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With thanks to our friends at BKD:

An Interview with Richard Sammel

A discussion with the actor who portrayed ‘Gettler’ in 2006’s Casino Royale

Das war wunderbar!

Herr Sammel hat ausgezeichneten Geschmack im Film (und im Lesematerial ).

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Danke Oliver, Wolfgang, Sascha und Heiko.

An excellent interview. Makes one want a fully-loaded Casino Royale DVD with all the missing scenes even more.

He brings up an interesting point about not even getting a name mention--practically no-one in the movie does. Gettler, Valenka, Carlos, Mollaka, Solange (if one doesn't count the kids screaming her name), Steven Obanno, Kratt, Leo, Villiers, etc...

A very good interview and a great read. It's a shame that a lot of the scenes mentioned didn't make it into the film, as they could have greatly enhanced the film, IMO.

Brilliant Article. Really interested to hear about the missing scenes. These weren't mentioned in the first draft screenplay . Anyone got any pics?

Interesting interview. Thanks for posting!

While I wish that we could see more of his character in the film, I think the reason for cutting some of his scenes is for the best. People often get annoyed when scenes or characters are cut from a film, but in most cases this happens for the better. Just because a scene is cut doesn't mean that it's a good one or a needed one, and it doesn't mean that it should be rather "forced" back into the film in some special edition dvd release.

Of course, there are many other times when important scenes are cut when they never should have been.

Great reading, Mr. Asterix. Many thanks!

I think that any cut scenes with Gettler would have significantly enhanced the final moments of the film. What really bothered me about the ending of CASINO ROYALE was how the ending of the novel was almost completely discarded. In the novel, Bond begins to see a change in Vesper's behavior, and Gettler pops up a few more times than he does in the film, which really adds to a sense of foreboding that really hangs over the end of the novel. I think that, had one of the two action set pieces at the beginning of the film been completely cut, then more time could have been given to the stalking of Vesper by Gettler in Venice, and that could have really added some tension to the end of the film that really wasn't there.

Well, you have a point there. I also would've preferred it if they snipped back the action heavy first act a bit and instead spent more of that time with Bond/Vesper/Gettler in Venice. But, I do understand why they didn't. As I stated on another thread, the Bond moviegoers have come to expect the action, and so when it comes to action vs. dramatic scenes, it makes sense that the action won out, although I still think CR did better with dramatic material than any other film in the series.

I actually thought Gettler fit nicely in the last act. We see him once, briefly making direct eye contact with Vesper (how eerie that was!) and then we see her meeting him with the briefcase. While we didn't get his name, I thought his role was edited into a nice, concise character that served his purpose well.

And no, he wasn't *quite* as fleshed out as in the book, but his point was made. Clearly. I dunno, the last act had a great, (I think Harms may have called it...) "Hitchcock-on-steroids" feel that I enjoyed.

One route that they could have gone with it would have been to have Gettler stalking the two of them like in the book, but have it be something similar to the scene where Bond is following Vesper through the back alleys in Venice. They could have cut out the scene with them in the hotel room, and perhaps had them at dinner or something, being watched by Gettler (I think something similar happened in the novel, but it's been a while since I've read it, so please excuse any mistakes on my part). This way, there could have still been the romantic scene between Bond and Vesper, and much of the same dialogue probably could have been said over dinner rather than in the hotel room, but with the ominous threat of Gettler hanging over it all.

Either way, though, Richard Sammel was absolutely brilliant as Gettler, even though he was given far too little screentime.

But they already had two scenes with Bond and Vesper talking over dinner so cinematically that might seem a bit repetitive.