SHADOWS Contactless Friday 22 2020 8.30 SBS on Demand + Messenger: ALFIE (1966)

When I was running Shadows at the ABC Gallery one of the regulars, a much older man, often complained to me about the more obscure films I showed. He accepted that that was part of my brief but said that he would show titles from the great trove of cinema classics that were easily available. I replied that my purpose was provide a kind of stand-in for the recently deceased Melbourne arthouse scene and show a mix of old and new that were difficult to access. Some of those might well be classics but probably wouldn't include Breakfast at Tiffany's or Casablanca. Good films, of course, but if you only show classics you never get to statements that the classics overshadowed, the cries from the margins and the fog beyond the mainstream. So, why the bloody 'ell am I showin' Alfie?

Well, it does look like one of those auld cinema classics with a '60s birthdate and a cast that includes Michael Caine and a host of other great UK players. But I'm putting it on as the two times I've seen it I had different responses. As a young cinema student ripe with cultural snobbery and political righteousness (and a very small handful of life experiences) I found myself looking around what I diagnosed as Alfie's misogyny and nihilism. Decades later, I saw it again and recognised through the laddish fourth wall confessions a growing sadness beneath the cockiness.

If you don't have a similar history with this title you might simply enjoy the slightly hard edge given to swinging London that the pop group movies left out. It's from a time when working class people could realise plans careers and affluence. Keith Richards famously remarked that the better money and end of enforced military service gave rise to the greatness of British youth culture in the '60s. Into this success they carried the impetuousness of an extended adolescence and an exuberance that probably seemed endless at the time. Caine brings to Alfie a harder face than today's Mockneys and would today be depicted with a kind of knowing affectation. Here, at least, it feels real.

So , let's watch Alfie.