7 Spies at the Casino

David Niven stands before us in all his suave, sophisticated glory to tell us the story behind the car crash that was the 1967 version of Casino Royale.

He was, after all, Ian Fleming's first choice to play James Bond (“and they went and gave the part to a Scottish milkman”) so it was only right that he should finally get to do it – such a shame about the film.

Could something featuring Niven, Deborah Kerr, Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, Woody Allen and Ursula Andress really be all that bad? Oh yes, and then some. The main problems stemmed from Sellers who was becoming more and more superstitious and unreasonable until he finally simply walked out in the middle of filming, never to return.

Not, however, before he and Orson Welles had developed such a hatred for each other they they only once appear in the same shot, in spite of the fact that their face to face card duel is crucial to the plot (if such there still was).

From Sellers' departure the film simply spiraled into sheer lunacy with its multiple directors, an army of writers, killer robot grouse, deadly bagpipes, male and female Bonds, cowboys and Indians and almost anything else you can think of. So entertaining was the description of its awfulness that I was almost tempted to buy a copy when I saw it, exactly as forecast, in a bin end in Blockbuster Video today. Almost, but not quite.

Paul Lavers is an excellent Niven with just the right sort of storytelling style. It's a shame that he's in the cavernous raw stone and corrugated metal space of Big Belly, perfect for many shows but not this one which cries out for intimacy. That he overcomes the space so well and allows his Niven to share some painful personal memories before returning to the safe world of cinematic shallowness is a credit to the actor's ease of technique.