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Alright, this film is generally awful, admitedly...However, I always try to look at any motion picture in the context of it's day and in it's retrospective historical perspective.
I like to look at movies as sociological studies, and the best ones transcend their time, becoming truly timeless.
"A Fine Madness" fairly stinks of clueless farce. The filmmakers completely lacked any shred of inspiration; a must for ALL art, IMHO.
Just looked at it; it's big,loud and randy without any awareness of the cultural changes about to happen in the late 1960s. These artifacts are unintentionally funny, as with any generation gap showing the older generation trying to be hip, but just embarrassing themselves, as when the Rat Pack tried fruitlessly to stay cool in the late 60s. Hollywood was out of touch with the youth of the counter culture, and with some exceptions, like "Hard Days Night", "Alfie", "Medium Cool" and "Easy Rider", most 1960s movies that tried to look authentic and relevant to the times, failed.
So, despite its badly written characters, it's hopelessly dated Psychiatric themes, its corrosively dated sexism and the apaulingly visionless, artless presentation, there ARE a few interesting elements.
Clearly a big budget film, I was impressed by the progressive bravado that the director showed in manhandling New York City. These bold tracking shots and cunningly calculated hand held camera work was quite new for 1966. These classy looking outdoor location scenes merging actors staying in character with the hubbub of the steaming cauldren of street life in Manhattan could not have been pulled off with a small budget. Look at that amazing tracking shot of Connery running on the Brooklyn Bridge. Many neighborhoods were captured in a stunning naturalism that was unprecidented. So if nothing else, it is as amazing a record of the city as when Harold Lloyd caught it back in the 1920s.
It's too bad the story couldn't have been embued with a great script. Perhaps something about the Village, with all it's alternative zeal, and incorporating the changing times which the city was such a part of.
The Music score tried to be wacky and inventive too...One could even see elements of Danny Elfman 30 years earlier, with all the big, burlesque horns and drums. Evidently the score was trying to compensate for the dull script and shrill, yet pedestrian performances by spicing up the soundtrack. But after a while the relentless music became as grating as Joanne Woodward's shrill hollering voice.
We have to wonder what Billy Wilder or Elia Kazan would have done for this material? Sigh...But Hollywood has always been bottom line, and wants to make its profit fast. Art? Who cares. Vision? Timelessness? Feh, sez the Movie Machine that has forever pandered to the lowest common denominator.
One leaves this dreadful film with the notion that it was teetering right on the precepis of the Martini vs. Mariquana epochs and fell back into its pre-sexual revolution, postwar establishment ethos with the thud of someone who just missed his train.
Interestingly and awkwardly, one is easily reminded of one of Connery's famous statements in a latter interview where he cavalierly remarked that 'Women should be hit now and then to keep them in line', or something to that effect. One can imagine his brutish Samson saying the same thing in this antique archive of a darker time in American HIStory.
score 2/10
ultimessence 27 May 2010
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2257483/ |
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18-3-2021 00:08:06