Alfie

Comedy, Drama

Michael Caine	Alfie Elkins
Millicent Martin	Siddie
Shelley Winters	Ruby
Julia Foster	Gilda
Jane Asher	Annie
Shirley Anne Field	Carla
Vivien Merchant	Lily
Eleanor Bron	The Doctor
Denholm Elliott	The Abortionist
Alfie Bass	Harry Clamacraft
Graham Stark	Humphrey
Murray Melvin	Nat
Sydney Tafler	Frank
Pauline Boty	One of Alfie's girlfriends (uncredited)
Peter Graves	(uncredited)
Shirley Ann Field

Director	Lewis Gilbert
Producer	Lewis Gilbert
Writer	Bill Naughton

"What's it all about, Alfie?" asked the hit Burt Bacharach/Hal David title song, to which the less philosophical answer might be: an amoral young man comically seducing a succession of beautiful women in swinging-sixties London. Michael Caine was the titular anti-hero, here consolidating his new star status from Zulu (1964) and The Ipcress File (1965), his conquests including Shelley Winters, Jane Asher and Shirley Ann Field. Alfie was a huge success, bringing a new frankness about changing sexual attitudes to the screen, in which respect it was almost the male companion to Julie Christie's then shocking, Oscar-winning performance in Darling (1965). It was also a sort-of contemporary Tom Jones, which had swept the Oscars for 1963, however, Alfie was not only better made, but in Michael Caine's guilelessly amoral asides to camera, offered a groundbreaking illustration of a newly self-conscious cinema. It is a technique Caine would reprise as the middle-aged philanderer in Blame It On Rio (1983). With Blow Up also released in 1966, and Ken Russell's Women In Love following in 1969, British film-making was truly in the midst of a sexual revolution. Michael Caine would reunite with director Lewis Gilbert and meet his female match in Educating Rita (1983). --Gary S. Dalkin