier to connect with, but still be intimidated by. Perhaps to his detriment, perhaps not. Again, subjective.

Paradoxical as this sounds, I think you're taking this a little too personally, and mistaking intense lament for considered rebuttal. This may come as a shock to you, but I do not spend my days and nights shaking my fist at what I had already expected to be a compromised adaptation of CR. I do however enjoy arguing with those who are perfectly satisfied with a movie that wasn't as good as it could have been.

You're right, my objectivity was waining, and of course I understand your POV and no, I'm not taking it personally. S'all good, and my apologies to you . But I have been through this disappointment in Bond films that have not achieved the level set by the novels. Fifteen times, in fact. This time, I found myself enjoying the film without seeing it through that prism as much. It's been the only time watching a Fleming-adapted Bond film that I haven't been distracted by how far off from the novel it turned out. And it definitely did have quite a few differences, but I guess the best way I can say it is...If all the other adaptations had matched the lack of cheekiness (found a good word!) found in this adaptation, I'd have much less to gripe about.

[blackjack60]

We differ on that one. Granted, GF and OHMSS were lighter as novels to begin with, but no film in EON's canon has been as non-superspy in its depiction of Bond...All I know is that I've never come as close to believing the cinematic character as much as I believe the literary one. Personally, I lament GF and OHMSS' departure from their novels much more than I do with CR.

I think it's relatively easy to reduce Bond to non-superspy status by removing the more outlandish humor and set-pieces. It's more difficult to make a movie about a superspy and to make the audience care about him and the people in his life as if he weren't a superspy, which is OHMSS's achievement. When GF and OHMSS depart from their source novels, it's usually to strengthen the plot and thematic consistency. And while OHMSS has light elements, it's also ultimately a tragic love story, and to me succeeds far better than CR in that light (the absence of stale and corny lines like 'you've stripped me of my armor'-type stuff helps).

Now, now. We're talking confident (characteristically overconfident, in all truth) assumption. Not clairvoyance as you appear to be defining it.

I'm using the word in a humorously broad sense because Bond's strength of assumption practically borders on an assertion of clairvoyance. Bond doesn't have any reason to be sure that LeChiffre will be interrupted and shot while in the midst of torturing Bond, even if LeChiffre is a wanted man. I think of what irks me about the line is that it's too obviously ironic (har, har, har, LeChiffre really did die scratching Bond's balls!) and that it swerves away from the mood of the scene. In the midst of wondering how the hell Bond is going to survive/get out of this, our focus is suddenly switched to what will happen to LeChiffre.

Yes, it was a departure from the original character. But now that we've had all the other derivatives of Le Chiffre before the man himself, it's not original anymore, and very tricky to try and depict him as the archetype from which the other twisted older villains derived without just making him unoriginal (quite the paradox!).

This doesn't quite fly with me. When I reread CR I don't think to myself "Oh, here's boring old LeChiffre, just a standard Bond villain." I instead tend to notice that if he's an archetype, he has the purity of one, which still makes him interesting, and he still retains more menace than his movie counterpart. And considering how far so many of the cinematic Bond villains have strayed from the Flemingian archetype, going back to the original character would have probably been more a greater departure, especially since few of the Bond films have focused on the silky, intimate sadism of Fleming's monsters. A villain who's on the run is basically one who's lacking one of the scariest aspects of a villain--the projection of absolute control, which would make being in such a person's power doubly frightening.

For the first time, they've finally made the cinematic version less cartoonish than the literary version.

A young, handsome chess prodigy with an eye that leaks blood who makes a killing on the stock market by predicting airline explosions he helps set up... versus a middle-aged party member who blows his money on brothels and happens to be pretty good at baccarat...I'm pretty sure that movie LeChiffre is the bigger cartoon. Having your the whites of your eyes entirely surround your pupils may not be a widespread condition (though I have met people with it), but it's certainly more common than blood-weeping eyes.

More of a real person, a believable human being, easier to connect with, but still be intimidated by. Perhaps to his detriment, perhaps not.

Well, does one really want to "connect" with a Bond villain? I think it's enough to have a clear idea of their goals and why they might be attractive. Isn't their original strength in the fact that they are not quite human, but super-potent in the rottenness of their character? When Bond fights small-sized villains, part of the movie tends to deflate (as in FYEO and TLD), because the Bond films and novels take their strength from the near-manichean clash of antagonists. LeChiffre in the movie is still cartoonish and not too small-sized, but in any case, if we must connect with a villain, doing so while the villain is torturing our hero is probably the worst possible time. Dividing the viewer's empathy can be the wrong decision at the wrong time.

Moving on...

I don't think so. The scene is pretty much an R-rated scene as is (no other PG-13 scene even comes close), with humor and lack of blood. Throw in blood, remove the humor... then the scene's WAY beyond the limits of the PG-13 rating. It's amazing it got through as is.

I don't think any of us can truly speak for the frequently capricious and often paradoxical logic of film-ratings boards. I will just re-venture my faith in that removing the humor and adding a very minute glimpse of blood, along with changing the rhythm of the scene to suggest Bond's weakening, would not necessarily entail an R if the scene were filmed suggestively enough. I think a better filmmaker than Martin Campbell might have pulled it off (though as it is, Campbell did a fine job in the director's chair).

Edited by blackjack60, 12 May 2007 - 02:26 PM.

[Mr_Wint]

I prefer the Fleming version. It is one of the most memorable moments in his books.

However, the film version is ok, but not more. Mads Mikkelsen is not even close to the Le Chiffre I envision from Fleming's book. The 'new' Le Chiffre they invented is somewhat underdeveloped in the film, and this makes the torture scene less effective.

Also, the line "the whole world will know you died scratching my balls" is great on paper, but I think Craig is overacting a little bit here and that makes the line somewhat awkward.

[stamper]

The movie version is cool because they had the balls (sorry) to include it.

But compared to the novel, it lacks good writing, good dialogue, good structure. Apart from the premise, nothing is memorable about it, especially the execution. They should have gone all the way and make it a 18 mn scene. The movie would have made twice the money it did.

[Harmsway]

But compared to the novel, it lacks good writing, good dialogue, good structure. Apart from the premise, nothing is memorable about it, especially the execution.

The dialogue is instantly memorable (and I find much more memorable about the scene).

They should have gone all the way and make it a 18 mn scene. The movie would have made twice the money it did.

It would have lost most of its core audience. Heck, I'm not even sure I'd want to sit through an 18-minute torture scene.

[stamper]

I would the scene as it is is just trown away? That just my opinion, mind you...

[00Twelve]

We differ on that one. Granted, GF and OHMSS were lighter as novels to begin with, but no film in EON's canon has been as non-superspy in its depiction of Bond...All I know is that I've never come as close to believing the cinematic character as much as I believe the literary one. Personally, I lament GF and OHMSS' departure from their novels much more than I do with CR.

I think it's relatively easy to reduce Bond to non-superspy status by removing the more outlandish humor and set-pieces. It's more difficult to make a movie about a superspy and to make the audience care about him and the people in his life as if he weren't a superspy, which is OHMSS's achievement. When GF and OHMSS depart from their source novels, it's usually to strengthen the plot and thematic consistency. And while OHMSS has light elements, it's also ultimately a tragic love story, and to me succeeds far better than CR in that light (the absence of stale and corny lines like 'you've stripped me of my armor'-type stuff helps).

I personally saw little that OHMSS did that superceded the novel, other than reorganize the opening on the beach and combine Sable Basilisk and Sir Hilary. For example, I thought there would have been just as much suspense had Bond escaped Piz Gloria before being physically caught (as in the novel), and skied for a few moments before hearing a gunshot and feeling a bullet whiz by. Laz did a good job with his script, and I actually defend him more than many, but if we'd had a Daniel Craig in the role at the time, I think the script wouldn't have "improved" on the novel with lines like "lots of guts" and "branched off" and all those other superfluous, underwhelming quips. And the attempts to tie it to Sean's films was a bit too overt.

For Goldfinger, the only improvement I saw was the change in the Fort Knox plan and the modification from drugged water to nerve gas. I seriously missed the original way Bond caught GF in Miami (though did appreciate the golden girl scene), and REALLY missed the scene at Reculver. That took a lot away. I also saw no practical reason to change the saw blade to a laser, and would have preferred the saw (just as you'd have preferred the carpet beater and rougher torture, and for good reason), and I'd have liked to have seen Tilly live on and be GF's co-secretary with Bond in NYC before going on to Kentucky. But I admit, the Kentucky atmosphere was nice.

But I digress...

In the midst of wondering how the hell Bond is going to survive/get out of this, our focus is suddenly switched to what will happen to LeChiffre.

Well, this is a tough one to discuss because neither of us have the perspective of one who hadn't read CR. If I didn't know that Le Chiffre was about to be killed, I would be worried more about Bond's predicament until Mr. White's silencer shot was heard. But any of us who read the book knew it was Le Chiffre's last scene.

Yes, it was a departure from the original character. But now that we've had all the other derivatives of Le Chiffre before the man himself, it's not original anymore, and very tricky to try and depict him as the archetype from which the other twisted older villains derived without just making him unoriginal (quite the paradox!).

This doesn't quite fly with me. When I reread CR I don't think to myself "Oh, here's boring old LeChiffre, just a standard Bond villain." I instead tend to notice that if he's an archetype, he has the purity of one, which still makes him interesting, and he still retains more menace than his movie counterpart. And considering how far so many of the cinematic Bond villains have strayed from the Flemingian archetype, going back to the original character would have probably been more a greater departure, especially since few of the Bond films have focused on the silky, intimate sadism of Fleming's monsters. A villain who's on the run is basically one who's lacking one of the scariest aspects of a villain--the projection of absolute control, which would make being in such a person's power doubly frightening.

I don't get the "boring old Le Chiffre" vibe when I reread it either. But imagine if we hadn't known about Fleming's character, and here's Le Chiffre, and he's just like Dr. No and Goldfinger and Mr. Big and Blofeld and every other villain that has already come in the film series. I just wouldn't find him all that interesting, without some seriously fantastic actor in the part. I didn't think the bloody tear idiosynchracy was a big deal, and it didn't distract me from the man himself. Neither did the inhaler, other than to subliminally re-enforce that he's vulnerable. No, I don't want to have things in common with Bond villains, but I appreciate their vague stab at semi-realism, where everyone has good and bad sides and even twisted villains aren't without fear.

For the first time, they've finally made the cinematic version less cartoonish than the literary version.

A young, handsome chess prodigy with an eye that leaks blood who makes a killing on the stock market by predicting airline explosions he helps set up... versus a middle-aged party member who blows his money on brothels and happens to be pretty good at baccarat...I'm pretty sure that movie LeChiffre is the bigger cartoon. Having your the whites of your eyes entirely surround your pupils may not be a widespread condition (though I have met people with it), but it's certainly more common than blood-weeping eyes.

If the movie were just for us Fleming nuts, I'd totally agree with the justification of keeping Le Chiffre just the way he is. But if there's not some element of international intrigue or danger, the bigger majority of the audience (the masses) will be less likely to invest in the situation (because of their conditioned mentality to require a world-level plot from a Bond movie).

[blackjack60]

I personally saw little that OHMSS did that superceded the novel, other than reorganize the opening on the beach and combine Sable Basilisk and Sir Hilary. For example, I thought there would have been just as much suspense had Bond escaped Piz Gloria before being physically caught (as in the novel), and skied for a few moments before hearing a gunshot and feeling a bullet whiz by.

I don't believe that would have worked particularly well.
Fleming is able to build the suspense in the original because he's working from within Bond's head. It would have been very hard to translate that to the screen. In the movie there's instead that brief nail-biting moment between Bond's escape and the turning on of the spotlight and raised alarm, followed by the Spectre disgorging its army from the mountaintop. The mood thus shifts from suspense to overwhelming danger. And had they followed the novel, Bond would have never confronted Blofeld out-of-disguise, and it's important that he do so. Otherwise, you get the very uncinematic-scene of Bond slowly puzzling out Blofeld's scheme at M's house, and you lose a vital moment of personal interaction between Bond and the villain: one of the flaws of the novel is that we never see Blofeld break his disguise and act like a bastard in Bond's company. Instead he remains distant. The film only erred in not emphasizing his snobbery enough. Beyond that it's quite superior to the book in two major ways: it better ties together the book's frequently separate Tracy/Blofeld plotlines by giving Bond a far more personal stake in destroying Blofeld, and it has a far better version of Tracy. Fleming's Tracy is most interesting during her most neurotic scenes at the beginning of the book and then becomes progressively insipid in relation to her happiness, whereas the film version, thanks to Diana Rigg's moody acting and the addition of scenes like the birthday party confrontation, makes the character warm, three-dimensional, and continually compelling.

if we'd had a Daniel Craig in the role at the time, I think the script wouldn't have "improved" on the novel with lines like "lots of guts" and "branched off" and all those other superfluous, underwhelming quips. And the attempts to tie it to Sean's films was a bit too overt.

I don't consider any of these to be particularly worrisome. "He had lots of guts" is wonderful black humor, and far more appropriate in the situation (Bond is crowing over a fallen goon after having made a triumphant escape) than the ball-scratching line was. And the bits emphasizing the continuity with previous Bond films only help to finally emphasize that by reminding the viewer of what went before, OHMSS can proceed to take Bond to places Connery never went.

For Goldfinger, the only improvement I saw was the change in the Fort Knox plan and the modification from drugged water to nerve gas.

In Fleming the entire Fort Knox sequence is cack-handed and is nearly over before it begins. The entire book is filled with that slapdash sprirt. Changing Goldfinger's scheme from stealing the gold to irradiating it was an eternally brilliant stroke, and almost all of the added scenes around and inside Fort Knox (which Fleming didn't even go inside--just doing so is a vast improvement) work just as well. Those are mighty big changes and additions.

I seriously missed the original way Bond caught GF in Miami (though did appreciate the golden girl scene)

I think showing the golden-girl onscreen is such a large improvement that it quite overshadows any onscreen minimizing of the original canasta game.

and REALLY missed the scene at Reculver. That took a lot away.

Like what? I didn't really miss it. The characters are just as vivid without it.

I also saw no practical reason to change the saw blade to a laser

Let's let Richard Maibaum answer this:

The buzz saw must go. It's the oldest device in cheap melodrama. It's comic by now. Instead, I am dreaming up a machine which utilizes the new laser beam...I visualize a demonstration of the beam, showing it cutting through steel, and then used as the buzz saw was in the book, threatening to cut Bond in half [or castrate him]. This out-Flemings Fleming. Using the very latest scientific discovery in the old proven way of scaring the wits out of people.

And so what could have been a visually old-hat scene became an immortal one. You try making a parallel between your objections and my objections to CR's torture scene, but I didn't mind changing the carpet beater to a rope, just as I didn't mind changing the buzz-saw to a laser.

I'd have liked to have seen Tilly live on and be GF's co-secretary with Bond in NYC before going on to Kentucky.

This would have been at the expense of denying Pussy Galore screentime, and reducing her to the much thinner character she was in the book. Another improvement: the movie doesn't rely on the silly "secretary" excuse for keeping Bond alive, and so Tilly can leave early.

But I digress...

As did I. I'll just say that GF and OHMSS both out-Fleming Fleming, whereas CR tends to tamp him down, and if we wish to further discuss these movies, we should probably do so in their respective forums.

But imagine if we hadn't known about Fleming's character, and here's Le Chiffre, and he's just like Dr. No and Goldfinger and Mr. Big and Blofeld and every other villain that has already come in the film series.

!! "Just like" three of Fleming's most flamboyant villains? I don't think so at all. LeChiffre is probably the lowest key, and still the most intimidating, precisely because he's so furtive, inscrutable and silent, unlike speech-making super-criminals like the three you mention.

I just wouldn't find him all that interesting, without some seriously fantastic actor in the part.

But the villain of the book, who possesses his own kind of twisted wisdom and imparts his philosophy to Bond, is already more interesting than any of the versions on film. Movie LeChiffre makes the mistake of talking too much and dispelling his mystique. Beyond that, he doesn't have much physical presence. Beyond his fear, there isn't much to the movie character, and he doesn't have the undercurrent of sexual perversity in the original (beyond that body comment, which is probably more humorous than sexual).

I didn't think the bloody tear idiosynchracy was a big deal, and it didn't distract me from the man himself. Neither did the inhaler, other than to subliminally re-enforce that he's vulnerable.

Again, a useful difference: in the original LeChiffre uses a Benzedrine inhaler which he squirts into each nostril with "obscene" effect. This would have been far more visually effective on film than what we actually saw, vulnerability be damned. The film traded away effectiveness by trying for a wrong-headed conception of realism.

No, I don't want to have things in common with Bond villains, but I appreciate their vague stab at semi-realism, where everyone has good and bad sides and even twisted villains aren't without fear.

As Fleming has Bond note, if LeChiffre has a good side, it's in how forcefully he pursued his bad side, thus setting an example in evil. That's the key to every effective James Bond villain. And it's missing in the movie version, which is not only far less down to earth than the original, but (to me) doesn't even have him convey as much collective fear as in that moment when LeChiffre lets out that "eek" before pleading guilty.

If the movie were just for us Fleming nuts, I'd totally agree with the justification of keeping Le Chiffre just the way he is. But if there's not some element of international intrigue or danger, the bigger majority of the audience (the masses) will be less likely to invest in the situation (because of their conditioned mentality to require a world-level plot from a Bond movie).

I entirely agree, but it doesn't change the cartoonishness of the character's conception. There are one too many outsized elements jostling around there.

[00Twelve]

I didn't think the bloody tear idiosynchracy was a big deal, and it didn't distract me from the man himself. Neither did the inhaler, other than to subliminally re-enforce that he's vulnerable.

Again, a useful difference: in the original LeChiffre uses a Benzedrine inhaler which he squirts into each nostril with "obscene" effect. This would have been far more visually effective on film than what we actually saw, vulnerability be damned. The film traded away effectiveness by trying for a wrong-headed conception of realism.

I think it's just too subjective a point. People visualize Le Chiffre's "obscenity" in their own way, and judge its potential level of effectiveness onscreen. Did the tear thing add to Le Chiffre? Not that I can think of, other than give him that subtle inhuman element (which may have been captured better if he were a more grotesque, twisted, calculating, older man. Too bad we'll never get to see for sure.). Did it take away? Far less than Blofeld's superfluous cat!

No, I don't want to have things in common with Bond villains, but I appreciate their vague stab at semi-realism, where everyone has good and bad sides and even twisted villains aren't without fear.

As Fleming has Bond note, if LeChiffre has a good side, it's in how forcefully he pursued his bad side, thus setting an example in evil. That's the key to every effective James Bond villain.
And it's missing in the movie version,...

Oh, Le Chiffre has no good side in the film. Certainly not. Perhaps the producers made a flawed decision in taking the only Bond villain hunted and killed by his own employers and deciding to make him to be more overtly threatened (though, admittedly, by two opposing forces)?

...which is not only far less down to earth than the original, but (to me) doesn't even have him convey as much collective fear as in that moment when LeChiffre lets out that "eek" before pleading guilty.

Which points out a possible flaw in the adaptation of SMERSH in general as the org. that White worked for. He basically said his peace and blew Le Chiffre away, and so not as much chance for pleading. The relationship was strictly a business one in the film, not ideologically charged.

If the movie were just for us Fleming nuts, I'd totally agree with the justification of keeping Le Chiffre just the way he is. But if there's not some element of international intrigue or danger, the bigger majority of the audience (the masses) will be less likely to invest in the situation (because of their conditioned mentality to require a world-level plot from a Bond movie).

I entirely agree, but it doesn't change the cartoonishness of the character's conception. There are one too many outsized elements jostling around there.

Much the same case as most of the adaptations of the villains, unfortunately.

Well, this has certainly proved to be thought-provoking, and let me say thanks for forcing me to look back over the pages and reexamine Bond's roots.

Good call on the other films, and if you'd like to discuss them further (and/or any of the other films/movies), let me know.

[spynovelfan]

LeChiffre is probably the lowest key, and still the most intimidating, precisely because he's so furtive, inscrutable and silent, unlike speech-making super-criminals like the three you mention.

He seems fairly speech-making to me.

'"Perhaps I should explain," said Le Chiffre. "I intend to continue attacking the sensitive parts of your body until you answer my question. I am without mercy and there will be no relenting. There is no one to stage a last-minute rescue and there is no possibility of escape for you. This is not a romantic adventure story in which the villain is finally routed and the hero is given a medal and marries the girl. Unfortunately these things don't happen in real life. If you continue to be obstinate, you will be tortured to the edge of madness and then the girl will be brought in and we will set about her in front of you. If that is still not enough, you will both be painfully killed and I shall reluctantly leave your bodies and make my way abroad to a comfortable house which is waiting for me. There I shall take up a useful and profitable career and live to a ripe and peaceful old age in the bosom of the family I shall doubtless create. So you see, my dear boy, that I stand to lose nothing. If you hand the money over, so much the better. If not, I shall shrug my shoulders and be on my way."

He paused, and his wrist lifted slightly on his knee. Bond's flesh cringed as the cane
surface just touched him.

"But you, my dear fellow, can only hope that I shall spare you further pain and spare
your life. There is no other hope for you but that. Absolutely none."'

[chris-o]

The book got the classical torture scene with the perfect villian style, but the movie scene is a modern version of a torture in the Bond universe!

[blackjack60]

He seems fairly speech-making to me.

Not really--Dr.No and Goldfinger and Mr.Big and so forth make big speeches about the nature of power, how much they love gold, or about accidie and so forth. These are all the sort of abstract, generalized speeches that one expects megalomaniacs to make. What you've quoted is hardly in the same category--it's merely LeChiffre telling Bond at length what he plans to do to him and why Bond has no real reason to feel hope that he'll prevail by holding out. In other words, unlike other big villain speeches it serves a more direct practical purpose in the story, unlike the other big villain speeches, which are akin to arias of Olympian evil and delightfully excessive.

Edited by blackjack60, 14 May 2007 - 11:05 PM.

[Harmsway]

Given the novel Le Chiffre and the movie Le Chiffre, I'll take the movie Le Chiffre any day.

[spynovelfan]

He seems fairly speech-making to me.

Not really--Dr.No and Goldfinger and Mr.Big and so forth make big speeches about the nature of power, how much they love gold, or about accidie and so forth. These are all the sort of abstract, generalized speeches that one expects megalomaniacs to make. What you've quoted is hardly in the same category--it's merely LeChiffre telling Bond at length what he plans to do to him and why Bond has no real reason to feel hope that he'll prevail by holding out. In other words, unlike other big villain speeches it serves a more direct practical purpose in the story, unlike the other big villain speeches, which are akin to arias of Olympian evil and delightfully excessive.

They're just different speeches, though. Le Chiffre bangs on about torture:

'"Torture is a terrible thing," he was saying as he puffed at a fresh cigarette, "but it is a simple matter for the torturer, particularly when the patient," he smiled at the word, "is a man. You see, my dear Bond, with a man it is quite unnecessary to indulge in refinements. With this simple instrument, or with almost any other object, one can cause a man as much pain as is possible or necessary. Do not believe what you read in novels or books about the war. There is nothing worse. It is not only the immediate agony, but also the thought that your manhood is being gradually destroyed and that at the end, if you will not yield, you will no longer be a man. That, my dear Bond, is a sad and terrible thought

[blackjack60]

[quote]They're just different speeches, though. Le Chiffre bangs on about torture...[/quote]Again, that is a speech with a practical point, not an abstract aria--LeChiffre is trying to intimidate Bond and let him know what he's in for (as well as the reader), and every bang has a designated target. It's not another supervillain speech---it's a different type of speech that calls less attention to itself as a speech than as a statement of imminent intent and warning, and it puts him aside from later Bond villains, whose speeches are not so occasioned by the direct circumstances.

[quote]I greatly admire your articulate expressions of what is good about the films and books, but when it comes to what is poor about them, I find you very intractable! And often oddly aggressive to anyone who happens to hold another view - you rarely seem to credit anyone else's thoughts as being worthwhile, but simply dismiss each and every point without any ground ever given way.[/quote]

I believe that I have tried at length to respond to most of the major points made in the various differing views I have encountered; if that persistence counts as aggressiveness I suppose I am guilty, but taking time and length to respond denotes that I find the other person's opinions to be worthwhile. I suppose I could be polite and give concessions but that would not be sincere if I have not been truly convinced.

[quote]
Perhaps I'm misreading. But one can argue any point of view if one takes long enough, and it's very easy for us to sit here now and pick apart what EON 'did wrong'. However great the film was, it would be possible to do this.[/quote]Not easy for me. I have put some degree of thought in examining my feelings about the film, which I quite liked but felt uncomfortable with. Had CR been a critical disaster I would probably be posting spirited defenses of it. But it is probably the best reviewed Bond film in three decades, and most of the praise I could have lavished has already been articulated by critics and fellow board members. So I don't see much wrong with concentrating on what the movie may have missed, especially since I don't feel that some of my complaints have been articulated. The filmmakers have already received a lot of praise, credit and money. A little criticism doesn't hurt, especially since they won't be affected by it anyway.

[quote]My view is that the film improved the novel much more than previous films improved their respective novels.[/quote]

Again, I would hold that GF and OHMSS both succeeded in turning either weak or greatly flawed novels into extremely strong movies that remain the best in the series.
The rest of your post goes on to discuss CR's strengths as an adaptation. I am currently preparing an essay on the book/film issue, and don't wish to reproduce it here in response. Additionally, by going beyond the torture scene we're going slightly off-topic. However, I will try to reply in a substantial if quasi-brief manner.

[quote]
It's overkill, especially as Vesper doesn't appear to have any particular task. She does in the film, though - she oversees the money Bond spends...[/quote]I agree on that point and on Leiter. I suppose that's a point conceded, but I've never disputed it.

[quote]In comparison to the film, though, Fleming's character seems a rather cardboardy hero. Daniel Craig's Bond seems a much more plausible former commando than the Bond of the novel. In the book, Bond describes killing people as he has dinner in a hotel with a beautiful woman; in the film, we see him doing it, and we get much more of a sense of what it means. We see the results of Bond’s recklessness with Solange's corpse; we feel it when he looks in the mirror. All those clich

Edited by blackjack60, 15 May 2007 - 05:19 PM.

[chris-o]

The german version of the CR novel gives you an other view on the torture as in the english original. I like both but the english book is more interesting so I could better imagine what was going on.

The movie scene is very good with perfect jokes, if CR would have been released 40 years ago, they would have chosen the original version which appears in the book.

[00Twelve]

I don't think I perceive as much smugness or triumph (other than getting the drop on White) as some at the end of the film. I think Bond certainly means business, but he looks more pissed than amused to me (articulate, no?). He's got his armor back on, so to speak, and it's treated as the unequivocal tragedy that it should be. Hopefully if the next film picks up at relatively the same place where we left off, we will see more of the pain that the betrayal caused (but not if it's just broadcasted!).

Blackjack, would your dissatisfaction with the ending partially have to do with the different way that Vesper perished? In my mind, we are left with a greater possibility that she was being forced into a situation that she didn't voluntarily accept, and could still be potentially made to be more of a forgivable character in Bond 22. I could see easily how M's revelation at the end of the film (after the "bitch" line) could give Bond a hope that the original literary man wasn't allowed to have.

In any case, I hope we see more of his difficulty with her betrayal and death, and something of that annual trip to visit her grave.

[spynovelfan]

It's not another supervillain speech---it's a different type of speech that calls less attention to itself as a speech than as a statement of imminent intent and warning, and it puts him aside from later Bond villains, whose speeches are not so occasioned by the direct circumstances.

True - but is that relevant here? I think the difference between Le Chiffre and, say, Dr No, in the novels, is not so great when it comes to the problem of adapting them to film. Both still speak far too much. Although Le Chiffre's speeches are more to the matter in hand, they're still far too long for the screen: you can't have characters talk for that long and maintain suspense. Dr No talks much more than Le Chiffre in that novel and to less purpose: but both films had to cut them dramatically or risk boring the viewer. Additionally, Le Chiffre's speeches in the novel still have that roundabout arrogant feel to them that has become parodic as a result of the massive impact of the earlier Bond films. Le Chiffre benefits greatly as a character from featuring in Fleming's debut, sprung-from-his-subconscious novella, but compared to other film villains and the screen version we have just seen of him he is still very speechifying; he's quite a lot on the way to saying 'I will kill you, but only after I've told you my plan'. He's not there, of course, but a straight adaptation of him would have given a similar effect in 2006. And I don't think he's so very original anyway in the novel: he is an amnesiac of unknown origin from World War Two, like Hugo Drax; and bulky but elegantly dressed, like Drax, Blofeld and Mr Big. You like his relative silence rather more than I do, anyway: I find the novel's opening very odd, in that I always wonder why Le Chiffre and Bond never talk except at the end of the book.

I suppose I could be polite and give concessions but that would not be sincere if I have not been truly convinced.

I wouldn't want you to do that. I suppose the above would be a fair illustration - whenever a counter-point is made to yours, you simply define your own point more specifically. So you say that Le Chiffre is not a speech-making villain. I quote a long speech of his. You respond that this doesn't count, because it's a different kind of speech. You may well have a point, but I think one could always shift the goalposts in that way. Is it on point? Realistically, I don't see how the very minor delineations you are drawing between the levels of supervillainry of Le Chiffre and Drax et al in the novels are relevant: I feel it's stark-staringly obvious to all and sundry that a faithful version of this character in this film would have drawn guffaws and would have been seen as a Dr Evil-ish supervillain, and I'm fairly confident that your comments would have gotten extremely short shrift around any scriptwriting table at EON - and for good reason. I think I'm stating the obvious there, and yet I doubt it at the next turn, because you make your case with such a straight face, and concede so little, and argue with such authority, that it sometimes feels a little like going up against a Bond fan version of Deep Thought.

No: I shall stay firm! There is clearly no way it would have worked to have had the villain from the novel faithfully reproduced in 2006. If they had done, we'd probably all be chastising them for not being clever enough to update him.

Had CR been a critical disaster I would probably be posting spirited defenses of it. But it is probably the best reviewed Bond film in three decades, and most of the praise I could have lavished has already been articulated by critics and fellow board members. So I don't see much wrong with concentrating on what the movie may have missed, especially since I don't feel that some of my complaints have been articulated. The filmmakers have already received a lot of praise, credit and money. A little criticism doesn't hurt, especially since they won't be affected by it anyway.

Okay - but I do find it a little odd that you're criticising it somehow partly because others have praised it and that seems a bit boring. Seems rather contrarian. Why not join in the celebrations? I agree that the film is not perfect, but no film is. You've provided plenty of insight into some of the weaknesses of the scene - but it seems uneven to me to do that considering how much closer it is to anything in a Fleming novel than any scene in the last five films.

Again, I would hold that GF and OHMSS both succeeded in turning either weak or greatly flawed novels into extremely strong movies that remain the best in the series.

Okay. I think CR, OHMSS and FRWL improved their novels the most, and think CR did the best job because it had the weakest and trickiest novel from this perspective to work with. Apart from the gold switch, the film of GF doesn't strike me as being so innovative, but then I prefer the above three novels to GF the novel, too. I could hold that position forever, I'm sure - but it's only my opinion, after all. We can't prove any of this. I know that's the nature of discussions such as this, but somehow it strikes me that you think you *can* prove your opinions.

Not all of us. Daniel Craig, fine as he was, also seemed to me to be a little too much of a former commando, which Bond wasn't fully in the first place (I can't quite imagine Craig making that "I take a ridiculous pleasure" speech).

Well, what to say but 'I can imagine him making that speech - easily'?

Vesper guesses that Bond is a 'former SAS type', and his reaction seems to suggest that she's hit the nail on the head. (Although she also seems to think Oxford is a school!) Fleming's novels - and Fleming himself - suggested that Bond had commando experience more explicitly. First of all, he assassinated two people in the war: that's a commando job. In GOLDFINGER, he kills a man with a 'Parry Defence against Underhand Thrust out of the book' and a hand-edge blow to the Adam's Apple that had been 'the standby of the Commandos'. Fleming's Bond is writing a book about unarmed combat, uses a commando dagger in LIVE AND LET DIE, and in the same book attaches a limpet mine to a boat: that's an SOE invention that was used for the exact same purpose in an SBS operation in 1942. The idea that Bond was formerly in special forces is not an invention of the film-makers: Fleming stated the influence of commandos he had known during the war on the character. See the Playboy quote in my last post.

And while we're shown brief scenes where he's made to realize the ramifications of his actions, the film doesn't culminate with a haunted secret agent--it ends with a triumphant one. Here's the James Bond you came to know and love--complete with signature line and theme music. So much for losing his soul and all that.

I didn't view it that way at all. I saw the ending as being the vow to hunt down the threat behind the spies, just as in the novel. I also saw him as having lost his soul. In earlier dialogue with Vesper he acknowledges that he should get out while he still has some of it left: now he's come back in and with a vengeance, as it were.

It doesn't help that in the book, Bond describes the murders with a regret that comes through better than in clumsy pointer lines like "Made you feel it, did he?"

I didn't see that line as clumsy at all, but very dark - and very British - humour. It reminded me of Bond in the book: 'And, well, he just didn't die very quickly.' But why do I have the feeling you'll tell me why the book's line was so much better?

In those two murders I don't think we get much of a sense of regret (or horror...)

Again, I did. More horror than regret. The expression on his face after the first kill showed his horror, I think. Made me feel it, anyway.

Obviously the last few sentences deal with Bond's character over the course of the series than in CR--there is certainly more going on with movie Bond's character than in the source novel, but I'm not convinced that gestures at depth signify achieved depth, and even if it did, it doesn't explain why the novel hits harder than the movie did for me, and why it left a greater impact.

I wonder if it could really have been any other way. From what you've said, I think it would have been nigh-on impossible to create a film that would not have disappointed you. You are parsing all sorts of differences that don't make much sense to me. Bond is repeatedly described in the novel as having a face that is cold, cruel and brutal, so I think taking Craig to task there is a mis-step. As for the romantic beating inside of him, the cool pose that is stripped away, I found that entirely convincing in a tour-de-force performance by one of Britain's most enthralling actors. You thought he was gesturing at depth instead of creating it. One could say that of any performance and instill doubts into those who praise the performance. I'll stick by my guns and say he didn't gesture at anything: he made Fleming's character look like gesturing at depth to me.

There are several important facets to the literary LeChiffre--his long-standing, brooding silence, broken during the torture scene, where he taunts Bond like a nasty father-figure,

I think this was simply poor plotting/planning on Fleming's part.

and his physical presence, which according to Fleming is a mix between Alistair Crowley and a deep-sea fish.

Just out of interest, where did Fleming describe him as that?

Again, I don't read the book and find LeChiffre a throwback to Dr.No. He is a predecessor of sorts, but in a "Bond Begins" movie, perhaps having Bond meet an ur-Bond villain on a human, grounded scale would have provided a greater frisson than having an otherwise bland villain whose primary innovation is in being hunted more than in the book, and thus reduced in effectiveness.

Perhaps. Or perhaps it's rather easy to come up with things now that they could have done to make it so much better. One can always imagine some perfectly written and directed Bond film in one's mind, especially after the fact. We can all be armchair scriptwriters. I also missed the father figure nature of the relationship, but you can't have everything, as someone once said: where would you put it? I found Mads Mikkelsen sinister and eerie and oozing sweat and fear and unpleasantness. I found his palpable sense of desperation more original than had he been another super-calm villain - he's meant to be desperate in the book, too, but Fleming forgets about that quite early on. The plot regarding Le Chiffre is also far more convincing in the film, beause we have someone else in the card game that Bond replaces, it's established that Le Chiffre is someone who gambles on the stock market so the idea doesn't seem quite so barmy, and there's some kind of point to the exercise other than just ridiculing him, which is the idea in the book: the side-motivation that he will be bankrupted is absurd, as there is no reason why MI6's gambler, however good he is, will win against him, and every reason to suppose that Le Chiffre's nonsensical scheme to avoid bankruptcy by gambling will fail without any risk on MI6's part. Even with Bond's success - which he only just manages, with convenient American money - his part in the drama cannot be revealed, so all MI6 has done is 'ridiculed' Le Chiffre in a way that he would almost certainly have done himself had they not become involved and risked the life and testicles of one of their agents. The film's plot regarding Le Chiffre isn't exactly plausible, but it's not anywhere near as weak as the book's, surely?

[blackjack60]

(I kept getting the "You have posted more than the allowed number of quoted blocks of text" message, so I've decided to post this insanely long reply in two parts. Here's part one.)

I think the difference between Le Chiffre and, say, Dr No, in the novels, is not so great when it comes to the problem of adapting them to film. Both still speak far too much.

One of the first rules of movies is to avoid long speeches, so naturally LeChiffre's verbiage would have to be compressed to its essence. I don't think I've voiced any objections to that necessity. I'm more concerned that almost none of the interesting things LeChiffre actually said made it into the movie. Instead we got to hear LeChiffre say how he was going to feed Bond his balls and so forth, which fits in with the usual torturer mentality, rather than the original's far more perverse frame-of-mind and manner. The speeches in earlier Bond films have become parodic because they don't serve any purpose beyond stroking the villain's ego and letting Bond know exactly what the master plan is. Remove those elements and you remove much of the parody, just as CR removed many of the most parodied elements of the Bond films and returned them to basics. Instead of hearing the usual pointless villain speech, the audience hears the villain lay out what is going to happen to the hero, how truly helpless he will be, and how powerful the villain truly is in his power to hurt and maim, and since that speech is vicariously directed to the audience as well, they're going to receive it differently than usual.

And I don't think he's so very original anyway in the novel: he is an amnesiac of unknown origin from World War Two, like Hugo Drax; and bulky but elegantly dressed, like Drax, Blofeld and Mr Big.

Isn't your conception of originality a bit backassward, considering that LeChiffre came first? And isn't your argument weakened by using two attributes that are fairly insignificant either in film-villain terms (they don't have anything to do with expectations regarding the movie villains, whose origins are unexplored and usually wear Nehru jackets) or in talking about the personality and M.O. of the villains?

You like his relative silence rather more than I do, anyway: I find the novel's opening very odd, in that I always wonder why Le Chiffre and Bond never talk except at the end of the book.

And say what, beyond the cliched veiled threats and uninteresting sneering that occur when they talk in the movie? Isn't a silent duel more interesting than a verbal one, especially when conducted across a space as small and intimate as a card table?

From the book:

"Le Chiffre looked incuriously at him, the whites of his eyes, which showed all round the irises, lending something impassive and doll-like to his gaze...He inserted the nozzle of the cylinder, with an obscene deliberation, twice into each black nostril in turn, and luxuriously inhaled the Benzedrine vapour.(CR.Ch.11)"

"Le Chiffre was tapping a light tattoo on the table with his right hand. Bond looked across into the eyes of murky basalt. They held an ironical question. 'Do you want the full treatment?' they seemed to ask."

"LeChiffre was watching him. His eyes glittered back at Bond. His mouth was open and he was beathing fast. He was waiting... (ch.12)"

"Like an octopus under a rock, LeChiffre watched him from the other side of the table."

"He felt LeChiffre's eyes boring into his brain."

"Bond's eyes were on LeChiffre. The big man fell back in his chair as if slugged above the heart. His mouth opened and shut twice in protest and his right hand felt at his throat. Then he rocked back. His lips were grey."

The lack of dialogue makes possible LeChiffre's "offensive pantomime" in the first quote. More importantly, the absence of dialogue focuses your attention on the eyes. This is already more cinematic and vivid than what the movie gave us. Its real cinematic equivalent are those close-ups you get of gunfighters' eyes right before the shoot-out in a Sergio Leone western. With no dialogue, the drama is carried out through looking into the eyes and studying facial expression and bodily movement. By not talking, LeChiffre assumes the silence of the octopus Bond mentions, the silence of a beast lying in wait. LeChiffre don't need to talk, because their glances are all the communication they need. Early in the match, LeChiffre shows "no trace of emotion" and plays "like an automaton, never speaking except when he gave instructions in a low aside." Thus any clue we have to his emotions and whether he's bluffing or not is not relayed through the sound of his voice or what he might have said, but how his eyes and body move. By not having him speak, tension is created, and when he finally speaks, it's to give Bond (and the reader) very, very horrible news, and to assume a very creepy persona.

whenever a counter-point is made to yours, you simply define your own point more specifically...You may well have a point, but I think one could always shift the goalposts in that way.

And one can always dismiss an argument by saying one's opponent is shifting the goalpost, just as one can dismiss whatever points are made by waving them away as "very minor" differences or delineations. I am less interested in shifting goalposts than in finding out exactly where those goalposts stand, which is the point of all those supposedly minor differences I point out and then redefine more specifically when it looks like they're being dismissed.

Okay - but I do find it a little odd that you're criticising it somehow partly because others have praised it and that seems a bit boring. Seems rather contrarian. Why not join in the celebrations?

Yes, why not be like everybody else and join the hallelujah chorus? Well, because I don't see anything wrong in being slightly contrarian if it actually gives some balance to a critical conversation (after all, many critics have found raves sometimes less illuminating than demurrals). And since it has prompted you and several other board members to give spirited and thoughtful defenses of the film, I think my stance has proved somewhat productive.

I agree that the film is not perfect, but no film is.

To me, some films are close enough. Frankly there's little to nothing I'd change about GF or OHMSS, just as there's probably nothing I'd change about Out of the Past or The Big Sleep, to name two movies I've previously mentioned. If pressed I could name several more that approach perfection closely enough in my eyes. So no, I don't agree, and I don't see the point going easy on CR just because it's closer to a Fleming novel than the Brosnan pictures (which is low praise anyway). And while I won't go into it here, I get more of a Flemingian feel from LTK than CR, even if the latter has more the letter (but not--in my eyes--of the spirit).

We can't prove any of this. I know that's the nature of discussions such as this, but somehow it strikes me that you think you *can* prove your opinions.

And what exactly are you doing in helping to prolong this discussion? Would you not be even slightly delighted if I conceded many of your points and said that you'd helped me see the light? After all, you kept up with me in persistence and obduracy. Opinions cannot be proved. But in defending them, they can be refined, and I would like to think that we are both doing that.

Well, what to say but 'I can imagine him making that speech - easily'?

I suppose I should re-phrase my original sentence: "I can easily imagine him making that speech, but in a strained and unconvincing manner." I still have trouble figuring out where Craig's Bond picked up his taste in vodka-martinis, since even more than Dalton he doesn't seem inclined to such finicky fripperies. But I can imagine him drinking a Miller High Life, if that's any consolation.

Fleming's novels - and Fleming himself - suggested that Bond had commando experience more explicitly.

And had Fleming wanted to make Bond into a former commando he would have explicitly made him so, instead of having him end up in the Special Branch of the R.N.V.R. As part of his tough, two-fisted make-up it's not surprising that Bond has some commando skills. But he was never all-commando or an SAS type anymore than Fleming, who shared the same rank as him. In imagining a tougher figure than himself Fleming gave him some commando attributes. But making Bond an SAS man and Oxford alumnus ignores the area Fleming situated Bond in--he made him commando-like but not fully commando, and sophisticated and seemingly upper-class without being the graduate of a posh university, or having even made it through a posh prep-school. Craig by contrast could really pass as a former commando. It's easier to imagine him in combat fatigues than in a naval officer's suit.

Edited by blackjack60, 16 May 2007 - 05:52 PM.

[blackjack60]

(and here is the second part of an already maddeningly prolix reply...)

I didn't view it that way at all. I saw the ending as being the vow to hunt down the threat behind the spies, just as in the novel. I also saw him as having lost his soul.

The audiences I've seen the film with did not seem to agree, and neither do I. I think lots of people were left elated that Bond had found himself and was kicking and taking down names. How can a man lose himself when he's finally become the figure audiences are comfortable with, gifted with the official signifiers--gun(even bigger than usual), line and music--that are every Bond actor's patrimony? Fleming makes Bond make a pledge, and I'd cringe if one scene later he caught up to what he pledged to catch. It would be as if Batman was orphaned in one scene and then caught his parent's killer in the next. As it is, what happens at the end of the movie is a conciliatory gesture to the audience, whose long-deferred pleasure in standard Bondiana is granted, and who are now free to revel in the Craig saying *the* line with *the* music. CR doesn't end on tragedy, ro with the sense of waste and loss that tragedy gives. It ends on a note of progress regarding the progress of Bond's pledge and Craig's progress in stepping into a role many were nervous about him filling.

I didn't see that line as clumsy at all, but very dark - and very British - humour. It reminded me of Bond in the book: 'And, well, he just didn't die very quickly.' But why do I have the feeling you'll tell me why the book's line was so much better?

What's British about guiding the audience to a conclusion as if it were a child? I don't think those lines would exactly function as replacements for each other, though in the book's line one is at least given the freedom to tease out from Bond's hesitation that he didn't feel quite right about the ordeal, whereas the other line places the dramatic question right in front of you and demands that you look in Bond's face and see what is apparently supposed to be a twinge of guilt. It doesn't matter because Bond shoots the guy and gives a quip that indicates he isn't too bothered. I'm not going to say that the book's line was better, since Bond's first killings would have to be visualized rather than related (though that line could have been retained during Bond's conversation with Vesper). But the pre-credits sequence seemed flat and obvious to me.

I wonder if it could really have been any other way. From what you've said, I think it would have been nigh-on impossible to create a film that would not have disappointed you.

I can't help feeling that you've employed something akin to the Basil Fawlty defense. ("We're not satisfied!" "People like you never are.)I certainly think it would be a hard task for anyone to adapt a novel that has little action compared with the movies the Bond series have become. And perhaps the Fleming stories, like the Sherlock Holmes stories, might be more faithfully transmitted as period television films. But I can also imagine some tweaks that would have made CR more satisfying to me than it is--I can even imagine a director with more vision, such as Quentin Tarantino, who wanted to make a relatively faithful version with Brosnan, succeeding with the material. As it is, I liked CR, but found parts of it pedestrian and disappointing. Vesper has more character in the movie, even if the love affair loses interest after the screwball comedy repartee evaporates. Yet, most or at least many of the major aspects of the novel--the baccarat game, LeChiffre's character, the discussion on evil, the up and down final scenes from the love affair, the rhythm and mood of the torture sequence--have often been unwisely handled, and even if some parts of the movie would have necessitated obvious cuts and changes (such as the nature of evil scene), it didn't have to come out the way it was.

Bond is repeatedly described in the novel as having a face that is cold, cruel and brutal, so I think taking Craig to task there is a mis-step.

Let's take a look at the most prominent evidence for that: "Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, cold."

So no, I don't think it's a mis-step to note that even with his eyes wide open Craig doesn't have much of that warmth, but rather a forbidding, icy stare that helps maintain a locked-in, self-contained onscreen personality, even if it belongs to one of "Britain's most enthralling actors". The significant scenes where Craig is supposed to show the romantic underneath the brutalist pose--the shower scene and recuperation scene--both suffer from obvious and hammy dialogue and an underlying obviousness thanks to their self-conscious and contrived set-ups. In any case, Craig reverses the dynamic of the novel--he's a brutalist who briefly enjoys playing at being a romantic. This does not strike me so much as depth, but simply the imposition of an actor's personality on flawed material.

Just out of interest, where did Fleming describe him as that?

Several commentators have remarked on Fleming's inspiration for LC being Crowley (he certainly has Crowley's eyes). In Ch.10: "LeChiffre, with the silence and economy and movement of a big fish, came through..." The "deep-sea" part was my memory acting up. I don't know if the majority of large fish live near the surface or in the deep.

Perhaps. Or perhaps it's rather easy to come up with things now that they could have done to make it so much better. One can always imagine some perfectly written and directed Bond film in one's mind, especially after the fact. We can all be armchair scriptwriters.

And anyone can dismiss criticism of any kind from a non-professional in the field as armchair criticism, though in your case you have no problem with armchair praise. I admire your powers of imagination, but speaking for myself, I can't imagine a perfectly written and directed Bond film in my head. I know one when I see one (I've seen two), and I can see parts where the filmmakers perhaps departed unwisely from their source, and how retaining more aspects of what made the book worth adapting in the first place might have worked to their advantage, even with judicious massaging.

I found Mads Mikkelsen sinister and eerie and oozing sweat and fear and unpleasantness. I found his palpable sense of desperation more original than had he been another super-calm villain - he's meant to be desperate in the book, too, but Fleming forgets about that quite early on.

No, he just makes the entirely logical assumption that touching on the villain's desperation and vulnerability is a bad idea during scenes where the villain is supposed to pose a great threat and challenge to the hero because he seems to have the upper hand and is free to use it in having his way with the hero. LeChiffre's desperation drives him to the casino, but it's sublimated otherwise, as it should be.
Mikkelson also strikes me as unpleasant, but since the character's emotional range as written most just vamps between sneer and fear, he's an easy to read villain and the actor gets stranded inside his cheekbones making hissing noises. I don't watch him eager to see emotions break through the automaton card player. I don't feel the tension in his insistent gaze at Bond (because the movie doesn't go for this), and if the filmmakers were really interested in doing so, they wouldn't have given him that distracting weeping eye either. I don't feel the silent tension that the book delivered, and I don't feel the true perversity of the character.

I certainly thought that the stock-market rationale was a good replacement for the unusable commie trade unions/brothels elements, though referencing 9/11 helped make LeChiffre more cartoonish. The idea in the book is to ridicule and destroy, by forcing Smersh's hand, and there's no reason to assume that LeChiffre would automatically bankrupt himself without determined help. Yes, the overall idea is crazy, but even M admits that, and it's appropriate that it should be a gamble in itself. In any case, the film's changes to that aspect of the plot, which I didn't mind and had accepted, didn't prevent several critics from complaining that the plot didn't make sense. Plots in Bond's world rarely do make perfect sense. Blofeld probably shouldn't be using high-profile beauties as his germ agents, and it's unlikely that the Chinese would have sponsored Goldfinger. Neither of these aspects matters too much if the film moves along fast enough and is engrossing enough in its individual scenes and surprises and doesn't throw out too many howlers (which is what the novel of GF tended to do). CR is unfortunately broken-backed due to its frontloading of action, but I had no problem with LeChiffre's situation being changed.

Blackjack, would your dissatisfaction with the ending partially have to do with the different way that Vesper perished? In my mind, we are left with a greater possibility that she was being forced into a situation that she didn't voluntarily accept, and could still be potentially made to be more of a forgivable character in Bond 22.

I already forgive Vesper--I didn't really need to see her being further forced into a situation she didn't voluntarily accept. I think she's more of a tragic heroine for accepting a tragic fate and acting on it. Maybe I'm alone in this, but part of why I feel her suicide hits harder in the book is because she and Bond have fought and made-up right before it happens. The book takes away hope right after you think you've regained it. It's crueler that way. As I said, I already forgive Vesper, but I don't need Bond to--his anger and bitterness are meant to put the viewer on edge. I think the film doesn't quite trust in the viewer realizing this distinction. Right after Bond badmouths her, M tells him how Vesper may have saved him and helped him, and then Bond finds Vesper's helpful message. Aw, she did some good after all! She didn't just leave Bond feeling bad! Again, this strikes me as softening, but I guess that to get in that final, final line, they needed to have Bond win in the end.

(Post done, now I can pass-out.)

Edited by blackjack60, 16 May 2007 - 06:07 PM.

[00Twelve]

You like his relative silence rather more than I do, anyway: I find the novel's opening very odd, in that I always wonder why Le Chiffre and Bond never talk except at the end of the book.

And say what, beyond the cliched veiled threats and uninteresting sneering that occur when they talk in the movie? Isn't a silent duel more interesting than a verbal one, especially when conducted across a space as small and intimate as a card table?

From the book:

"Le Chiffre looked incuriously at him, the whites of his eyes, which showed all round the irises, lending something impassive and doll-like to his gaze...He inserted the nozzle of the cylinder, with an obscene deliberation, twice into each black nostril in turn, and luxuriously inhaled the Benzedrine vapour.(CR.Ch.11)"

"Le Chiffre was tapping a light tattoo on the table with his right hand. Bond looked across into the eyes of murky basalt. They held an ironical question. 'Do you want the full treatment?' they seemed to ask."

"LeChiffre was watching him. His eyes glittered back at Bond. His mouth was open and he was beathing fast. He was waiting... (ch.12)"

"Like an octopus under a rock, LeChiffre watched him from the other side of the table."

"He felt LeChiffre's eyes boring into his brain."

"Bond's eyes were on LeChiffre. The big man fell back in his chair as if slugged above the heart. His mouth opened and shut twice in protest and his right hand felt at his throat. Then he rocked back. His lips were grey."

The lack of dialogue makes possible LeChiffre's "offensive pantomime" in the first quote. More importantly, the absence of dialogue focuses your attention on the eyes. This is already more cinematic and vivid than what the movie gave us. Its real cinematic equivalent are those close-ups you get of gunfighters' eyes right before the shoot-out in a Sergio Leone western. With no dialogue, the drama is carried out through looking into the eyes and studying facial expression and bodily movement. By not talking, LeChiffre assumes the silence of the octopus Bond mentions, the silence of a beast lying in wait. LeChiffre don't need to talk, because their glances are all the communication they need. Early in the match, LeChiffre shows "no trace of emotion" and plays "like an automaton, never speaking except when he gave instructions in a low aside." Thus any clue we have to his emotions and whether he's bluffing or not is not relayed through the sound of his voice or what he might have said, but how his eyes and body move. By not having him speak, tension is created, and when he finally speaks, it's to give Bond (and the reader) very, very horrible news, and to assume a very creepy persona.

Like the suspense of Fleming's OHMSS ski chase being based on Bond's inner monologue and perception, so too is Le Chiffre's menacing effect. Quite a few of these quotes are based upon how Bond sees him and sums him up. It cannot be totally inferred from only a third person perspective, which is what we get in movies. We can't be in Bond's head, only watch them glare at each other across the baize and try to interpret the mental conversation. It helps to think that movie Bond is thinking what Fleming Bond thought, but it's impossible to completely convey.

Not to deviate from the topic, but let me illustrate another Fleming villain. Goldfinger. I'm blatantly jumping to the conclusion that assuming you believe that along with the rest of the film, Frobe's GF is an improvement upon Fleming's. Besides the physical difference, the change that was made was to make him more talkative and "louder" in terms of persona.

There were many instances in the book of GF's eyes "looking past his eyes, through to the back of Bond's skull." Much unspoken conversation between he and Bond, and much to be said by his non-verbal actions and glares. Frobe gives a few of these, but it isn't the same (at least in my perception). He had to speak more and be more outwardly mad to get the same effect on Bond: Horror and disgust at the gluttony and madness, but utmost respect for the intellect and resourcefulness. Le Chiffre also had to be more outwardly scared and determined to get his money so that the non-Flemingo audience could grasp the situation. By broadcasting clearly illustrating to the audience exactly what was driving Le Chiffre, it strengthened the effect that his character had on said audience (though perhaps revealed too much, IYO). That's my take on him, at least.

And since it has prompted you and several other board members to give spirited and thoughtful defenses of the film, I think my stance has proved somewhat productive.

Indeed.

I agree that the film is not perfect, but no film is.

To me, some films are close enough. Frankly there's little to nothing I'd change about GF or OHMSS, just as there's probably nothing I'd change about Out of the Past or The Big Sleep, to name two movies I've previously mentioned. If pressed I could name several more that approach perfection closely enough in my eyes. So no, I don't agree, and I don't see the point going easy on CR just because it's closer to a Fleming novel than the Brosnan pictures (which is low praise anyway). And while I won't go into it here, I get more of a Flemingian feel from LTK than CR, even if the latter has more the letter (but not--in my eyes--of the spirit).

I guess there's no objective way to differ in opinion (<- key word), but I just do. I'd change more in GF (perhaps only very little, yes, in OHMSS), and I certainly think LTK is right up there with CR in terms of Fleming's spirit, but it's critically hampered down by remnants of the Moore-era aesthetic, and so one has to see though more haze to realize the Fleming feel.

[Harmsway]

I think there's a lot worth changing in OHMSS, and if we're going to place CASINO ROYALE against such nitpickery (a lot of which I don't think is justified... for example, all this nonsense about Le Chiffre being inferior... I find Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre to be as compelling a villain as we've had in the franchise), then OHMSS deserves to be put on the block as well. Problems with OHMSS:

-Bond. Say what you will, but Lazenby is only serviceable, with a few good moments. He's hardly reaching the full potential of this role.
-Blofeld. Savalas is good, but he's hardly the dominating and intimidating figure of Fleming's imagination.
-The Tracy/Bond relationship. There's almost no development here in any degree, and it's all summed up in a rather lame montage. Give it a little more honest psyche-delving, please, both on Bond's part and on Tracy's. Don't just gloss it over, as it does (Tracy starts off committing suicide, but her psychological trouble is never touched again).
-Bond's stay in Piz Gloria. It's way too silly and campy, full of horrendous one-liners and dialogue, and Bond is sleeping around like a fiend (which totally undermines the Bond/Tracy romance of the story).
-OHMSS is more than a little overlong, padded with lots of scenes that don't necessarily move the story forward and instead take up valuable screentime. We're lucky that these scenes are often pretty good in their own right, but the film still takes a while to get moving.
-Hunt's experimental editing often makes the fight scenes really confusing to watch.

[spynovelfan]

I'm more concerned that almost none of the interesting things LeChiffre actually said made it into the movie. Instead we got to hear LeChiffre say how he was going to feed Bond his balls and so forth, which fits in with the usual torturer mentality, rather than the original's far more perverse frame-of-mind and manner.

I love the novel, but somehow I feel you're overselling Le Chiffre. Perhaps it's because I find him a not especially scary villain for most of the book, and a not especially distinctive one. I find him hard to picture: other than his eyes, his physical characteristics never seem to take coherent shape. I'm bothered by the level of implausibility of his plan to avoid Smersh, and find I can't take him as seriously as he needs to be taken a result. He is much better written than most villains that preceded him in the genre, of course - that's Fleming for you - but fundamentally I don't find him so much a step on from the likes of Clubfoot. When you take away Fleming's prose, which you clearly have to with a film, the danger is you're left with a rather obvious stereotypical villain, albeit with some very good lines. I do share some of your concerns with what they did with him in the film, but I still think they really had to radically alter the character in some ways or risk being laughed out of the cinema.

I like all your quotes from the book with Le Chiffre staring Bond down, but I really appreciated them from the point of Fleming's prose style: sometimes - not all the time, but sometimes - I think these sentences are there not so much to create tension but because Fleming couldn't really think what to do with Le Chiffre until the really big showdown. Perhaps I'm being as cruel to the Master as you are to the film and being an armchair critic, but that's still how it strikes me: the Le Chiffre of the novel is a cipher, but not entirely in a good way, I find. He feels undeveloped and patchy and somehow not quite there until the torture scene. Perhaps it's all masterful art on Fleming's part, but somehow I come away with the idea that the masterful bit is the way he covers this up with details and phrases that avoid cliche, and keep you reading.

Yes, why not be like everybody else and join the hallelujah chorus? Well, because I don't see anything wrong in being slightly contrarian if it actually gives some balance to a critical conversation (after all, many critics have found raves sometimes less illuminating than demurrals). And since it has prompted you and several other board members to give spirited and thoughtful defenses of the film, I think my stance has proved somewhat productive.

Fair enough!

But in defending them, they can be refined, and I would like to think that we are both doing that.

That's my view as well, but I'm glad to hear you say it because sometimes, you see, I'm not *that* sure of my own views and I do want to refine them and throw them up in the air and look at other angles I may not have thought of, and so on. You sometimes give the impression of having already made up your mind so definitively and with attention to every possible angle, and do so with a kind of calculated forcefulness that seems to render throwing any kind of counter-ideas into the ring futile, because it's certain they will be thrown back as having already been weighed, analysed and discounted for the obvious tosh they are.

And had Fleming wanted to make Bond into a former commando he would have explicitly made him so, instead of having him end up in the Special Branch of the R.N.V.R.

That's just a cover, though. He assassinated people in the war, and tells us about it. He was writing in a time before the security services were officially recognised as existing. As you point out, Fleming himself didn't actually work as a field agent, and as he admitted in that late interview, he was inspired by people he knew who did, both in the secret services and in the special forces. I'm guessing, of course, but to have stated that Bond was with SOE or SAS during the war might not have made him friends. It's unstated, then, but the man's experiences certainly suggest that is what he did. But yes, he's an amalgam of secret agent and commando, and Fleming was vague and inconsistent about Bond's career.

But making Bond an SAS man and Oxford alumnus ignores the area Fleming situated Bond in--he made him commando-like but not fully commando, and sophisticated and seemingly upper-class without being the graduate of a posh university, or having even made it through a posh prep-school. Craig by contrast could really pass as a former commando. It's easier to imagine him in combat fatigues than in a naval officer's suit.

But isn't that primarily based on Craig's looks (and your personal opinion of them), rather than what's in the film? It's only Vesper's guess that he is an SAS-type and went to Oxford or somewhere like it. That could easily mean he had been in SBS and was expelled from Eton, and get the same reaction. There's nothing else in the film that explicitly tells us about Bond's commando background.

[Loomis]

Problems with OHMSS:

-Bond. Say what you will, but Lazenby is only serviceable, with a few good moments. He's hardly reaching the full potential of this role.
-Blofeld. Savalas is good, but he's hardly the dominating and intimidating figure of Fleming's imagination.
-The Tracy/Bond relationship. There's almost no development here in any degree, and it's all summed up in a rather lame montage. Give it a little more honest psyche-delving, please, both on Bond's part and on Tracy's. Don't just gloss it over, as it does (Tracy starts off committing suicide, but her psychological trouble is never touched again).
-Bond's stay in Piz Gloria. It's way too silly and campy, full of horrendous one-liners and dialogue, and Bond is sleeping around like a fiend (which totally undermines the Bond/Tracy romance of the story).
-OHMSS is more than a little overlong, padded with lots of scenes that don't necessarily move the story forward and instead take up valuable screentime. We're lucky that these scenes are often pretty good in their own right, but the film still takes a while to get moving.
-Hunt's experimental editing often makes the fight scenes really confusing to watch.

I totally agree with all of that.

OHMSS is a very good film, with many wonderful aspects, but it's still flawed, as Harmsway has just pointed out. While also flawed, CASINO ROYALE is a superior film.... and also a superior Bond film.

[spynovelfan]

I think lots of people were left elated that Bond had found himself and was kicking and taking down names. How can a man lose himself when he's finally become the figure audiences are comfortable with, gifted with the official signifiers--gun(even bigger than usual), line and music--that are every Bond actor's patrimony? Fleming makes Bond make a pledge, and I'd cringe if one scene later he caught up to what he pledged to catch. It would be as if Batman was orphaned in one scene and then caught his parent's killer in the next. As it is, what happens at the end of the movie is a conciliatory gesture to the audience, whose long-deferred pleasure in standard Bondiana is granted, and who are now free to revel in the Craig saying *the* line with *the* music. CR doesn't end on tragedy, ro with the sense of waste and loss that tragedy gives. It ends on a note of progress regarding the progress of Bond's pledge and Craig's progress in stepping into a role many were nervous about him filling.

I take your point, and yes, there is some element of the triumphant about it, and a sop to fans. I wouldn't have minded if he had not said the line and we hadn't had the theme kick in, personally, but I'm perverse. However, I think beyond that superficial air-punching, Craig's performance and the weighting of some of his lines earlier means that this effect wears off pretty quickly, and after a while what you're left with - or what I was left with, at any rate - was the feeling that it was a hollow soulless triumphalism, which he could really have done without. And yes, that the Bond We Know And Love was shaped by the events we have just seen, and that that is not a pretty thought, and he's not the straightforward gung-ho hero he's always been mistaken for. I don't see this as akin to Batman finding his vengeance in a day at all - Bond hasn't solved the problem. He has simply taken the first step in fulfilling his vow. He never did in Fleming. Read the description of Solitaire to see how scarred Bond is by Vesper's death: she is almost a clone of Vesper, and Bond doesn't even think about it. This is probably because Fleming wasn't sure how successful CASINO ROYALE would be when he sat down to write the 'sequel', so he 'rebooted' right away.

What's British about guiding the audience to a conclusion as if it were a child?

I don't read the line that way, but as the knowing acknowledgement and quasi-nostalgia of someone who has long lost their soul for a time when they, too, felt something when committing murder. Bond is a novice at murder: he soon won't be. There's a cosy, wry, deadpan-ness to the line, and I think the 'made' rather than 'did' and the 'it' rather than something more specific, and the question, and the delivery, all bring it away from telegraphing. Some telegraphing is necessary in a scene that is already confusing, because as in most films we're plunged in media res, it's in black and white, there's a new Bond actor, and so on. But I don't find the line as patronising as you, and think there is some juice to it.

I can't help feeling that you've employed something akin to the Basil Fawlty defense. ("We're not satisfied!" "People like you never are.)

Fair point.

But I can also imagine some tweaks that would have made CR more satisfying to me than it is--I can even imagine a director with more vision, such as Quentin Tarantino, who wanted to make a relatively faithful version with Brosnan, succeeding with the material.

Certainly, but hindsight is 20/20, isn't it? I agree, for instance, with a couple of Harmsway's points about OHMSS, but then I think the same could be done for all the Bond films. They're often maddeningly uneven. I guess I think that CASINO ROYALE got so much so right, after so long waiting for precisely these elements to be gotten right, that I am more prone to forgiving some of its weaknesses. It is uneven and dissatisfying in plenty of ways, but I suppose I'd rather look at how it expands on what we have seen already and what I loved about it and what it opens up for the next films than dwell on its - to me - minor faults. But I admit you've given a lot of food for thought. Perhaps it is just that I don't want to consider the faults for fear it will impact my enjoyment of the film.

Let's take a look at the most prominent evidence for that: "Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, cold."

So no, I don't think it's a mis-step to note that even with his eyes wide open Craig doesn't have much of that warmth, but rather a forbidding, icy stare that helps maintain a locked-in, self-contained onscreen personality, even if it belongs to one of "Britain's most enthralling actors".

But you have chosen that as the most prominent evidence. I agree that there's not a hell of a lot of warmth in Craig's eyes in this film, although there's plenty of humour. There isn't much physical descrption of Bond in the novel, but what there is usually relates to coldness, and his emotional state is often described in those terms. The words cold, cool and variations repeatedly occur in the book, in relation to both Vesper and Bond.

'He is very good-looking. He reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless in his...' Chapter 5

Well, certain websites might dismiss the first sentence, but can there really be any doubt that Daniel Craig has something cold and ruthless in his appearance? (Unless she was going to say something else, of course!)

'Bond looked at her tenderly. Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.' Chapter 21

Well, you found the shower scene and the armour dialogue hammy; I think it reflected the above very well indeed.

'"He's a dedicated man," her chief had said when he gave her the assignment. "Don't imagine this is going to be any fun. He thinks of nothing but the job on hand and, while it's on, he's absolute hell to work for. But he's an expert and there aren't many about, so you won't be wasting your time. He's a good-looking chap, but don't fall for him. I don't think he's got much heart. Anyway, good luck and don't get hurt."
All this had been something of a challenge and she was pleased when she felt she attracted and interested him, as she knew intuitively that she did. Then at a hint that they were finding pleasure together, a hint that was only the first words of a conventional phrase, he had suddenly turned to ice and had brutally veered away as if warmth were poison to him. She felt hurt and foolish.' Chapter 9

Again, I think Craig's performance fits this, and his physical presence fits it.

'He suddenly had a vision of Vesper walking down a corridor with documents in her hand. On a tray. They just got it on a tray while the cool secret agent with a Double O number was gallivanting round the world - playing Red Indians.' Chapter 27

'He pulled on a shirt and trousers and with a set cold face he walked down and shut himself in the telephone booth.' Chapter 27

The spirit of these two quotes is not in the film to the same extent, as you have eloquently argued - but I do think they are in there. Le Chiffre's dig about MI6 taking him on whatever the outcome and Bond's reaction to it is brief, but concerns the first quote. The second quote was drowned out for you by the large gun, the line and the theme tune, but the set, cold face was there for me, and chilled me.

Craig reverses the dynamic of the novel--he's a brutalist who briefly enjoys playing at being a romantic. This does not strike me so much as depth, but simply the imposition of an actor's personality on flawed material.

Don't many great actors do that, though? Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW, for instance. It's a germ of a thought, but I wonder if this isn't partly a definition of a great actor. Surely Connery did this.

Several commentators have remarked on Fleming's inspiration for LC being Crowley (he certainly has Crowley's eyes). In Ch.10: "LeChiffre, with the silence and economy and movement of a big fish, came through..." The "deep-sea" part was my memory acting up. I don't know if the majority of large fish live near the surface or in the deep.

I was intrigued that you attributed the Crowley inspiration to Fleming. I've always wondered if it were true - there seems little hard evidence for it - and thought perhaps you had the missing piece of that puzzle that would enlighten me.

And anyone can dismiss criticism of any kind from a non-professional in the field as armchair criticism, though in your case you have no problem with armchair praise.

I think the two are very different. One mode presupposes greater knowledge and know-how than the people who created the piece of art, while the other seeks to celebrate and learn from it. Of course we should criticise - we'd have little to discuss otherwise. But your criticisms sometimes strike me as excessively pedantic and overarching and, in a way, condescending. You alone seem to know precisely what they did wrong, and how it all could and should have been rectified. You've got it all worked out, and we're just here to listen. Well, that's caricature, but it's the ballpark area of why I've reacted here and in other threads in this way: simply because your tone and modus operandi sometimes seems a little over the top to me. Perhaps too brutal and cold? Perhaps you could take off the mask for another moment and show us the warm loving humanity inside?

Well, it was worth a try.

I don't watch him eager to see emotions break through the automaton card player. I don't feel the tension in his insistent gaze at Bond (because the movie doesn't go for this), and if the filmmakers were really interested in doing so, they wouldn't have given him that distracting weeping eye either. I don't feel the silent tension that the book delivered, and I don't feel the true perversity of the character.

This all sounds to me a bit like: 'They didn't make the film precisely as I would have done'. I thought there was plenty of silent tension in his staring at Bond over the table. Bond didn't have a vertical scar on his face; Vesper's accent was noticeably not English at all times; there was no smoking; Mathis ain't the same; no straw hats. One could endlessly dissect differences and weaknesses in the film. I suppose I just liked the film better than to feel it worth doing that to such an all-encompassing degree.

But yes, I am aware of how long this post is.

I certainly thought that the stock-market rationale was a good replacement for the unusable commie trade unions/brothels elements, though referencing 9/11 helped make LeChiffre more cartoonish.

True.

The idea in the book is to ridicule and destroy, by forcing Smersh's hand, and there's no reason to assume that LeChiffre would automatically bankrupt himself without determined help.

He needs no help at all, surely. If you owed a large sum of money to a lethal organisation that specıalıses in assassination and you knew they were probably onto you so you had to get it back fast, would you also plan to do so by holding a massive card game in a casino? Surely you'd know that most people who bet large sums of money lose either some, most or all of it, and that the chances are fairly much stacked against you getting it all back and coming good, especially in such a short space of time? If not, we'd all be in the casino right now. But Le Chiffre has an excuse: he's desperate. MI6 has no excuse other than that Fleming wanted to use this plot so found a weak way of shoehorning it in. In the above scenario, I wouldn't mount an elaborate operation to risk my own money in ensuring you lose - as you're pretty certain to without my help anyway, and I might just lose myself into the bargain. And when you do lose, how are you ridiculed, exactly? You're not: you're just killed by the lethal organisation, as you were going to be all along: rather stupidly, you've advertised your presence at a rather flashy card game. In the meantime, I've lost the love of my life and can't piss straight.

[Loomis]

But I can also imagine some tweaks that would have made CR more satisfying to me than it is--I can even imagine a director with more vision, such as Quentin Tarantino, who wanted to make a relatively faithful version with Brosnan, succeeding with the material.

Eon's CASINO ROYALE is already relatively faithful - more than relatively faithful, in fact. I find it hard to see how casting Brosnan (54 today, apparently) would have made for a more faithful film. I don't believe Bond's age is mentioned in the novel, but Fleming certainly did not portray him as a 50-something.

Visually, Craig (okay, apart from the blond hair) really nails the Bond described in the novel, his face "a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal and cold".

ETA: Ah, I note that that taciturn mask business has already been quoted. Oh, well, great minds (he writes modestly)....

[blackjack60]

Like the suspense of Fleming's OHMSS ski chase being based on Bond's inner monologue and perception, so too is Le Chiffre's menacing effect. Quite a few of these quotes are based upon how Bond sees him and sums him up... We can't be in Bond's head, only watch them glare at each other across the baize and try to interpret the mental conversation.

I think you are miscomparing both scenes. Much of the suspense in OHMSS depends on Bond mentally tabulating when his colleague will crack, and when Bond will be blown and sent for, and what conditions might be like once he makes his escape. That can't be rendered onscreen. Much of CR however consists of LeChiffre being silent and Bond having to try and "read" LeChiffre's expressions from his eyes. I think movies do this even better than books, because they can have us look from Bond's viewpoint. You can't be in Bond's head, but you can be in his eyeballs, and in the gambling scene that's what counts, because we're in Bond's position anyway--when LeChiffre glares at the camera he's glaring at us, and we're intrigued about reading his expression. LeChiffre's menacing effect probably would be even greater onscreen, because the combination of silence and being directly stared at is even greater when conducted through image and sound, rather than mere words. So no, I very much disagree.

There were many instances in the book of GF's eyes "looking past his eyes, through to the back of Bond's skull." Much unspoken conversation between he and Bond, and much to be said by his non-verbal actions and glares.

I think these however are clearly subsidiary to the verbal interaction between Bond and Goldfinger, who's one of the first villains Bond really goes to town with in verbal sparring. Gert Frobe was such an odd looking phyiscal specimen that he probably was even better for the role than what Fleming had in his head. Frobe has that instant-photograph look in his eyes, and he's wonderful when he looks shifty or perturbed. Goldfinger and Bond don't have the single-duel and torture relationship that counted in CR. They keep meeting multiple times and getting to know each other better. Having a relationship based on silence and eye contact would not have worked for them. It's important that they talk to size each other up.

Le Chiffre also had to be more outwardly scared and determined to get his money so that the non-Flemingo audience could grasp the situation.

I think this is a little unfair to the audience. Once told LeChiffre's motivation, I think they can keep it in mind.

I certainly think LTK is right up there with CR in terms of Fleming's spirit, but it's critically hampered down by remnants of the Moore-era aesthetic, and so one has to see though more haze to realize the Fleming feel.

That's the first time I've heard LTK accused of carrying Moore-era aesthetics (TLD usually gets that criticism). I think the charge that it carries too much Miami Vice aesthetics is more valid, though I dispute that one too.

[blackjack60]

I think there's a lot worth changing in OHMSS, and if we're going to place CASINO ROYALE against such nitpickery (a lot of which I don't think is justified... for example, all this nonsense about Le Chiffre being inferior...

Sorry for spouting all that nonsense then. But in turn I have to say that your criticisms regarding OHMSS don't make much sense to me either...

Bond. Say what you will, but Lazenby is only serviceable, with a few good moments. He's hardly reaching the full potential of this role.

I think you are doing what Spynovelfan has accused me of doing. The expression "say what you will" basically means that everything I say will be ineffectual and thus hardly worth the effort. Maybe it would be justified if a sentence like "Say what you will, but Lazenby is only serviceable" was a mathematical proof. Alas, it's only masquerading as hard fact. Lazenby is quite fine in OHMSS. Maybe other actors might have been even better, but I think an essential point that OHMSS makes is that Bond is not a superman, but simply a man who happens to be a good fighter and employed by the SIS. He doesn't have too many outstanding qualities. It's the closest the series came to an "everyman" Bond, and having an actor of limited charisma (but still some) helps make that point quite well. And he has many good scenes because he plays well opposite most of the major actors: surly with M, cocky but inwardly sensitive with Tracy, insolent and unimpressed with Blofeld. For a stripped-down Bond he's suitably stripped-down and good enough.

-Blofeld. Savalas is good, but he's hardly the dominating and intimidating figure of Fleming's imagination.

What is so dominating and intimidating about Fleming's Blofeld? We don't see the character very often--we don't even see him break his disguise in order to project the menace you detect. What we do get is a pleasant old gentleman with contact lenses who has one or two suspicious moments. Blofeld is one of the weakest characters in OHMSS. The only rich aspect of his character is his craven snobbery.

The Tracy/Bond relationship. There's almost no development here in any degree, and it's all summed up in a rather lame montage.

I think you could not be more wrong. The film actually adds scenes to further the development of the relationship--the confrontation in Bond's bedroom, the very moving birthday scene where Bond is forced to prove to Tracy that he cares for her (something Fleming didn't do well), not to mention the ski-chase scenes, which shows how well they move and interact as a couple. Let's remember that Fleming dropped Tracy's psychological troubles after Bond left for Piz Gloria as well, and the character suffered for it. She became bland and happy. The movie's Tracy actually increases in interest, and she's given a more important role in the plot, as well as far more spunk, guile, and independence of spirit. It's no coincidence that the proposal scene in the movie works much better than in the book.

Bond's stay in Piz Gloria. It's way too silly and campy, full of horrendous one-liners and dialogue, and Bond is sleeping around like a fiend (which totally undermines the Bond/Tracy romance of the story).

The dialogue doesn't strike me as overwhelmingly bad ("a slight stiffness" is probably the best smutty line in the series), and Bond was already "unfaithful" to Tracy in the novel as well. I wouldn't protest if Bond were less of a bed-hopper, but I don't regard his being so as out of character or as much of glaring flaw.

OHMSS is more than a little overlong, padded with lots of scenes that don't necessarily move the story forward and instead take up valuable screentime. We're lucky that these scenes are often pretty good in their own right, but the film still takes a while to get moving.

I would hope that you could name these scenes so that I'd know what you were talking about. And it's a little funny to attack OHMSS for being overlong when CR is guilt of the exact same sin (as an endless string of even positive reviewers has moaned). And unlike CR, OHMSS doesn't break its own back by frontloading most of the action scenes.

Hunt's experimental editing often makes the fight scenes really confusing to watch.

Confusing for who? I've never been unable to tell who's fighting whom. The fight scenes brilliantly give the explosion of impressions that results when you're in the thick of a fistfight. If your method of debunking OHMSS is to critique all its best points, then you have a lengthy task ahead of you.

[blackjack60]

I really appreciated them from the point of Fleming's prose style

While I appreciate Fleming's prose style too, I wasn't paying much attention to it in those quotes, and had they been worse written they would not have been much less effective.

I think these sentences are there not so much to create tension but because Fleming couldn't really think what to do with Le Chiffre until the really big showdown.

But the gambling scene is the big showdown. Bond has little to no interaction with LeChiffre beforehand, since there was no reason for them to meet beforehand. Again, a silent duel is more intriguing than a talky one. I don't think anything is really added with dialogue is such scenes. Let the camera create the tension through cutting between glances and by delineating the space between the players, and creating a mystery as to what LeChiffre is thinking. And if the actor you have cast is good enough to draw interest to himself by silently brooding and looking like a "black minotaur", then his force of charisma and silence create a desire on the audience's part to delve into the mystery he presents.

But yes, he's an amalgam of secret agent and commando, and Fleming was vague and inconsistent about Bond's career.

I think that Fleming essentially wanted the best of all worlds, and thus he gave his character elements from commandos and agents he'd known in addition to his own background. I think it's a tricky balance to maintain, and I didn't think the film maintained it.

But isn't that primarily based on Craig's looks (and your personal opinion of them), rather than what's in the film? It's only Vesper's guess that he is an SAS-type and went to Oxford or somewhere like it.

Bond doesn't contradict her though--if memory serves (and if it doesn't, please let me know), he's mostly grudgingly silent, as though she'd got him in a sensitive spot, just like her (accurate) remark about his being an orphan.