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.
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.