ALFIE (60TH ANNIVERSARY)

SEPTEMBER 10

A cockney skirt-chaser gets his comeuppance in swinging sixties London in this jaunty, touching, and rueful adaptation of Bill Naughton’s popular West End play. Caine, in the role that made him a huge international star, leads an excellent supporting cast that includes Denholm Elliot as a drunken back-alley abortionist and Vivien Merchant as the most tragically spurned woman of all. (Caine, who appeared opposite Merchant in her husband Harold Pinter’s first London stage production, The Room, had a decisive hand in getting her the part.) The film is notable not only for Sonny Rollins’s jazz score but also for the moments when Caine speaks directly into the camera lens:

“[Director Lewis Gilbert] and I had studied two previous examples of this—Olivier in Richard III and Albert Finney in Tom Jones. Both were executed in a declamatory and theatrical style as though addressing a real audience. [But this] looked artificial in the modern realistic setting of *Alfie*…. Lewis decided to bring the camera in very close and have me speak not to an audience, but to one close confidant. The intimacy of this worked so well with those who watched the rushes, that we decided to keep it this way.”

Set in postwar London, "Alfie" features Michael Caine as a chauffeur bent on promiscuity. After impregnating his girlfriend he takes off on vacation. He continues his life of womanizing, but he can't hide forever. A misfortune strikes and Alfie is forced to face the product of his ways.

Alfie. 1966. UK. Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Screenplay by Bill Naughton, based on the play of the same name.