We'll never know, but Hecht's surviving material offers a glimpse into a cinematic genius at work, and an alternate James Bond adventure as rich and thrilling as anything yet brought to the screen. It has all the excitement and glamour you would expect from a Bond film but is more suspenseful, and the violence is brutal rather than cartoonish.Ĭasino Royale might even have been regarded as not just a classic Bond film, but as a classic thriller.
Hecht's treatment of the romance element is powerful and convincing, even with the throwaway ending, but there is also a distinctly adult feel to the story. Duns calls the combined material, from April 1964, 'phenomenal': It seems that Hecht never quite completed his final draft, but Duns was able to approximate what Hecht's finished product would have looked like by putting Hecht's last two incomplete drafts together.
