Hey Diane, I noticed in your journal that you saw the original Alfie a few months ago -- I've only seen it once, but I remember thinking it was a pretty powerful depiction of promiscuity and its consequences. My British-born father was something like 20 or 21 when the film came out, and he tells me it had an impact on him, too. As it happens, and as you may know, there is a remake of this film coming out this year, starring Jude Law (and re-titled What's It All About, Alfie?) -- yes, that's right, ANOTHER remake of a Michael Caine movie (cf. the Sylvester Stallone version of Get Carter and the Mark Wahlberg version of The Italian Job; I have heard there is at least one more in the works). Since the original film came out in 1966, at a time when the sexual revolution and "swinging London" and all that stuff was really beginning to crest, I can only imagine what an early-21st-century take on this story will be.

BTW, Alfie was originally a play by Bill Naughton, who also wrote the play that became The Family Way, one of my personal favorite films of all time (and another film that was released in 1966). There was a sequel to the original Alfie in 1975, called Alfie Darling, but it did not star Michael Caine, so I've never bothered to see it.

Naughton also wrote the play Spring and Port Wine, which was filmed with James Mason in 1970.

Not being a great Michael Caine fan, I haven't revisited Alfie for some time. Surprised to hear it is being remade.

Btw, while we're on the subject of quintessentially British dramas of the 1960s, anyone heard anything about the remake of my favourite film, Billy Liar, the original of which was filmed by John Schlesinger in 1963?

Possible SPOILERS for the remake ahead.

[quote]Hey Diane, I noticed in your journal that you saw the original Alfie a few months ago -- I've only seen it once, but I remember thinking it was a pretty powerful depiction of promiscuity and its consequences.[/quote]

That's right. Saw it a while back. Woo boy, was it ever. I remember feeling a little sick during that scene in the kitchen, after the middle-aged married woman Alfie had an affair with has an abortion. But then again, I'm pretty squeamish and don't handle things like that well. Caine handled that scene brilliantly. I felt sorry for the lout, but in the next scene he tells his friend he cried over what he saw—but not for the child, who was didn't have to face the problems of the world, but for himself. Made me wonder if there was any hope for Alfie at all.

[quote]As it happens, and as you may know, there is a remake of this film coming out this year, starring Jude Law (and re-titled What's It All About, Alfie?) -- yes, that's right, ANOTHER remake of a Michael Caine movie (cf. the Sylvester Stallone version of Get Carter and the Mark Wahlberg version of The Italian Job; I have heard there is at least one more in the works). Since the original film came out in 1966, at a time when the sexual revolution and "swinging London" and all that stuff was really beginning to crest, I can only imagine what an early-21st-century take on this story will be.[/quote]

Yeah, I heard there was going to be a remake. Should be very interesting to see what they do with an updated story.

[quote]BTW, Alfie was originally a play by Bill Naughton, who also wrote the play that became The Family Way, one of my personal favorite films of all time (and another film that was released in 1966).[/quote]

I need to track that one down. I'm followed that thread, and it sounds interesting.

[quote]There was a sequel to the original Alfie in 1975, called Alfie Darling, but it did not star Michael Caine, so I've never bothered to see it.[/quote]

A sequel?! I had no idea. Where could they possibly go with that? When I finished the original, I wasn't really sure if Alfie had learned anything at all. He had his heart broken; he was thrown over for a younger man, but the end of the film has him trying to make another date with a former lover who's married. Hmmm.

America will fall for Jude Law's Alfie, predicts Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine is helping an attempt to make British star Jude Law a household name in America with a revival of Alfie. . . . He said that the remake was "a form of flattery really -- we couldn't have done a bad job of it the first time." He added: "I think it's great that Jude is playing Alfie. He is a friend and I'm a great admirer of his. I think he's a wonderful actor and it will be very interesting because Alfie was a male chauvinist pig in the 1960s, and the story is being re-written by an American woman. I'll be intrigued to see it."
Daily Telegraph, August 23

- - -

Hmmm, so Sir Michael hasn't even seen the film yet. Anyhoo, has he ever officially endorsed any of the other remakes of his films? Like, okay, I know he had a bit part in the Sylvester Stallone remake of Get Carter (2000), but with Sir Michael, taking the paycheque for an acting job is never indicative of how he actually feels about a film! (Plus Sir Michael had worked with Stallone before, in the wartime soccer film Victory (1981), so he may have done it for personal friendship reasons.)

Hmmm, the publicist tells me that the "American woman" who wrote the remake is actually Canadian.

Anyhoo, I'm not sure that I'm allowed to give any evaluative opinions of the film just yet, so for now I'll content myself with pondering some of its contents more objectively.

I still haven't seen the original in a long time, so I'm a little hazy on the exact nature of certain plot twists and the way in which they were sequenced, but I think the remake mutes the dread seriousness of certain elements from the original. To some degree, this is probably inevitable, since e.g. single mothers and unplanned pregnancies don't have quite the stigma that they used to have, but at the same time, in order to fit in with the social mores of our times and give certain episodes the life-altering dramatic value that they once had, the film has to, I dunno, contrive things a little more. I'm not saying this is good or bad -- I'm just noting that this element is there in the film.

A few plot twists are a tad more predictable than they arguably need to be, too -- though the film sort of tries to get around this on at least one occasion by having Alfie say, much later, that he knew what was really going on all along, but didn't want to admit it. Since he has become quite adept at lying to himself, this sounds plausible -- and I think it could raise interesting questions about the way we in the audience may have suspended our own disbelief while watching the film, and how we suspend disbelief in real-life relationships, too.

There are a LOT of nods to the '60s here, from the occasional freeze-frame images to the oldies music (Beach Boys, Righteous Brothers, etc.) to the Vespa that Alfie rides to the Thomas Crown Affair clip we see on one character's TV to the closing-credits montage, which evokes the grainy look and coloured-letter scheme of certain classic rock albums.

There is also something odd about scenes like the one where a character tells our titular lothario, "You never mean to hurt anyone, but you always do," and then the soundtrack goes to a brand new Mick Jagger tune -- now what does THAT particular ladies' man make of this film? (The song that Mick sings over the closing credits even has the refrain "Old habits die hard," fer cryin' out loud.) For that matter, what do we make of the fact that Jude Law left his wife for the woman who plays Alfie's worst domestic nightmare (and who, being the actress with the least marquee value, is the only one of Alfie's dates who gets a full-fledged nude scene)? There's a lotta subtext here, if one wants to look for that sort of thing. To a degree, I think films like this might be somewhat soothing to those men who hop from one bed to the next, since its title character looks so witty and charming and he doesn't seem like a predator -- the films create sympathy for devils like him, you might say -- and yet the story satisfies the moral qualms of the regular paying audience, since Alfie does pine a bit for the things that he DOESN'T have because of his lifestyle.

Did the original film make so many direct references to the male member? I doubt it, but I can't remember. The remake's opening montage includes a tight close-up on the groin of a Fleischer-era Superman model in Alfie's apartment -- thus accentuating both his boyish irresponsibility (he has never, ever made his own bed) as well as the fact that he is driven by his lusts -- and as he takes us through his morning routine, he mentions that he never wears cologne above the neck but he does like to splash a bit of it on "Big Ben". Later on, there is a sequence involving Alfie's impotence problem, with, again, some shots and bits of dialogue that draw at least our mental attention to his nether regions. I suspect frankness in such matters was not a feature of 1960s film, and thus not a feature of the Michael Caine version of this film, but again, I will have to see it again to be sure.

I wonder what would happen if someone ever remade The Family Way.

Here's something else to consider. What are we to make of those bits in the dialogue where the character says he doesn't respect "the institution of marriage"? How do THOSE lines hold up after 38 years?

Consider this. The Family Way was written by the same playwright who wrote Alfie, and both of these films came out in the same year, 1966. In The Family Way, there is a scene where Hayley Mills's character says it's a good thing she and her boyfriend didn't have sex before they got married, otherwise they couldn't have had a "white wedding". Now who even REMEMBERS those kinds of cultural practises nowadays? Who, in this day and age, would even THINK to tell a woman that she could not wear white at her wedding because she was not a virgin? THAT is the sort of cultural backdrop against which the original Alfie was written, and it is in THAT sort of context that the original character did his promiscuous-with-occasional-bits-of-soul-searching thing. True, the film came out at a time when "Swinging London" was on the rise, but that, I think, is precisely why the original film is what it is -- it expresses caution around that burgeoning new scene, and it looks to a more traditional past that in some ways is still quite present. (In fairness, though, even The Family Way begins with a wonderful opening line to the effect of, and I'm paraphrasing, "Once upon a time, there was a virgin, and she was, you might say, a rare bird." Later on, someone remarks that Hayley's husband is "lucky" because he has an "innocent wife" -- so there's a recognition even in that film that the times are changing.)

But what about the new film? Marriage doesn't have quite the traditional status that it once had, so when Alfie says he doesn't care for it much, well, much of his audience will probably be inclined to shrug and say they don't care for it much either, but so what. The sense that there is something REVOLUTIONARY about such sentiments, and thus something new and even adventurous about such sentiments, and thus a reason to be cautious about such sentiments, simply doesn't exist any more; indeed, one line in the film even makes a sort-of nod to the increasing acceptability of gay marriage, and thus indicates that our definitions of marriage have changed much more radically than the people behind the original film probably could have ever envisioned. So that's another way in which the remake lacks the urgency of the original -- though there was probably no way around such a lack, short of not remaking the film in the first place.

I haven't seen the remake of Alfie (and don't intend to), but there are a few things the non Brits might want to bear in mind. I think first and foremost is the 60's 70's revival that accompanied the Britpop era, which also included a great burgening of ladish culture. Magazines such as Loaded which were designed especially for "lads" (beer, sex, football were the main themes) became massive and defined a way of life for a huge proportion of young British men in the 90's. Think of the Gallagher brothers on a large scale. Alfie, and Michael Caine, were heroes in this cultural "revolution." So the references in the new Alfie to the old films are also a referencing to the reappearance of the social attitudes captured in the first Alfie.

And here is where I think the two diverge. There has been mention of the original Alfie as a commentary on

Thanks for your remarks about the "lad" culture, gigi -- that will be very helpful when I write my review. It also reminds me of the "metrosexual" thing that is typified by e.g. Beckham -- at the beginning of the new film, Alfie chides the audience for thinking that it undermines his masculinity if he wears a pink shirt; as far as he's concerned, he's got nothing to worry about because he's secure in his masculinity, or something to that effect. So yeah, the film DOES address a new social scene.

: You rightly mentioned the sexual revolution, but don't you find it interesting that
: although the intention of the sexual revolution was to bring political and economic
: empowerment to women in the case of Alfie (and Alfie is a type) it was solely a
: means of abusing women. And so, I don't think it is a criticism of the sexual
: revolution, but of the exact opposite - the prevalent mysogony that was rampant
: before the sexual revolution and continued throughout it and continues still.

Good point -- in fact, I was discussing a related subject with some colleagues after the film last night, when we talked about how most of the actresses in the new film were never shown explicitly in the nude. When the "sexual revolution" took place and filmmakers suddenly had the freedom to show as much nudity as they wanted, there was a LOT of gratuitous nudity in the films of the '70s and '80s (I typically cite scenes from Slap Shot, Commando and Die Hard whenever I go off on this tangent), but almost all of it was female, and in the past decade, we have seen, if not a backlash, then at least an increasing degree of restraint where that is concerned. A decade or so ago, people kept bemoaning the lack of good roles for women, and someone pointed out that this was actually a fairly new phenomenon -- there were lots of great roles for women in the '30s and '40s and '50s -- and the more recent lack of great roles may have had something to do with the way in which the new "freedom" of modern cinema, which happened to coincide with the rise of feminism, had actually led to an exploitation or sexualization of women that bordered on the misogynist. (I have GOT to find a better way to put that, but I think you know what I mean, yes?)

: I would say that abortion in Alfie is not the consequence of promiscuity but the
: consequence of a society that values tradition over the rights of women.

Hmmm, interesting. Well, that certainly ain't the subtext in the NEW film!

: As for the new Alfie, I saw a debate on this on one of the Beebs arts review
: programmes. They mentioned that it was void of the social awareness of the first
: film, that Alfie was quite soft, emotional, and likeable. He was portrayed as being
: "unlucky in love" and if he only found the right woman he would be ok.

Sounds fair. You mentioned that the original Alfie was "cold", and that certainly isn't the case here. In fact, I found myself wondering if Michael Caine had shown as much charm as Jude Law does here, since I know some of Caine's OTHER roles from that era (e.g. Get Carter) were very cold indeed and veered way off to the misogynist end of the scale.

A number of points (poop... I'm getting NO work done today!)

Again, I haven't seen the new film but one of the reviewers mentioned how women were portrayed in "pieces," "fragmented" and essentially fetishing them, which echoes what you said about the lack of explicit nudity in this film. Perhaps the attempt to be more sensitive towards displaying naked women has resulted in this. Maybe it was an attempt to demonstrate Alfie's POV. I can't really say, but I find it interesting that directors have become more afraid of nudity. It's not the nudity per se that is a problem, for me, but the context in which it is shown. It's a bit of a conundrum really. Removing sexuality from women is removing a basic facet of human existence (and also removing the space and vocabulary for discussion), showing women's sexuality (which I believe is different from showing naked women having sex) has the potential to be abused.

As for the lack of female roles: maybe it has something to do with the sexual revolution. There's a lot of writing on the change in producution trends and the reasons for them about these decades. The general consensus is that the studios moved away from marketing films to women (mother's and wives who were often the moral voice of the family and decided which film was appropriate for them to watch this month) towards men, particularly young men who were considered to be the trend setters. Hence the New Hollywood with very macho films and directors to go along with them: Coppola, Scorsese, etc. Lately it's been veering back, to a degree thanks to the success of Titanic and there has been a huge growth in the action heroine (with a bit of romance thrown in for good measure).

As for Caine... I do change how I feel about his work on a regular basis. I can't decide if he's a genius who is completely aware of the implications of his roles or a misogynist (note the correct spelling ) who revels in it. I think I shall give him the benefit of the doubt. Partly based on The Quiet American which was a coup for him, in my humble opinion.

gigi wrote:
: It's not the nudity per se that is a problem, for me, but the context in which it is
: shown. It's a bit of a conundrum really. Removing sexuality from women is
: removing a basic facet of human existence (and also removing the space and
: vocabulary for discussion) . . .

True, but this basic facet of human existence (or at least this way of expressing it) has been removed from men for years, so removing it from women levels the playing field, at least. (Then again, come to think of it, we probably DO see Jude Law's bare chest at some point or other. Hmmm. Then again, there ARE a few female characters who show us plenty of cleavage, etc. -- basically, the only thing that makes the Miller character unique is that we get a good view of her topless, no bra, nipples exposed, etc., whereas some of the other female characters get about as close to that as you can get without being technically "nude", e.g., some attention is paid to an ex-lover's tattoo on one of Susan Sarandon's breasts, but it's in a spot that is visible even when she's wearing something.)

: The general consensus is that the studios moved away from marketing films to
: women (mother's and wives who were often the moral voice of the family and
: decided which film was appropriate for them to watch this month) towards men,
: particularly young men who were considered to be the trend setters. Hence the
: New Hollywood with very macho films and directors to go along with them:
: Coppola, Scorsese, etc.

Right, and this was quickly followed by the "fanboy" films of Lucas and Spielberg, which set Hollywood on its everlasting quest for the adolescent-male dollar.

: Lately it's been veering back, to a degree thanks to the success of Titanic . . .

So something good came out of that after all? (I actually kinda liked that film.)

: . . . and there has been a huge growth in the action heroine . . .

Hmmm, which ALSO harks back to the films of James Cameron (especially Aliens).

: . . . (with a bit of romance thrown in for good measure).

Ah, well, Cameron has never been very good at combining the action and the romance. I guess it's been up to the next generation of filmmakers to go this route!

FWIW, I passed my comments on to my dad for HIS comments, since he was born in England and grew up in colonial Africa (specifically Zambia), and he was in his early 20s when the original Alfie came out. In response to my comment above about the "white wedding" exchange in The Family Way, he writes (re-posted here with his permission):

- - -

I recall that when we were at the end of high school / beginning of university back around the time Alfie came out, there was a sort of bittersweet feeling when a couple you know finally "did it" because the girl would never be the same again. In fact, she wasn't a "girl" after that, she was now a "woman" (you hear the same idea in that song 'w-o-m-a-n' with its line "and I can make a man out of you"). Some guys made a point of having their first sexual experience with a woman who already had a lot of sexual experience, so as not to spoil it for any 'nice' girl, and every group of guys knew a small pool of experienced women to recommend. In the slightly older scene, women who had been married and were now divorced or widowed were much in demand because casual sex with them was seen as not hurting them in that way; in fact, it was doing them a favour, because they must miss it now.

[Re: the 'w-o-m-a-n' song] Had you realized Helen Reddy (I think that's who sang it) was bragging about her sexual experience, and offering to initiate any virgin males in her audience? The idea that a woman would boast openly about how much sexual experience she had was way over the top when the song first came out, which was why it was such a hit. In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the 30-ish virgin at the heart of the story goes round the house singing that song, we (the audience) are supposed to catch on, even if her mother doesn't, that she and her non-Greek boyfriend have "done it".

My daydream in my virgin, pre-Christian days was that my first sexual experience would be to seduce a woman who was already married. This wasn't an unusual idea; apart from the experience factor, it would also explain and "take care of" any resulting pregnancy. Books and films from that era have covered that ground thoroughly; for example the whole point of 'Summer of 42' is that the 'bad' guy is the one who has sex with the 'bad' girl on the beach, whereas the 'good' guy receives a voluntary offer of sex from a newly-widowed woman with whom there has already been a mutual attraction. I knew exactly how he felt when I saw that scene; that movie played to such a common fantasy of the era when it was made (I can't speak for the era it portrays!).

Thanks for that post Peter!

Here is an interview in which Law describes his reluctance to take this part, and his lack of interest in delving into sexual relationships in cinema. Might be a good starting point should any A&F members get to interview him...

I was roped into seeing this film yesterday. (Very poor choice of films, to be honest.)

The first half-hour was infuriatingly vacuous, and when the moral dimensions began to emerge, it was all rather ironic -- maybe hypocritical wouldn't be too strong a word. I mean, we're being told that Alfie's promiscuity and careless womanizing is costly, irresponsible, subhuman or whatever, but at the same time the film's entertainment value is clearly based on the audience enjoying immensely -- admiring or even idolizing, in fact -- Alfie's could-care-less-I-could-have-any-woman-I-want-or-even-have-a-threesome approach to life. The film's "message" begins to look more than a tad hollow and insincere.

SPOILERS FOR THE 1966 VERSION

I've seen the new film twice now, and I find I kinda like it as a new film made for the present day, but it definitely pales next to the original (which I finally got around to seeing on DVD yesterday, shortly before seeing the new film a second time), which was much, much more serious in intent and tone. I'm afraid there may seem to be a disconnect between the basically positive star rating I give it, on the one hand, and the content of my review, on the other hand, which doesn't do the thumbs-up-or-down thing so much as scrutinize the sorts of social and narrative changes that have transpired between the two films, or something like that. I kind of excuse, kind of critique the new film on the grounds that it may be a shallow film, but these are shallow times.

I was particularly struck by the little hints of everyday religiosity in the original film -- the "God Bless" that Gilda gives to Humphrey, the story about the angels that Alfie tells his son, the "prayer" that Alfie offers after the abortionist has "murdered" the other child -- which are all but absent in the new film (aside from some line about Jude Law's character having been to "Bible class" once -- is that a common thing in British schools, or does it indicate anything unusual about Alfie's upbringing?).

'Twas also interesting to see how the Shelley Winters character in the original film dumps Alfie for a young rock'n'roll musician -- it's the guitar that gives it away! Whereas the music to the new film was provided by a couple of rock musicians, one of whom (Mick Jagger) was EXACTLY the sort of young musician that the Winters character was going for. I wonder, does the jazz in the original film reflect a nostalgia for the past in the same way that the Mick Jagger music does in the new film? Or was the jazz of the original film fairly "current" for that time?

I don't think the new film necessarily "idolizes" the womanizing life, any more than, say, Trainspotting "idolized" the drug-taking life. There IS a reason that people are drawn to that sort of lifestyle in the first place -- there DO seem to be, and ARE, definite pleasures.

FWIW, my review.

Oh, and here's another item for the wacky-ratings file: When I rented the 1966 film yesterday, I noticed that the DVD said the American rating was PG but the Canadian rating was 18-A (our equivalent of the American R). Now THAT'S weird. (For comparison's sake, the 2004 film is R in the United States but 14-A in B.C. and Ontario.)

Jeff, I noticed that you linked, in your blog, to a blog entry by Amy Wellborn which, in turn, links to a review of the new film by James Bowman. It looks like Amy's readers assumed that the new film left out the abortion angle altogether, and it looks like they might have assumed this because of the way in which Bowman really, really tried to avoid any spoilers in this regard. As Bowman writes:[indent]Alfie would not be Alfie without his brief fit of conscience, so naturally I wondered how the new version would handle it. I can't reveal the answer here, as it depends on a minor plot-surprise, but I will say that Alfie's moment of emotion and moral insight comes from remorse at the betrayal of a friend.[/indent]I struggled with how to deal with this aspect of the film, too, and this is what I came up with, for my own review:[indent]The original film turned the abortion of Alfie's child into a traumatic, existential climax, in which the supposedly carefree playboy found himself moved to prayer, however perfunctory it may have been, and brooding over the fact that he had "murdered" his own child. The new film softens these edges, partly by moving the sequence to a much earlier point in the story, where its impact is cushioned by the events that follow, and partly by toning down the dialogue around this moment, so that Lonette will only say that she feels "empty," while Alfie tells the audience how he regrets that he will never get to know his own child. This is not to say that the film in any way condones abortion -- indeed, one could argue it goes the other route -- but it does reflect a more permissive shift in social attitudes.[/indent]FWIW, I think the "plot-surprise" to which Bowman refers does push the crisis in Alfie's conscience a bit beyond the fact that he has betrayed a friend. If memory serves, it is right after this "plot-surprise" that Jude Law's Alfie decides he has to at least TRY to commit to somebody.

SPOILERS FOR THE 2004 VERSION

To say any more than that probably WOULD take us into spoiler territory, which is something you can't really do in reviews of the sort that Bowman and I were writing. But I think I do inch in that direction with one of the questions I pose at the end of my review: "What does the film say about abortion? Is it pro-choice or pro-life? Comparing the two versions of this film, which would have a bigger impact on a person like Alfie -- witnessing an aborted fetus, or witnessing a live baby?"

The last bit in my paragraph quoted above is an important point, I think. Abortion is NOT the illegal activity that it was back in the mid-1960s (thus reducing the likelihood that the Alfie of 2004 would ever get to see an actual aborted fetus, let alone on a kitchen floor), and social attitudes HAVE changed since then (thus reducing the likelihood that the Alfie of 2004 would have inherited a system of values traditional enough to prompt a crisis of conscience over the matter of abortion), and what's more, a successful ladies' man these days DOES have to assume a greater degree of "empowerment" on the part of the women he seduces than the Alfie of 1966 ever had to do (thus reducing the degree to which the Alfie of 2004 can claim sole responsibility for the existence and abortion of the child; the mother in today's film cannot claim to have been a victim of traditional gender roles in the way that the mother in 1966 could do; to put it another way, the Alfie of 2004 is not so much a master seducer as he is a male slut).

So I do not blame the FILM for altering or even deleting the abortion sequence of the original film -- there is simply no way a story set today could include it. But I do think it could be interesting to explore how the film deals with the abortion and its aftermath.

Specifically, we do find out near the end of the film that the mother KEPT the child, figuring there was a chance it might be her boyfriend's after all and not Alfie's; apparently she was ready to risk the possibility that the child would turn out to be Alfie's after all -- and indeed, that IS how things turn out -- and thus she was ready to take the risk that her boyfriend might leave her. In other words, she was prepared to jeapordize the relationship rather than to snuff out a life. (Of course, if the child HAD been her boyfriend's, it is possible she might never have told him about her one-night stand with Alfie, and there would still be an element of deception there, but set that aside for now.) And I would hope that very few people could look at that baby, once it is born, and say, "You should have cut this life short in order to keep your fling a secret from your boyfriend."

What I'm saying is, the film acknowledges that abortion leaves people feeling "empty", in the scene where we are supposed to believe that the abortion has taken place; and then it reveals that the mother chose to keep the baby, despite the consequences, perhaps because the consequence of killing the child would have been worse; and then, on top of everything else, Alfie sees this child and, knowing that the child is his, he is moved to try to make a change in his life -- and perhaps we, too, are moved to see that the creation of new life is a good thing AND that it is something that works properly within certain contexts.

So I think the film gives us a quasi-positive example, in a sense, whereas the film hits us with a negative example -- and while the quasi-positive example might not be as obvious or overt or easily translatable into a sermon illustration point, it still speaks a truth of some sort, no?

But maybe I'm putting too much thought into this. Certainly, the film's dismal box-office performance suggests there won't be too many dialogue partners on this film, anyway.

Incidentally, I do love this bit from Bowman's review:[indent]Ultimately, this movie fails because we have stopped being so hypocritical about sex. Back in the day when everyone pretended to think that, in the words of the song, love and marriage went together like a horse and carriage, shock at a character like Alfie was obligatory. Naughton and Gilbert played upon this automatic response in order to remind us of two things: first, that we weren't as shocked as we pretended to be and, second, that we should be.[/indent]I have been inclined to look at this film's lack of seriousness as a reflection of the fact that we have stopped being serious or profound about life and death and morality and so forth -- so it is intriguing to hear someone say that the film fails because we have stopped being hypocritical! It is almost as though what I attributed to a lack of moral depth were being attributed to a lack of moral shallowness.

Peter:



I read your review right before I went to see the movie and I thought you did a great job of keeping the "plot-surprise" a surprise. I didn't see it coming until just a few moments before it happened. Of course, I hadn't read the questions at the end of your review which do seem to give it away.

I don't have much to say about the movie itself except that I thought Susan Sarandon's glorified cameo stuck out like a sore thumb.

How's that for a deep insight?

Darryl A. Armstrong wrote:
: I don't have much to say about the movie itself except that I thought Susan
: Sarandon's glorified cameo stuck out like a sore thumb.

Really? Why? (Have you seen the original, in which her character was played by Shelley Winters? If ANYONE was capable of sticking out like a sore thumb...)

I haven't seen the original, but I thought Sarandon stuck out here because she really didn't seem to be the kind of girl Alfie would go after. I know he explains to the audience how good loking she is for such an older woman, but I didn'y buy it. It just felt like her character was thrown in because it would make a great cameo for a "star" like Sarandon.

But that's just all IMHO...

Michael Caine talks to the Associated Press:[indent]AP: Does it bother you that you're in a string of supporting parts rather than lead roles?

Caine: Oh no. Blimey, it's a relief, because I did "The Quiet American," then I had to go out and promote it without a lot of backup, shall we say, from Harvey. It was such a nightmare, doing that. I thought, I don't want to play the lead in a movie for a while, so I was very happy to do these parts. But now, I'm sort of ready. Now I've had a good rest. I haven't worked since November. I've only got one project ... Jude Law and I want to remake "Sleuth." We have a very good rewrite by Harold Pinter, and we might do that. I figured everybody else is remaking my movies. I'll remake one. And Jude's already remade one of mine.

AP: Jude's "Alfie" flopped last year. What did you think of it?

Caine: I thought it was very good, but you see, it's timing. It was the wrong movie at the wrong time. The basis of my Alfie, what was funny about my Alfie was that he was a man who not only did not have a feminine side or was out of touch with his feminine side, but he just had no idea. That's what was funny about him. I mean, he called women "it." Jude played it as a modern man who is in touch with his feminine side, so it's not as funny, but it's more touching. I was sort of a barbarian, an absolute barbarian in the world of sex, so when Alfie turned at the end of the movie and he said "What's it all about?" you knew there was something that had happened to him. When Jude said "What's it all about?" you thought: well, I thought he really knew at the beginning. He was a modern man, and he knew what it was all about. He'd been beaten up by women for the last 25 years, and he knew what it was all about.[/indent]Of course, Caine sort-of already remade one of his own movies by accepting a cameo role in the Sylvester Stallone version of Get Carter ...