S. 
Minute by Minute of Casino Royale continues with Rob Smith, Views From Mark and Lucas Townsend. We discuss the entrance of Vesper, played by Eva Green. You can listen to the full chat and break down on the There Will Be Bond podcast. A weekly podcast on Spotify and iTunes, currently breaking down the minutes of Casino Royale.
Vesper
Lucas Townsend: I’m in the final weeks of my PhD on Ian Fleming and Graham green at the University of Roehampton here in London. I’m the associate editor of the International Journal of James Bond studies, and I’m a trustee of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust charity, and I’ve taught at universities for about six years on spy fiction.
I have some opinions on Nick Shakespeare. As an academic, a scholar speaking, and I’m going to be pilloried online for saying this, but I think as an academic biography it doesn’t work very well. The index is terrible. It’s an 823 vainglorious tome that says it’s the complete man, as if you could encapsulate everything about Ian Fleming into one book. There’s so much more to tell, which is why I’m doing a PhD on him.
Why is it vainglorious?
I do take an issue with the the way some of the chapters, for example, he’s like, oh, you know, I’m gonna go interview the last member of Fleming’s commandos that exists. It’s more a story of how Nicholas Shakespeare found this guy more so than the guys. Sorry, that’s just my opinion. It might be personal.”
About Vesper
What do you think of the dialogue between Vesper and Bond in this minute?
I do find it interesting that Vesper is sort of made this Treasury agent. Whereas in Fleming’s original novel Casino Royale, she actually is an MI6 clerk, along with bond more or less.
Well, let’s talk about what your comparisons between the movie Vesper and the book Vesper. People think that she’s a bit too girly, a bit too ditzy in the novel. More so in the novel than the film, would you agree?
I would agree with that. Because in the book, I think she’s a lot more lackadaisical in terms of, I think the Vesper in Casino Royale, the film is much more edgy. And she’s more of the femme fatale than, I think the Vesper that we get in the novel.
But I think it’s so masterful Fleming to portray Vesper like that. Because when you re-read Casino Royale, the book, you have to pay attention that the entire time, Vesper is a Soviet double agent. The entire time she’s acting. The way she attracts Bond is totally to undo him, because that’s her mission as a Soviet double agent.
Bond is more or less blinded by his own internalized misogyny to the threats of enemy counterintelligence. So I think it’s really well done by Ian Fleming to so it’s more purposeful that he’s written her as a ditz.
Lucas the line about, Oh, do you realize, if you bugger this up, you would have directly financed terrorism first? That’s a real look that Bond gives her. He’s taken aback by that barbed comment. That was actually a real event, right? Ian Fleming did go to a casino, put a load of money down trying to wipe out the Nazis, but completely failed. Is that true?
I don’t think it’s true. So just to set the scene in the Second World War, Admiral Godfrey, who’s Fleming’s Boss, he’s the director of Naval Intelligence who M is based off is on their way to America to help set up the OSS, which is the precursor of the CIA. They stop in Portugal at a casino outside Lisbon.
And at this casino, Fleming sees some Nazi officers on leave playing baccarat at a table. Fleming imagines and says to Admiral Godfrey, ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we sat down and cleaned them out of their money?’
Now Fleming, later would go on to say that it was he who sat down there and done that, but there’s no real evidence of that. But what we do know is that there was a British triple agent by the name of Dusko Popov that was at that casino who was stealing money from Nazis. They think, because Fleming worked in naval intelligence, knew that Dusko Popov was there, hijacked the story.
Other thoughts
“Watching Vesper looking at Bond, you could argue she almost looks like she’s already in love with him. But then you have to remember what’s coming up. What her character arc is throughout the movie. She would have made a brilliant spy herself, rather than just counting numbers, because she’s playing bond like a fiddle. Vesper has been turned by this mysterious organization that we don’t yet know anything about. Bond’s job is a spy, hers isn’t so, and we find out the motivations, obviously, later on and in other movies.” – Views From Mark.
“It’s a real tragic character, isn’t it? Because she’s being played by a honey trap effectively in the movie. That belies her character on screen there, because she comes across as very intelligent. She can see through people immediately, she’s great with numbers, is very academic, very beautiful and very intelligent, yet she can’t see that she’s being played.” – Me.
“I had to get four minutes in where they sussed each other out and fell in love at the same tim. What does Bond really want from a woman? He wants them to see through him entirely. And this is her unpacking him, almost dismantling him.” Paul Haggis – screenwriter in the blu ray commentary (rough transcription).
