I saw this movie when it came out. I was 17. I fancied myself a budding writer and was prepared to forgive everything poet Samson Shillitoe did because, well, he was a poet. And a genius. And, well, artists were entitled to be bastards who cheated on their wife and then beat them up when they complained. Shillitoe flouts all things middle class and bourgeois. He does not make art. He IS art. My hero.
What an idiot I was.
This is a dreadful movie. There were a lot of preposterously themed flicks in mid-Sixties American movies. This is one. I can see the pitch. "Let's make a movie about a hot-tempered madman genius poet living a Bohemian lifestyle in NYC, and who beats his wife, who falls into the clutches of effete careerist psychiatrists who believe he is a perfect candidate for a lobotomy."
Sean Connery probably agreed to do this because at the time he would take any route necessary to prove he should not condemned to play only James Bond for the rest of his career.
Why Joanne Woodward, who plays his punching bag of a wife, got on board is a mystery. Probably it was a chance to play opposite hot property Connery.
If anyone truly needed a lobotomy, it is Samson Shillitoe.
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