Alfie

A film set in London. Alfie is a driver. His affairs with women are constant and he takes none of them seriously; by his own account it is a way of living and he sets its rules himself. The formal idea is there. Alfie looks at the camera and talks to the audience; he says what he is doing, why, and what he thinks of the woman in front of him. That telling makes him likeable, and the film builds it that way on purpose. The sections advance through women. He has a child with one and keeps seeing the boy without taking responsibility. Another affair is brief. The relationship with a married woman brings a problem past a certain point, and here the film changes its tone. That passage is its hardest. The narrative goes as far as an abortion scene, and for the first time Alfie can find no joke for the audience. What the narrative is interested in is not amusement but reckoning: the man defends himself for the whole film, and at the end there is nothing left to defend. The source is a play by Bill Naughton. Michael Caine plays Alfie and the part made his name internationally. Shelley Winters, Millicent Martin, Julia Foster, Jane Asher and Vivien Merchant are in the cast. Lewis Gilbert directed. The film won a jury prize at Cannes and took a number of Academy Award nominations. Who it is for: anyone who likes British cinema of the 1960s and narratives that speak straight to the audience. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot carry the character's view of women; the film criticises it but tells much of the story in his voice.