If ever there was an award given out for "Most Outrageously, Sexist-Minded Film Ever (of the 1960s, that is)", I think that A Fine Madness would, most definitely, be a sure-fire winner.And, with that said - If you are, indeed, a total feminist (or a feminist-hugger), I guarantee you that frequent key moments throughout this utterly absurd comedy will surely get your dander up like no other film from that era ever has. (I'm not kidding about this, folks!) Of course, in order to get any sort of real entertainment value out of A Fine Madness's story one must keep it firmly in mind that here is a film that is a complete product of its time. This is a picture that proudly beats its chest and clearly states that "Hey! This is a man's world!" (so if you're a woman you better like it, or lump it).In my opinion - A Fine Madness was solely made to cash-in on Sean Connery's rugged animal magnetism and his equally virile screen-charisma (following his huge success playing James Bond in 1965's "Thunderball").So, just be warned - If you're prone to detest a lead character who just happens to be nothing but a boozing, womanizing, wife-beating, loudmouth with a hair-trigger temper, then, believe me, you're probably not likely to find this comedy to be much of a laughing matter, in the long run.

I never thought I'd see a movie in which Sean Connery, master of ironic understatement, could be accused of overacting. But there's a scene here in which Connery has been paid two hundred dollars -- he's a blocked poet and down on his luck -- to read before some ladies' literary club. As he waits to be called to the speaker's platform, bored, angry that he's being forced by circumstances to be "a performer," he polishes off a bottle or two of champagne. He's hunched over at his table while a harpist precedes him on the stage. Getting drunker, he looks around at the women in the audience -- and he sneers and scowls and frowns with fulsome disgust. It's WAY too much. And, as if we were too dumb to understand, the director punctuates the scene with shots of the ladies in the audience -- fat, overdressed, smiling at the heavenly music, sleeping, snoring, abstracted, and ugly. (Except for Jean Seberg, who is not at all ugly.) The title comes from Michael Drayton, who in 1627, referring to playwright Christopher Marlowe, wrote: "For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." But this movie has a lot less to do with poetry than with madness. If we didn't know Connery was a blocked poet, we'd just view him as a destructive and self-indulgent maniac. He hurls furniture at the walls and insults at strangers. He feels no remorse, no love, just anger. He takes a mean pleasure in revealing a psychiatrist's stolen notes to a pathetic patient.The whole movie is ill conceived and over directed. It substitutes speed and noise for effective comedy. Slapstick needn't be bad if there's some wit propelling it. "The Pink Panther" was full of pratfalls but was a successful comedy. Here, the intent seems to be to overwhelm the audience with a foot pursuit across the Brooklyn Bridge, the demands placed on a harried waitress in a clangorous delicatessen.There is a plot, actually, gossamer but discernible. Connery is really out of control. Should he get the Menken intraorbital leukotomy? It's a little reminiscent of "Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment." But that film was both funny and tragic, whereas this is neither.I can't tell whether or not Connery was asked to speak with a working-class New York accent or not. If he was, it was a mistake. Joanne Woodward, as his wife, does a little better with her acting and her accent. Jean Seberg is beautiful. A few more scenes of her running around in her skivvies would have helped. The production design is good, and there is a nice scene involving a plastic eye popping out of a plastic skull. The musical score is badly in need of a clinical dose of lithium carbonate. Open wide, please, the whole movie.

Cute music, New York street scenes, lots of pace, some really good actors, an audacious plot, probably ahead of its time, some delightful vignettes, so what went wrong? Probably the fact that it is neither funny nor illuminating. There is humour, mostly visual, but this is outweighed by Shillitoe's wanton violence and abusiveness when thwarted. The film could not exist without Samson Shillitoe, no other set of characteristics would bring all those disparate plot and character elements together. You might say that Shillitoe is the creator of the story, indeed, of the little world that the film inhabits. As I watched, a memory began to surface, of the God Thor in Douglas Adams' novel "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul". That, with Shillitoe's obscure references to Apollo, and the failure of Menken's surgery, suggest that Shillitoe is not mortal, but a God of the classical era come amongst us on a whim, or perhaps in exile. Anyway, that's the only excuse I can think for for this shambles.

Okay, to borrow a few things from the previous commenter's observations, sure, this is an adaptation from a novel, and apparently the main character is an obnoxious lout who happens to be a genius.Here's where this film fails in just about every department.Not for a second do we buy that Sean Connery's Samson is a "genius" in any sense of the word. He's a thick-headed brute who hollers anti-establishment rants that really aren't enlightened nor are they particularly radical. The fact is, though, that he hollers a lot. There is no modulation to Connery's performance. No sense of a human being in there. His character is drawn to just be the hunky societal interloper whose mere physicality and scowls suggest a counterpoint to everyday norm. Genius, he is not.Topping poor Connery in the shouting department is the screeching yowl of Joanne Woodward, whose hapless wife character of Samson, Rhoda, is given all the depth of a punching bag (literally). Connery takes swipes at her head, connecting with her skull in the end, along with throwing every dish in the apartment in her direction. He even shoves her down the staircase resulting in a broken leg, and perhaps, 1960's sentiments saw this as an uproarious moment of hilarity. You know, madcap abuse of the wife is always so mercilessly humorous. Anyway, you get the picture (reference the above reference to "thick-headed brute").Jean Seberg is absolutely wasted in this performance. She plays the stifled wife of a renowned psychiatrist, Patrick O'Neal, who for some reason, and quite illogically I can only add, winds up having sex with Connery in a whirlpool bath and then dumping him the next time she sees him. There is no logic in having her character even in this film other than to flesh out the above-the-line star wattage on the marquee.Only Clive Revill, playing a hare-brained psycho-therapist in every sense of the word, cuts loose with the material and lends a Peter-Sellers-like diversion for a total of 3 minutes screen time.I cannot conceive of any audience, whether in the '60s or today, eliciting anything more than ho-hum chuckle and a wan smile over this pale comedy with absolutely no focus and one of cinema's most ill-conceived one-note main characters.My rating: 1 out of 5 stars.