1pm PST – Alfie (1966) – A British womanizer refuses to grow up until tragedy strikes. Cast: Michael Caine , Julia Foster , Millicent Martin , Shelley Winters Dir: Lewis Gilbert C-114 mins, TV-14
Jude Law’s painful 2004 remake didn’t fail because, well, remakes usually do, it failed because present-day Hollywood wasn’t about to “remake” what makes the original so timeless. Michael Caine’s Alfie is practically a platinum cardholder in The Club Of Social Conservatism.
Produced in 1966, just as the swinging sexual revolution was getting under way (especially in London), Caine’s Alfie was a sign of the times – a reckless libertine ready to bed any woman willing, including the wife of a sick man he meets during a stay in the hospital. Consequences be damned, Alfie charms, cheats, lies and breaks hearts because this is how he defines himself and measures his self-worth.
At first there’s a vicarious thrill in watching our working class bloke make his way through “the birds,” but before long it becomes clear that what we’re really witnessing is a pathetic, hollow man whose relentless pursuit of self-indulgence is doing nearly as much emotional damage to himself as to his conquests. Eventually, as the tragic fallout of his lifestyle piles up, Alfie has a very real and consequential moral awakening. And it all begins with what James Bowman calls ‘one of the great moments in cinematic history:’
…the scene in which Michael Caine breaks down on seeing the dead fetus an abortionist (Denholm Elliott) has left in his kitchen. Lewis Gilbert’s film version of Bill Naughton’s play allowed us to watch as this jaunty Lothario who’s got it all figured out suddenly and unexpectedly acquired a conscience. Afterwards, Caine’s Alfie treats his emotional lapse as a curiosity. “I don’t know what I was expecting to see,” he says to the camera; “certainly not this perfectly formed being.” He “expected it to cry out. It didn’t of course; it couldn’t have done. Still, it must have had some life.” And then there comes, like “praying or something,” his moment of insight when an “it” becomes a “him”: “‘You know what you done?’ I says to myself. ‘You murdered him.'”
Obviously, Big Hollywood’s 2004 incarnation refuses to go anywhere near this or to even criticize reckless sexual behavior. Instead, Jude Law’s Alfie has a very special awakening about the importance of friendship.
And the movie flopped because the movie’s meaningless.
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