Licence to Adapt: the Resilience of the 007 Narration in Casino Royale

Abstract

In 1953 Ian Fleming published his first novel, Casino Royale, introducing 007 agent James Bond to his readers. The homonymous 2006 film, directed by Martin Campbell, is the third screen adaptation of the novel and is considered to be a prequel of the successful franchise, as it presents an inexperienced and vulnerable James Bond at the beginning of his career. According to semiotic theories, film transposition is a form of translation. The term transposition, in fact, evokes the transition from written to audio-visual narrative, hence the idea of going through and beyond the original text, increasing its semantic potential. The aim of the present paper is a comparative analysis of language uses in the novel and the film, both in a diamesic and a diachronic perspective, as the original 1953 story is recontextualized in the 2000s. James Bond, the fictional British Secret Service agent created by Ian Fleming in 1953, has been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games, and has been the protagonist of the most successful and long-lasting film franchise in cinema history. Indeed, it is thanks to those films, not the novels, that everybody knows something of the 007 myth. Actually, as genre films, the Bond movies have been consistently successful since the early 1960s, winning the approval of several generations of audiences all over the world. Casino Royale, published in 1953, is the first novel written by Ian Fleming and featuring the Double-0 agent. In 1954 it was adapted into a one-hour television adventure as part of the cbs dramatic anthology series Climax Mystery Theater, whereas in 1967 it was adapted into a comedy spy film featuring David Niven as the original James Bond. The 2006 film Casino Royale, starring for the first time Daniel Craig as James Bond, reboots the 007 franchise, establishing a new timeline and narrative structure meant to precede rather than succeed the earlier Bond films. Casino Royale is not a prequel in the traditional sense, as it is set in the 2000s and not in the time period before Dr. No, the first Bond movie released in 1962 and based on the homonymous 1958 novel. The