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| “ | You know, I never understood all these elaborate tortures. It's the simplest thing to cause more pain than a man can possibly endure. And of course, it's not only the immediate agony, but the knowledge that if you do not yield soon enough, there will be little left to identify you as a man. The only question remains: will you yield, in time? | „ |
| ~ Le Chiffre's most famous quote as he tortures James Bond. |
Le Chiffre is the main antagonist of the late Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, and all of its adaptations. His alias is French for "The Cipher" or "The Number". Ian Fleming based the character on Aleister Crowley.
In the novel, he is the paymaster of a French trade union secretly controlled by the Soviet agency SMERSH. In the 2006 film, Le Chiffre is an Albanian master criminal who works for a mysterious group called Quantum, and finances terrorist groups by buying company stocks with his client's money and forcing stock market shifts through terrorist acts. It is implied that he profited from the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In the 1954 television adaptation, he was portrayed by the late Peter Lorre, who also played Hans Beckert in M, Raskolnikov in the 1935 film adaptation of Crime and Punishment, Signor Ugarte in Casablanca, and Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon. In the 1967 film, he was portrayed by the late Orson Welles, who also played Franz Kindler in The Stranger, Harry Lime in The Third Man, Nag in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil, and Unicron in The Transformers: The Movie. In the 2006 film, he was portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen, who also portrayed Hannibal Lecter in the TV series Hannibal, Randall Boggs in the Danish dub of Monsters, Inc., Chick Hicks in the Danish dub of Cars, Captain Rochefort in The Three Musketeers, Kaecilius in Doctor Strange, Cliff Unger in Death Stranding, David Prentiss in Chaos Walking, Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Jürgen Voller in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Biography[]
Novel[]
Le Chiffre was originally found an amnesiac mute in the Dachau displaced persons camp in the US zone of Germany in 1945. He regained the ability to speak before being transferred to Alsace-Lorraine and Strasburg three months later with a stateless passport. He adopted his moniker because he considered himself "only a number on a passport". His background and nationality are unknown apart from educated guesses based on his description.
Le Chiffre is the paymaster of Syndicat des Ouvriers d'Alsace (Alsatian Workmen's Union), a trade union run by SMERSH. He makes a major investment into a string of brothels with SMERSH's money, which ends badly after prostitution is banned. In order to reclaim his lost funds, Le Chiffre travels to Royale-les-Eaux and hosts a high stakes baccarat game with the goal of earning 50,000,000 francs. Secret Service agent James Bond is sent to take part in the game and bankrupt Le Chiffre, forcing him to turn to MI6 for protection. Things do not bode well for 007 when Le Chiffre manages to clean Bond out of his funds, but CIA Agent Felix Leiter gives him 32,000,000 francs, putting Bond back in the game. Despite the fact that one of Le Chiffre's henchman attempts to kill Bond, Bond wins the game and costs Le Chiffre 80,000,000 francs belonging to SMERSH.
In a desperate attempt to get the money back, Le Chiffre kidnaps Bond and his love interest, Vesper Lynd, and subjects the former to torture, threatening to kill them both if he is not told the location of the money. When he realizes that Bond will not talk, Le Chiffre prepares to castrate him, only to suddenly be shot by a SMERSH agent as punishment for his failure.
Films[]
Casino Royale[]
Le Chiffre is described by M to be a "private banker for the world's terrorists", financing groups internationally by staging attacks to manipulate the stock market; he is believed by MI6 to have been involved on some level with the September 11 terrorist attacks, making a fortune by short-selling large quantities of airline stocks beforehand. His first scheme presented in the movie is an attempt to make money for Quantum by investing $101,206,000 that Lord's Resistance Army member Steven Obanno had entrusted to him by investing it in an airline company called SkyFleet. He plans to gamble on the stock by purchasing put options and then ordering the destruction of their new prototype plane. Bond foils the plot, however, and Le Chiffre loses his total investment. Le Chiffre sets up a high stakes Texas Hold 'em poker tournament at a casino in the Balkan nation of Montenegro to win the money back.
MI6, who knows Le Chiffre is funding terrorism but cannot prove it, dispatches Bond to Montenegro to compete in the exclusive tournament; his mission is to win the tournament and bankrupt Le Chiffre completely, after which MI6 will offer him asylum from his clients in exchange for information on them. Le Chiffre arrives in Montenegro and bribes the police chief to protect him. The police chief is exposed as corrupt by MI6 Agent Rene Mathis, costing Le Chiffre his official protection. Le Chiffre later meets Bond, who is using the alias Mr Beach. However, Le Chiffre learns who Bond really is after the Swiss banker Mr. Mendel asks that Bond put a password into an encryption.
During a break in the game, Obanno threatens to kill Le Chiffre and his girlfriend Valenka for losing the LRA's money, but Le Chiffre swears he will win it back. Bond later kills Obanno, taking some of the pressure off Le Chiffre.
When the game resumes, Le Chiffre has Valenka poison Bond's drink with digitalis. However, British Treasury agent Vesper Lynd revives Bond with a defibrillator, and he returns to the game and defeats Le Chiffre, taking all of his money.
In a last act of desperation, Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper and takes her to a nearby tramp steamer, presumably unaware that she is in fact a reluctant double agent for Quantum. Bond pursues them only to be captured himself, and Le Chiffre has him stripped naked and tied to a cane-bottomed chair, which the seat was cut open, in order to get the password from him. When Bond refuses, Le Chiffre tortures him by whipping him in the testicles with a knotted rope. Bond refuses to give in, taunting Le Chiffre that killing him will leave him with nowhere to hide from his vengeful clients. However, Le Chiffre gloats that even if he kills Bond and Vesper, MI6 will still be willing to grant him asylum in return for information on his clients, declaring that he will win either way.
Bond still refuses to give in, so Le Chiffre threatens to castrate him. At that moment, however, Mr. White, Le Chiffre's immediate superior in Quantum, breaks into the room after killing Valenka and the rest of Le Chiffre's cohorts. Le Chiffre fearfully states that he'll deliver the money as soon as he is done with Bond. However, having formed his own plan to recover the money with Vesper's help, White coldly refuses by declaring that he no longer trusts Le Chiffre anymore and shoots him in the head, killing him and sparing Bond.
Spectre[]
In the film, it is revealed that Quantum was a subsidiary of SPECTRE, making Le Chiffre an agent of the latter organization. along with Dominic Greene and Raoul Silva, the villains of Quantum of Solace and Skyfall, respectively. It is also revealed that SPECTRE mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld ordered Mr. White to kill Le Chiffre and his cohorts as punishment for their failure.
Trivia[]
- Le Chiffre has bichromatic eyes (his right eye is brown, his left eye is blue). This could be attributed to the injury that he sustained in his left eye.
- While it is never explained in the film why Le Chiffre's eye weeps blood, Mads Mikkelsen conceived a backstory to use as subtext. In this story, Chiffre got into a knife fight as a teenager with another boy whom he had cheated in a card game and accidentally stabbed himself in the left eye, damaging the tear duct and requiring the fitting of an artificial eye.
- Le Chiffre appears to suffer from asthma, as he is shown using a bronchodilator.
- Le Chiffre is the first (and so far, the only) Bond villain to die before the climax.
- Despite being one of the most formidable foes that Bond has ever faced, he never actually directly kills anyone throughout the entire film, with his main threat being his intellect.
External Links[]
- Le Chiffre on the Pure Evil Wiki
- Le Chiffre (film version) on the James Bond Wiki
- Le Chiffre (literary version) on the James Bond Wiki
- Le Chiffre on Wikipedia
