Casino Royale (1967 Film) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

The "chaotic" nature of the production was featured heavily in contemporary reviews, while later reviewers have sometimes been kinder towards this. Roger Ebert said "This is possibly the most indulgent film ever made," and Variety said "it lacked discipline and cohesion."

Some later reviewers have been more impressed by the film. Andrea LeVasseur, in the AllMovie review, called it "the original ultimate spy spoof", and opined that the "nearly impossible to follow" plot made it "a satire to the highest degree". Further describing it as a "hideous, zany disaster" LeVasseur concluded that it was "a psychedelic, absurd masterpiece". Robert von Dassanowsky has written an article on the artistic merits of the film and says "like Casablanca, Casino Royale is a film of momentary vision, collaboration, adaption, pastiche, and accident. It is the anti-auteur work of all time, a film shaped by the very zeitgeist it took on."

Writing in 1986, Danny Peary noted, "It's hard to believe that in 1967 we actually waited in anticipation for this so-called James Bond spoof. It was a disappointment then; it's a curio today, but just as hard to get through." Peary described the film as being "disjointed and stylistically erratic" and "a testament to wastefulness in the bigger-is-better cinema," before adding, "It would have been a good idea to cut the picture drastically, perhaps down to the scenes featuring Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. In fact, I recommend you see it on television when it's in a two-hour (including commercials) slot. Then you won't expect it to make any sense."

Despite the lukewarm nature of the contemporary reviews, the pull of the James Bond name was sufficient to make it the thirteenth highest grossing film in North America in 1967 with a gross of $22.7 million and a worldwide total of $41.7 million ($291 million in 2012 dollars).

Orson Welles attributed the success of the film to a marketing strategy that featured a naked tattooed lady on the film's posters and print ads. Since its release the film has been widely criticised by a number of people. For instance, Simon Winder called Casino Royale "a pitiful spoof", while Robert Druce described it as "an abstraction of real life". In his review of the film, Leonard Maltin remarked, "Money, money everywhere, but film is terribly uneven - sometimes funny, often not."

Conversely, Romano Tozzi complimented the acting and humour, although he also mentioned that the film has several dull stretches.