Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

All those poor suckers who don't get a date, or who are the sort of guy who think being pinned down to one woman is a life sentence, may think a guy like Alfie is a real hero. After all, his whole life, indeed, his entire philosophy, is about having affairs with women and not developing a deep bond with them. He doesn't want to commit himself to anyone, and expects his partners to respect this. He's the ultimate player.

It's the late 1960s in England, and Alfie (Michael Caine) considers himself a pretty swingin' guy, as he has affairs with both married and single women, and has pretty much mastered the whole idea of detachment. He's so detached that, whenever he looks to the camera and talks to us about his life, he practically speaks of women as objects... well, as "birds", anyway. I suppose in a lot of ways Alfie is a jerk, but he doesn't come across as a complete swine, because we see right away that his life is pretty messed up.

As the film begins, he's having an affair with both a married woman (the first scene is of the steamy windows of the car as he and his lover are fooling around inside) and a single woman who also gets attention from a much more mild-mannered and responsible individual. It's not too long when he finds out the single woman is pregnant with his child. Alfie, being the guy of no commitment or responsibility, hopes she'll do the "right thing" and give the kid up for adoption -- his personality is so manipulative that in persuading her to do whatever she likes, he's really trying to persuade her to do as he wants. He doesn't want a family or responsibility.

Nevertheless, the girl keeps the child. Alfie doesn't marry the girl, though -- he'd rather be a part-time dad, although it's still enough that he finds himself drawn to the kid. He does genuinely seem to like the time he spends with his son, at least. However, eventually the woman decides to marry the mild-mannered friend, who still holds a torch for her even with her relationship with Alfie.

Alfie moves on, with yet more affairs. Just as with before, he finds himself fooling around with both a single and married woman. The single woman he picks up at a diner during one of his jobs as a chauffeur -- he tricks her into abandoning the equally lecherous truck driver who picked her up as she was hitchhiking. The two soon move in together. The married woman is the wife of a man Alfie met at a sanatorium as he was resting from the effects of a lung infection..... and in the twist to the first part of the film, it is the married woman who gets "in trouble" so to speak. He also gets involved with an older woman, played by Shelley Winters, who seems to actually rival him in the hedonistic sweepstakes.

The best way to describe Alfie, the film, is to call it a sad comedy. It is nothing else but that. The main character seems like he would be an entertaining character, and he is -- if nothing else, he'd be entertaining as a charmingly amoral sort who believes in temporal pleasures instead of anything long-lasting and concrete. But while other movies would just wallow in the antics, and perhaps be either sentimental, or not, in the end, this film gives us both the fun and the pain simultaneously.

The brilliant stroke here is the monologues Alfie gives to us, the viewers. The concept of a character speaking to us isn't exactly original (and I don't know how original this was in 1965), but it works here because his narration isn't merely filling in details. In many ways, it's the other way around -- he's talking to us, giving us his view of things, while the events surrounding him are the details which fill us in. He tells us his side of the story, while we see the story as it really is.

Actually, the story as it really is, is that he's not really as heartless and amoral as he lets on, but he is very destructive all the same. Not just to others, but to himself. His unwillingness to fix up his life manifests itself in physical ways, which is the reason for his extensive stay at the sanitarium -- although he doesn't take stock of his life here. He would much rather make it with the nurses, and tell his friend, whose wife he'll end up having an affair with, that he shouldn't trust his wife not to have an affair while her husband's ill and locked up in a sanitarium for months at a time.

I say he's not really heartless and amoral because there are a few scenes where it's clear he has deep feelings -- and these feelings come about because of some truly painful (and, in one case, tragic) situations. But he wants to brush them off, he wants to go back to being the detached cad he was before. Far more easier and automatic than trying to dig deep within your soul and realizing what you've done, and what you can do to repair it. I'd say, too, that some of the painful things which happen to him in this movie only serve to drive him deeper into the destructive behavior he's been living for a long time. The movie's end is far more honest than what some Hollywood movies might do...... even those of us who aren't nearly as problematic as Alfie would take a very long time to come to grips with our problems. For a long time, we are merely floating through life, living our usual patterns --- often, even when we are confronted with the possibility our lifestyles are ruinous, we still can't get out of that rut. We're so used to being this way that we almost enjoy it, even if it does hurt. Same with Alfie.

Michael Caine is a really good actor. It's not even because of seeing him in any recent films that I know this -- actually, I can't say I recall much of anything he's done in the past 15-plus years that I've actually seen. But Caine gives us some really great performances in movies like The Ipcress File, The Man Who Would be King and Get Carter. It's the same with this movie -- he comes across as arrogant, cocky, amusing, and yet still manages to create a character which probably deserves our pity more than anything else.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV