A Fine Madness (1966)

Sadly Over-hyped

hyped garbage

Great Film overall

Don't listen to the negative reviews

I saw this film when it was first released. It was a "fish out of water" comedy, a coarse brute running rampant among effete elitists. At that time, I had a lot of contact with numerous psychiatrist/psychoanalysts. This film brilliantly caught the self satisfied pomposity, the self promotional tendencies, and the double standards of this group. The psychoanalysts couldn't cope with this guy! I found this part of the film hilarious, although most of the humor would go unappreciated by those who didn't know any people in the psychoanalytic world.I have seen this film many times since then. Much of it now makes me wince. The field of psychoanalysis has imploded and almost disappeared. Making fun of the pretensions of a now forgotten group of elitists is no longer very funny. Thus, it is a clumsy, sexist mild comedy. Yet, see it as a document of its time, and it is worthwhile.

While this may not be the worst film I have ever seen, it comes very close to being the worst comedy of all time. And it may be the most sexist film ever to be produced in the United States. Wife-beating is portrayed as humorous, cheating on your spouse is depicted as admirable, and yelling at, humiliating and degrading women is de rigueur throughout the movie. It's a distillation of everything that was wrong with '60s comedies.Sean Connery plays a violent, philandering, selfish, hateful bully who imagines himself to be a brilliant poet. When he suffers writer's block, his screeching, yammering nag of a wife (Joanne Woodward, at the nadir of her career) sends him to a pretentious psychiatrist for treatment. After Connery ends up seducing the psychiatrist's sexy wife (Jean Seaberg, in a squandered, vapid role), he is condemned (spoiler alert) to have a lobotomy. Yes, folks, this is a lobotomy comedy. It's about as funny as it sounds. Along the way the audience is treated to "wacky" chase scenes, goofy camera angles, rinky-dink pianos and theremins in the soundtrack, and incessant shouted dialogue -- while every female role is an insulting caricature: the prissy old matron, the nymphomaniac secretary, the harpy of a wife, the bored socialite, and so on. Connery's poet is supposed to be a lovable anti-hero, but he comes across as loathsome and contemptible, and by the end you'll want to give him a lobotomy yourself just to shut him up.What makes all this especially puzzling is that Connery was the top leading man in the world when "A Fine Madness" was made, riding high on the unparalleled success of his James Bond roles. Why in heaven's name did he choose this embarrassingly amateurish script when he had the entire film industry at his feet? A terrible career blunder.Imagine taking the film "Charly" (aka "Flowers for Algernon," about a retarded man who is given brain surgery), the worst episode of the TV sex farce "Love American Style," and some outtakes from the Keystone Kops, and then editing them all together into a disastrous mash- up of conflicting styles and painfully unfunny humor -- voila, you have "A Fine Madness."The only redeeming features are the true-life location shots on the streets of mid-'60s Manhattan (which New-York-o-philes might enjoy), and a hilarious mini-documentary about Sean Connery made in 1966 to promote the movie, included on the DVD as a bonus. Aside from that, though, "A Fine Madness" is a depressing fiasco of a film, not even worth watching in the "so bad it's unintentionally funny" category. And to top it all off, the ending makes absolutely no sense, and serves to render the entire film pointless, even when accepted at face value. What were they thinking?If, by writing this review, I can save just one person from having to endure sitting through "A Fine Madness," then my life will have been worthwhile.

As a poet who is institutionalized, Sean Connery distances himself quite grandly from screen alter-ego James Bond. Connery is unexpectedly gregarious as the avant-garde writer, Joanne Woodard is suitably shrill as his spouse, the supporting cast (including Jean Seberg and the wonderful Zohra Lampert) is terrific, but this is an extremely bumpy, frantic piece on challenging the system. Director Irvin Kershner has always been a little erratic, and his shifts in tone take a while to get used to. The script, from Elliot Baker's novel, is uneven, yet the film certainly looks good, with handsome photography and fine use of New York locations. Often gets confused with "They Might Be Giants", another comedy which also co-starred Joanne Woodward and dealt with a certain madness. ** from ****

This is the sort of movie that makes me ponder the whole time I'm watching it, "Who SHOULD have been in these roles?" Connery and Woodward really give it a good try, chewing big hunks out of the scenery, but they never convince, not for a moment. The role of earnest but ignorant and garrulous wife could have been played to perfection by Geraldine Page or, in an earlier and lighter version of the story, Judy Holliday. The role of Samson Shillitoe, deranged poet, could have been handled well by Jason Robards or Walter Matthau, and his mysterious attraction for women would have been more believable with the former, and more humorous with the latter.For me, the only real laughs came from the one short scene featuring pudgy businessman Sorrell Booke learning the facts about his wife's hysteria. "You'll ascertain MY virility????"I think they were trying for the kind of thing here where, like Alec Guiness's deranged artist character in "The Horse's Mouth," the obnoxious jerk has a mysteriously endearing charm or ability that shines through despite his appalling behaviour, but this poet isn't the horse's mouth. Quite the opposite.If you enjoy the type of film that leaves you shaking your head and wondering why, this is definitely for you.