Shortly after I read Jeremy Duns' article in The Telegraph, disclosing the existence of a previously unknown "Casino Royale" script by famed screenwriter Ben Hecht, I visited Chicago's Newberry Library and was permitted to make digital photographs of the entire screenplay, dated April 10, 1964, with additions dated April 14. This material was provided to me on the understanding that I would not disseminate it further, and I must regretfully decline any requests for copies of the text.
Duns recently published Rogue Royale, an e-book on Hecht's script, and, after reading it, I went back over Hecht's script, in greater detail. My thoughts regarding this material are somewhat different than Duns', and in offering them I appreciate that he is not a poster here and that very few, if any, CBn'ers will have access to Hecht's work. Some may therefore wonder at the purpose of writing this review, but the screenplay is a major piece of Bond history, written by a major author, and I think it appropriate to set down a few of my thoughts. First, however, I encourage Bond enthusiasts who have not read Rogue Royale to do so, as it sets out an excellent, comprehensive discussion, not only of Hecht's screenplay, but of a major slice of the early struggles to bring James Bond to the screen.
I think of Hecht's screenplay of having three parts, not of equal length. The first part is the "set-up," consisting notably of the M scene and Bond's first meeting with Vesper. The M scene contains a precursor to what has become known as the "code name theory," the notion that "James Bond 007" is an identity bestowed by the Secret Service on a succession of agents (in this case, an American) to keep alive the mystique that had come to be attached to the original agent of that name. Had I first encountered this notion as part of a fairly straightforward Bond film adventure, I'd have hated the whole idea, and, truth be told, I'm not very fond of it now. Because, however, I first encountered this thought decades ago in CR 67's madcap mish-mash of a film, I never took it seriously as anything more than another example of that movie's string of excesses, and my reaction to seeing it in Hecht's screenplay wasn't as negative as it otherwise would have been.
This first section of the film also introduces Bond to Vesper, when she visits his flat, and I'm not terribly happy with this scene. It strikes me as overly jokey, with Bond demanding to verify her identity by requiring her to display the strawberry birthmark on her right thigh. Vesper also identifies herself as a non-drinker, but she no sooner pronounces the words than we're positive that Bond will eventually get her tipsy, and that in fact occurs later in the script. To me, the comedy seems forced, and the set-up for the later scene is too obvious.
My most significant reservations involve the screenplay's long middle section, with scenes in Hamburg and France. In Hamburg, Bond finds himself pursued by Colonel Chiffre's men to a nightspot called the Café Sofa, where there's a distasteful hint of child sexual exploitation. Beyond that, there's a strange and unconvincing scene where Bond seeks to evade his pursuers by jumping into a mud pit with two female wrestlers and becoming involved in their combat, even being lifted out of the mud by one of them and then body-slammed down into the mire. In the course of this contest, Bond is able to undress himself and is essentially naked when he escapes through a service door. He emerges from the club with his nakedness covered by a long military overcoat, having apparently inexplicably rid himself of most of the mud apart from that in his hair. He knocks out a taxi driver and eventually follows another car to where a rubbish truck has halted on its rounds. There, he observes Colonel Chiffre's wife and a group of henchmen preparing to dispose of Vesper and another British agent. Bond shoots one of the henchmen, named Fleurot, and, unseen by the others, bundles Fleurot's body into the truck's cab. He tears off Fleurot's eyepatch and, still seated in the cab's front seat, manages what I regard as the unlikely feat of removing Fleurot's tight-fitting leather suit and donning it himself. He also twice successfully imitates Fleurot's voice, although he had not had a significant prior opportunity to hear Fleurot speak.
Later in the middle section, Bond (still believed to be Fleurot) is at the wheel of a truck carrying Chiffre's collection of pornographic blackmail films across the French Alps. Several members of Chiffre's entourage are riding in the back of the truck, including a woman who becomes highly unsettled by Bond's high-speed driving and cornering on the treacherous mountain road. In a reaction that seems to me to defy all logic, she opens the communicating window to the cab and fires a pistol shot at Bond's legs, a move I would have thought more likely to cause a crash than to promote safe driving.
In Royale itself, Colonel Chiffre's men plant a bomb in Vesper's room. It explodes while Bond is with her, collapsing the ceiling, but Vesper asks the hotel manager to be allowed to remain in the debris-filled room, and he, improbably in my view, acquiesces.
This brings me to what I regard as the final section of the film, consisting of the baccarat game, Bond's capture and torture, and Vesper's suicide. Jeremy Duns has remarked that his section contains "a virtuoso piece of writing," and I fully concur. I recall that when, in an early reveal about CR 06, it was disclosed that Bond and Le Chiffre would be playing poker, some writers observed that hands of baccarat are played so quickly that the gambling scenes at the heart of the story would resultantly be too brief to generate the drama and suspense that the film would require of its central set-piece. Hecht's screenplay succeeds in this regard, effectively layering suspense into the gambling scenes.
Yes, there was a bit where a mind-reading henchman of Colonel Chiffre's used his powers to inform Chiffre telepathically of the cards in Bond's hand, and Bond fools the mind-reader and Chiffre by visualizing a different hand. I'm not overly troubled by this little bit of business, as it affects the outcome of only a single hand and isn't the primary factor in Bond's ultimate victory.
The torture scene is unsettling, as it should be, made more so by Hecht's having Chiffre's facially deformed wife administer the beating of Bond's testicles, while Chiffre's dogs are driven into a wild frenzy by witnessing the torture. It's a gripping scene, but I'm forced to wonder whether it could have been filmed and released in the 1960's, when a major American magazine, commenting on CR 67, observed that the sequence as Fleming wrote it "defies filming or description in a family magazine."
The final sequence , Vesper's suicide, requires that we believe that Bond had truly fallen in love, so that we are moved by the loss he feels at her death. For my part, I find the romance credible and the suicide deeply moving.
To sum up, despite what I regard as some striking flaws in its early and middle sections Hecht's screenplay succeeds in bringing Fleming's novel to life. I've doubts as to whether it could ever have been filmed as written, but I'd have loved to see the filmmakers try. The discovery of this screenplay is a major contribution to Bond scholarship, and I deeply appreciate Jeremy Duns' work in bringing it to light.