Cast:
Michael Caine (Alfie Elkins), Shelley Winters (Ruby), Millicent Martin (Siddie), Vivien Merchant (Lily Clamacraft), Jane Asher (Annie), Julia Foster (Gilda), Shirley Anne Field (Carla), Eleanor Bron (the Doctor), Denholm Elliott (the Abortionist), Alfie Bass (Harry Clamacraft), Graham Stark (Humphrey), Murray Melvin (Nat), and Sydney Tafler (Frank) Produced and Directed by Lewis Gilbert (#292 - The Spy Who Loved Me, #338 - Moonraker, #354 - You Only Live Twice)
Review:
"At that time, there had never been a cockney film. In cinema, the cockney was the man who said: "Guvnor, your car's outside." You never saw a cockney family with real problems. In the 60s, we were beginning to make films that reflected something of the British way of life. Before Alfie and its contemporaries, British film was all Noël Coward and drawing rooms."
The British can make for curious folks. Lewis Gilbert had a road fit for being involved in film business. He was the son of music hall performers and he first saw a film set in his childhood years. When World War II came, he served with the Royal Air Force in their film unit and later the First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Forces. He made documentary work for Gaumont British before going on to feature directing in 1947 with The Little Ballerina. Among the most noted films before Alfie involved ones based on historical events such as Reach for the Sky (1956) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). He followed Alfie with a variety of dramas and adventures (most notably with three James Bond films) before his final film in 2002; he died in 2018 at the age of 97. The film is based on the play of the same name by Bill Naughton. He had originally come up with the idea with "Alfie Elkins and His Little Life" which was broadcast on the radio BBC Third Programme in 1962 before he was commissioned to turn it into a stage play that premiered the next year. A production on Broadway was done in 1964 with Terence Stamp as the star, but it lasted only a handful of performances. It was during these productions that Hydra Gilbert saw the production and recommended it to her husband Lewis. Naughton wrote the screenplay for this film, which was the first of three adaptations of Naughton's work that followed with The Family Way (1966) and Spring and Port Wine (1970), with Naughton writing the latter. Evidently, when it came to casting, Caine was not the first choice for the lead role nor even the second. Laurence Harvey was first considered but he did not want to play the role on Broadway, and Terence Stamp, just wasn't interested in playing the role again after the Broadway show. Incidentally, his roommate at the time was Michael Caine, who was best known for Zulu (1964) and The Ipcress File (1965); incidentally, James Booth, who starred with Caine in the aforementioned Zulu film, turned the role down. Caine got offered the role (Paramount Pictures, who distributed the film, didn't care much because the film was cheap anyway), went right in, and the rest is history. A "sequel" followed with Alfie Darling (1975) that had no Caine in the lead (Alan Price took over) and therefore no particular reason to see it before an inevitable remake was done in 2004 with Jude Law as star.
The striking thing is that for a film of the Swingin' era of London, it actually is a pretty sobering comedy-drama film beneath the fourth wall posturing by Caine (as devised by Gilbert and company) that makes its mark in self-centered but aware amusement in what romance really means, particularly within "peace of mind". The performance of Caine carries the movie as far as you would possibly expect. He makes the exemplary example of a Casanova in all of the ways you hope to see in sad amusement. You can see how his Cockney accent and blustering attitude towards women make him more than a caricature or target for easy jokes, since all he really is one who knows only what he wants to know in pleasure without pain, one who changes partners like one changes socks that makes for a quality scoundrel. Winters is actually only in three scenes despite her billing, but she is still in good form here in terms of provocative enjoyment in taste. There is a distinct edge to how our lead treats each of the four women he tries to make a roll within Martin, Merchant, Asher, and Foster that they each handle with useful timing and pathos, right from the opening sequence where Caine is trying to explain pursuit with a married woman with the first chat he makes to the camera. Within the edges is the withering of Alfie's own life where he can't even see his own kid because of his own ways and even a bout at the sanitorium because of how he takes the news about shadows in lungs that is handled expertly. Of course, it also is a film that doesn't skimp on the key event that made the play a lightning rod for discussion: a character going through an abortion. Obviously, it isn't actually shown in either the play or the film, but the very fact it is mentioned at all was quite notable in its time. It isn't moral handwringing to say that certain actions have consequences, and it is seeing those up close that make it especially important to make a film effective, which I think is handled quite well within the time spent with Caine, Merchant, and Elliott. By the time the film ends on a last conversation to the fourth wall in "what's it all about?", you have a pretty good idea of just what it means to have seen someone look at their consequences in the face and come out still asking questions and all alone. As a whole, Alfie is a curious and suitable way to spend 114 minutes when it comes to saying something distinct about what it all means to try and play the master of all in something and end up as master of none in the home of one's mind, which makes for a pretty good comedy-drama.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
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