Alfie

Rating:
Summary: What it is all about?
Review: Caine delivers a multi level performance in this wonderful film.

Its meloncholy a bit sarcastic and is loaded with subtle innuendo that will have you watching again.

Rating:
Summary: An Opposite number
Review: Don't let the cover fool you. This is actually a great one for the guys. Sure there is a moral you observe under a rye grin. Alfie gets it in the end but he has a lot of fun on the way. Basically the opposite number of the notorious college girl movie Breakfast at Tiffanys. That is if they hadn't tacked on the happy ending and George Pepard had split on the lovely head case. It also doesn't have Micky Rooney which is always a plus. "What is that you say, If you lie and mess people around all the time you lose them? Who would have thunk it!"

Rating:
Summary: ALFIE is Michael Caine at his best.
Review: I can't believe it took the remake to inspire me to buy the original ALFIE with Michael Caine and watch it for the first time. I regret that I waited so long to see this, the best version, and to again see why Michael Caine is such a great actor. Forget that we're in London in the 60's, and just focus on this story of a guy who beds anything in sight and has about as much depth as a wading pool. (Some themes never age.) Caine plays his part wonderfully, including sharing his inner thoughts directly with the audience, straight-on into the camera. The women he crosses paths with are an assortment of types and each actress plays the part well. My favorites among his "birds" are Vivien Merchant as Lily, and Shelley Winters as Ruby. Talk about the extremes in his life! And as if the performances aren't enough, the end titles are creatively enhanced by Cher singing the title song. This one will hold a special place in my DVD collection. It took me almost 40 years to see ALFIE and I'm glad I finally did.


Rating:
Summary: Boring..................
Review: I have seen this film about 3 times and each time I find the same feeling, one of boredom. It's too long for one thing for such a thin plot. On the good side, Caine is good, the look and feel of the swingin' London '60's is good from a sociological point of view and Vivien Merchant is wonderful in a supporting role as a mature woman who is impregnated with Alfie's baby and has an abortion, which no doubt was daring for the 60's. Suffice it to say that the movie hasn't weathered well in the 38 years since its release, but it's an interesting watchpiece of the '60's, if you can stay awake during the long stretches of boredom.

Rating:
Summary: Sex Addict
Review: I saw this one back in the 60's and remembered it. It was a young man's dream-comes-true on screen and pretty racy after the Hollywood Film Code collapsed. However, my head was full of mush back then because clearly, I missed all the sadness in this story of the rogue cockney and his ladies. The year of the film, 1966, is significant because swinging London was happening and mini-skirted tarts roamed London with Rolling Stone bad boys. Alfie is a 30ish fellow that was of the pre-60's generation of Hugh Hefner, 1950's wanna-be's. He loves them and leaves them. Alfie is a good talker and his young pregnant girlfriend loves his abusive banter. Alfie is amusing and there's plenty of mid-sixties sex jokes, double meanings, but all the tough guy-docile female antics are dated. These quaint attitudes are an archeological dig of pre-feminism. There is an exception. Shelley Winters is terrific as the hot-to-trot American widow that gives Alfie more than he bargained for.

There is a backroom abortion scene, which horrified my wife and I. We saw it differently. Alfie has a stint in a hospital ward and befriends a middle-class fellow who lives for his once a day visit, his dowdy wife. You guessed it: Alfie beds Dowdy wife (wonderful Millicent Martin ) and the pregnancy must be terminated. The uncharacteristic abortionist asks questions of morality. The woman has a rough one and the aborted baby haunts Alfie. I thought these scenes rang of anti-abortion sentiment. My wife said it was pro-abortion because now women can have abortions in clean clinics.

Michael Caine was wonderful in the role that made him a star. He talks to the movie audience directly and we are amused and disgusted at the same time. Today we would call this fellow a Peter Pan and get him off to a sex addict group meeting.


Rating:
Summary: Not what you'd expect -- Alfie is a sick guy
Review: I'd actually give this 3 1/2 stars. I'd give it more if it hadn't been packaged as a "delightful comedy", as Judith Crist called it (what was she on?). Alfie (the character) is a sick, mean, selfish a-hole that deserves to be lonely and miserable. Of course guys like him never are. They continue to find people to use and hurt. And those getting used and hurt deserve it, too. They should wise up and tell guys like Alfie to take a hike.

I found this movie thoroughly unpleasant. And that's fine, because I don't mind unpleasant movies. It's just that the movie tries to be cute amid all this ugliness. And the whole subplot about the abortion was just plain yucky, with having to imagine the dead, half-developed fetus in that room purely repulsive. It's shocking that a movie at that time went so far, yet somehow manages to maintain a reputation as being a "comedy".

Don't watch this one if you're looking for a good time. You'll have more fun watching "Judgment At Nuremburg". I'm not saying there's nothing to be gathered from this film, because there is. I just found it to be too nihilistic while simultaneously trying to be lighthearted.

Rating:
Summary: Portrait Of The Cad As A Young Man
Review: In "About a Boy", Hugh Grant's character, Will Freeman, was concerned with little else but meeting and bedding an endless series of woman. He drives a cool car, wears cool clothes, and is loaded down with enough to charm to choke a horse. His selfish ways were an attempt to shield himself from pain, for if you have no close relationships, he reasoned, you can't get hurt. But his life changes when a young boy enters it, and for the first time, he's able to take off his blinders and see the world outside himself.

Having recently seen Lewis Gilbert's 1966 film, I discovered that if you took the above paragraph and replaced 'Will Freeman' with 'Alfie Elkins', 'Hugh Grant' with 'Michael Caine', and "About a Boy" with "Alfie", the summary still holds true.

Unusually bereft of story, "Alfie" is still a highly entertaining picture. In place of a narrative, it concentrates on the character of its protagonist. And what a character he is! Alfie Elkins is selfish and outlandish, rude, mean, and arrogant, hurtful, harmful, and egotistical, immature, insensitive, and ignorant. But on the other side of the coin he is charming and thoughtful, dashing, intoxicating, and witty, funny, fun, and fearless, cheeky, cheery and, ultimately, caring. A mess of contradictions in a dapper suit, Alfie is the only interesting character (save for Shelley Winters' beguiling Ruby and Denholm Elliott's pragmatic abortionist) in a film populated by bored housewives and worrisome husbands.

Originally written for the stage, "Alfie" retains a lot of its theatrical qualities. The trick of breaking down the fourth wall (wherein Alfie spends a lot of time looking at and speaking to the camera), more common in the theatre, was almost revolutionary when put on film. Sure, Groucho Marx and George Burns got a lot of mileage out of this technique, but whenever anybody talks about "Alfie", this seems to be the first thing brought up. Probably because it works beautifully. Instead of straight voice-over-narration, a technique that more often than not is distracting and pointless, Alfie gets to have an intimate dialogue with his audience. It's a great platform for expounding on his life philosophies and making casual observations.

His inner thoughts are a scream. When confronted by a close-up view of Shelley Winters' cleavage, and told that she is twice a widow, Alfie can't help but remarking about her husbands, "I think I know what they died of." Or, when pressured by a lady friend to tie the knot -- "Maybe we should go through with it," she says -- Alfie nihilistically replies, "I've never been through with anything in my whole life." A wry smile passes over his lips, and his on to the next escapade. He makes no excuses for the selfishness in his life. "What do look nice when you get up close to it?" he says, unapologetically.

But there's a darker underbelly to Alfie's world, one that the film is intent on slowly showing us. One early scene has him schmoozing a young lady with all the respect in the world. To her face. To the audience, he refers to her with the condescending pronoun 'it'. As in: "It will go home happy." This kind of insult rolls easily off his tongue, while delineating what he thinks is one of his core tenets. "I don't believe in making anyone unhappy," he reiterates later on. He may not believe in it, but he does it. All the time. When a situation appears to be closing in on him, Alfie bares his claws, the better to defend himself against the unhappiness that human entanglements can bring. He's only happy when shielding himself from unhappiness. It's a sheltered existence, doomed to fall in on him. And it does. During a particularly tense moment, when his comfort is needed, Alfie is rendered useless. But at least he knows it. "My understanding of women only goes as far as the pleasure. When it comes to the pain I'm like every other bloke: I don't wanna know." It's this kind of self-awareness that makes Alfie, if not likable, than at least understandable. He has drawn a metaphorical curtain over the harsher aspects of his life, for he knows he is incapable of dealing with them. In one of the film's most powerful scenes, however, a literal curtain shields him from a horrific sight. He is warned not to go through it, but does anyway. He can't handle what he sees, and breaks down in tears. It is a terribly powerful moment.

Michael Caine, in was one of his first breakout roles, is a dominating presence as Alfie. Every note he strikes is perfect, from the controlled stillness of the film's first half (he rarely blinks or shows discernable expressions, the better to show Alfie's apathy towards those around him), to the subtle intonations of Alfie's inner torture in the film's second half. Caine, a wizard at showing dry wit and charm, is in his element here, for those are Alfie's two stocks in trade. Only in his early thirties when the film was made, and with his boyish strawberry blond locks intact, Caine has the look and feel of the dashing, handsome young man Alfie is supposed to be. You always believe that he is the kind of man every woman wants to go to bed with, even after a round of devious verbal abuse.

A lot darker and more disturbing than I'd expected (it deals in a non-nonsense manner with such issues as infidelity, abortion, insanity, and poverty), "Alfie" is still a film easily enjoyed. You'll marvel at the wit and wisdom of the main character and at Michael Caine's note-perfect lead performance. While a tad overlong (the same points could have been made if Alfie had just two or three lady friends, rather than five or so; half an hour or so could have been shaved off its 114-minute running time), it never ceases to be engrossing, important, and entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: A pointless grim tradgedy, No comedy here. A waste.
Review: Just as the pseudo protagonist wastes his life and those around him, he spreads the misery to the audience. To spend 2 hours with a man that refers to woman as an "it" rather than she wastes 2 hours of your own life. The good performances only serve to highlight the bad writing of the flick.

Rating:
Summary: This movie is one that any clever person will enjoy!!!!
Review: Michael Caine along with a tallented cast of characters makes this 60's Mod movie wonderful. Michael Caine gives his chauvanistic, self-centered character endearing qualities. The sharp British humor is intelligent, the music (by Sonny Rollins) adds to the "daddy-o slick" feel. I'd reccoment it to anyone and everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Caine Is Perfect
Review: Michael Caine makes his career with this excellent profile of a '60s cockney womanizer. You despise him but can't turn away from his extremely charismatic performance.