Alfie (1966)

The title character of Alfie, nominated for Best Picture of 1966, is a misogynistic, womanizing cad. That he's played with some degree of charm by Michael Caine is perhaps his only redeeming feature. Otherwise, I cannot imagine why anyone would make a film about such a reprehensible man and expect us to feel sympathetic towards him. Perhaps many people of the time were amazed at just how realistic Caine's portrayal of a chauvinist was, but watching his Alfie Elkins for almost two hours was quite depressing at times and anger-inducing at others.

The film begins with Alfie making out with a married woman, Siddie (Millicent Martin) in his car. She's on her way to the train to meet her husband, but she first has to have her regular rendezvous with Alfie. It's during this scene that perhaps the most tiresome aspect of the film comes into play: Caine's direct address to the audience. This might have been a novel idea for a movie in 1966, breaking the fourth wall and all that, but most of the time, Alfie just tries to rationalize his bad behavior to the viewers. For me, it's not a successful device. It seems as if he wants us to see what goes on in his mind when he mistreats these women, thinking that we might start to empathize with him, but it just makes me feel even more disgusted with his behavior that he thinks he is justified in his actions.

We quickly learn that Alfie already has a girl at home, Gilda (Julia Foster), who starts to realize that she might be pregnant. Alfie tells her that she needs to consider seriously the merits of having an abortion versus giving the baby up for adoption after it is born. He, naturally, wants her to have an abortion because he doesn't want to take on the responsibilities of fatherhood. However, for a brief moment, the amount of time it takes to play a montage of the boy (named Malcolm) playing with his father while growing up, we might feel that Alfie has a bit of a heart. Yet he never marries Gilda. In fact, he lets another man marry her. It's a particularly cruel series of events that he sets into motion with that conversation with Gilda.

Meanwhile, Alfie continues to have encounters with a series of women: the manager of a dry cleaner (although he calls her a "manageress"), a chiropodist, a bodybuilder's girlfriend, or "any bird that came my way by chance." Notice the derogatory language that he uses to refer to women. One of them is a hitchhiker, Annie (Jane Asher), that he "steals" from a truck driver in an encounter in a coffee shop. It's as if he wants to see just how much he can get away with. Alfie is particularly cruel to Annie, who just seems to want to keep things nice for the man she thinks she loves. He finally drives her away with his persistent verbal abuse.

During the middle of the film, Alfie suffers a health scare when two spots are found on his lungs by an x-ray, and he spends about six months at a sanitarium in the country. While he is recuperating, he has a fling with one of the nurses, and then after he recovers and comes back to visit his old roommate, he takes up with his roommate's wife, Lily (Vivien Merchant), and even gets her pregnant. He won't even pay, at least initially, for the abortionist who comes to his place to perform the procedure. I will give credit to Caine, though, for the look on his face when he sees the fetus after the abortion. He does appear to be thoroughly shocked at the consequences of his actions, and he seems to be headed toward becoming a better man as a result.

After he sees his son Malcolm at a christening for Gilda's new baby and how happy the family seems to be, he decides that he needs to settle down with just one woman and try to forge a true relationship. Unfortunately, the woman he wants to have as his mate is Ruby, played by Shelley Winters, and she has already moved on to a much younger man by the time Alfie comes to his senses. The movie ends with Alfie encountering Siddie, the married woman with whom he was having an affair at the film's beginning. They talk about meeting again, and even though she repeatedly says, "maybe," it's clear the two of them will likely take up where they left off. The ending is too parallel to the beginning of the film to suggest otherwise. Even the same dog--perhaps a metaphorical representation of Alfie himself?--appears in both the opening and closing sequences. It's a depressing frame device; at least, it left me feeling depressed for someone like Siddie.

By the way, in case you think I'm overstating the misogyny of the main character, consider this: when addressing the audience, Alfie never says "she" or "her." He always uses "it" to refer to any of the women with whom he has slept. How much more dehumanizing could this character be? He uses the pronoun for objects rather than the ones for women, yet we are supposed to be somehow sympathetic towards him. I would attempt to psychoanalyze a womanizer who tries to bed almost every woman he encounters but seems to hate all women, but I don't know if the film's makers have tried to give us a sense of the origins of the title character's attitudes towards women.

In case you're wondering, I've not seen the remake from a couple of years ago with Jude Law in the title role. After watching the original Alfie, I don't think I'd be interested in seeing another version. I doubt men like Alfie have gotten any better in the forty years since Michael Caine first played the part. While I can admire the talents of a performer like Caine, I can't really say that I like the role he portrays here or the movie that surrounds his character.

As an aside, I'll admit to being shocked to hear Cher singing the title song. That song has become so associated in my mind with Dionne Warwick that it caught me off guard to discover that she wasn't the original singer.

Oscar Nominations: Picture, Actor (Caine), Supporting Actress (Merchant), Adapted Screenplay, and Song ("Alfie")