Alfie

I have for some time been a fan of the original movie version of Alfie - the version with a young Michael Caine which was made in 1966. It was a play originally. There has been an updated version which was made a few years ago with the actor Jude Law. I have not seen it yet for a number of reasons.

This is a movie which is definitely NOT "high art," but it is a well crafted moral tale. Yes, a moral tale - always a dangerous thing to do. It is walking a tight rope to do something like this without it becoming "preachy," but I think the director Lewis Gilbert pulls it off well. There is also a decent jazz score by Sonny Rollins and then, at the very end of the movie, the famous Burt Bacharach song "What's it all about, Alfie?" sung by a then very young Cher (still of Sonny and Cher).

Much of the movie is carried, though, by Michael Caine who does a superb acting job. He plays a thirtyish cockney Lothario who is really quite bad. He uses and throws women away (including married women) like it's going out of style - and the women quite foolishly fall for him and pine the loss of him. They can't get enough of him. He is so darn charming, though (and I say this as a man). He's not quite what the British called a "teddy boy," but he's roughly of the same era and definitely a bit of a dandy.

However, it is basically the story of a very self-centered man who is mercifully given an opportunity to change through some very intense suffering.

Just to touch on a few highlights, he gets this young woman, Gilda, pregnant and she has the child, a boy. She names him "Malcolm." He actually keeps in touch with her and the child and he grows rather fond of the boy. There is another man, Humphrey, who is very much in love with her, but she will have little to do with him. He is a very plain looking man - not ugly - but very plain in his looks and personality. Nonetheless, he is very taken with her. She clearly is waiting around hoping that Alfie will marry her and fully take up his responsibilities as father of the child. This goes on for 3-5 years! (I can't quite tell exactly how old the boy is.) Ultimately she starts taking Humphrey more seriously and, when Alfie makes it clear he has no interest in marrying her, she agrees to marry Humphrey.

Finally, she made the right choice. If she wants real love, she's going to get it from Humphrey rather than Alfie.

Alfie goes away, but - though he has no problem moving on to other women (he already had done this romantically) - it really bugs him that he can no longer see his child. This is something new to him. A crack in his armor. He talks about this to his other "girlfriends," and to the audience. (A feature of the movie is that he will ignore theatrical convention and talk to the audience.) He says, "now you can replace a bird, but a child is each one unique." (He also will refer to a woman as "it," but not the child.)

Later, toward the end of the movie, he gets the wife of a friend pregnant. He procures an abortion for her which is performed in his apartment. (Apparently she is given an injection which kills the fetus and then she has to wait to give birth.) She tells him to leave after she is given the shot by this very creepy abortion doctor. Abortion was still illegal - at least after 3 months - in England at that time so that's why it had to be so clandestine (i.e. at his apartment). He goes out for a walk and sees Malcolm, his son, running out of a church. Then he sees Humphrey, now his legal father, come out and playfully scoop him up and take him back into the church. Alfie can't stand this and goes in to see what is going on. From the back of the church he sees that Humphrey and Gilda (now husband and wife) have had a baby and are having him baptized. Thus one child is being born into eternal life while another was being snuffed out. Alfie watches this new family leave the church (clearly with grandparents, relatives, friends, etc.) very happy while he skulks behind a pillar. He is very hurt by this. Another chink in his armor.

After this he goes back to his apartment to find the dead fetus - his son. In a very good piece of acting - and with the camera exclusively on his face - he picks up the dead child and tears fill his eyes. He runs out crying and goes for a walk with a male friend. Later he says to the friend, "I guess I killed him." (i.e. the boy) Alfie moves on to an older woman named Ruby with whom he had already started to have an affair. She is played by Shelly Winters. I suppose she is a forty-something very experienced, blowsy, cut-rate Mae West. He likes her because, as he says, "the young birds are always talking about love, but she never does. She knows what she wants and she's going to get it." Don't let this fool you as he also talks to the audience about how he is thinking of settling down with her. He is looking for some sort of stability in his life.

Ruby had given him a key to her apartment very foolishly, and he walks in on her unexpectedly when she is with a young rock guitarist. During the confrontation he asks her, "so what's he got that I don't have?" She says, "he's younger than you, Alfie. You get it?!" Another big crack in his armor. Alfie gets his comeuppance. He finally is used by an older, more experienced woman, the way he has been using women younger than himself.

The movie ends with his famous, "What's it all about?" monologue delivered near the Thames. (I tried to find the spot when I was in London this Summer, but didn't succeed.) Afterward he is approached by a little dog whom he had shooed away at the very beginning of the movie. He walks off with the dog - this once very popular ladies' man - now reduced to having this stray mutt as his only willing companion. It is a very cutesy ending but, well, I can put up with it.

So the movie ends with a man who - against his own will - is given the gift of an opening to grace. This opening was brought on by his own bad behavior. He was allowed to suffer the hammer blows of fate - the result of his own choices - and thus have an opening made in the thick shell of his ego. It is a profoundly religious movie without in any way being overtly so - kind of like a Flannery O'Connor short story. The movie ends with him yet to make a choice, not because it is "modernistically ambiguous," but because the movie is the story of a particular sort of fallen soul and how God tries to reach such people. That is the point. It is up to them to decide. Some say "yay," some say "nay." Free will.