Alfie

Alfie

It’s odd that the movie “Alfie” (1966) is often remembered as a comedy, because it was about a man who tried to make every aspect of his life funny as everything around him slowly and deservedly got turgid. In 1966 and again in 2004, Alfie wants nothing more than to keep grinning madly, have fun all the time and be lover to a line of women who are willing friends; never complain; ask no favors and understand his need to be unfaithful. Any woman like that, if she existed, wouldn’t be worth having. But try telling that to Alfie.

Michael Caine made “Alfie” and “The Ipcress File” (1965) back to back, and they made him a star. He had a cocky cockney self-assurance that hinted at something hard beneath the kidding. Jude Law is already a movie star one of the busiest and in “Alfie,” he’s less predatory than Caine; more like a needy hedonist who is hurt by indeed surprised when women won’t put up with him.

Certainly he encounters a different kind of woman in 2004 than Caine did in 1966; much has changed between those two dates: The feminist revolution happened; so did the rise and fall of the one night stand, not to mention AIDS; today, a compulsively promiscuous man is more dangerous to himself and his partners than he was then. In 1966, Alfie’s worst sin leads to an abortion; in 2004, it consists essentially of throwing away the love of the only woman he really cares about.

That would be Julie (Marisa Tomei), who is honest and grounded and has a young son and absolutely will not share Alfie with other women. Of course she doesn’t know about them at first. Alfie confesses, in one of his rueful speeches to the camera, that what’s difficult about dating a woman with a kid is that you get to really like the kid. And it’s also tough, Alfie discovers, when you get to like the woman.

He’s still British in this version, but more upmarket; he now lives in Manhattan, where being a limo driver gives him access to many women and them to him. We meet them as he does: Dorie (Jane Krakowski), the lonely married woman; Liz (Susan Sarandon), the successful businesswoman who takes a no-nonsense approach to acquiring sex; Nikki (Sienna Miller), the gorgeous model who wanders into his life and seems like she might be the undemanding woman of his dreams. Then there’s Lonette (Nia Long), the girlfriend of his best friend Marlon (Omar Epps). She should be off-limits, but as far as Alfie’s concerned, boundaries are for crossing.

The first film closely followed an era of British movies about Angry Young Men and had overtones of proletarian rage expressed by characters played by actors such as Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. The new movie comes out of a lad mag era in which Alfie is better dressed, smoother and smoldering not with anger but with a spoiled boy’s demand for indulgence. Both 1966 and 2004 probably deserve their characters; narcissism has evolved in those years from being one character flaw among others into something more like an entire male fashion line.

The ladies have changed, too. Marisa Tomei’s Julie might have felt powerless in 1966 that she had to put up with Alfie because she had no choice. Now she does have choices. The sexy businesswoman (Sarandon) is no longer seen as aging and needy (as Shelley Winters was in the original) but as desirable and independent; when he finds her with another man, he asks “What’s he got better than me?” and her answer is a little sorry for him: “He’s younger than you.”

And though Lonette gets pregnant, abortion doesn’t seem like the inevitable path even if the mixed race of her child will give away its father to her boyfriend. In 2004 it is possible for a woman to have a child outside the traditional rules; in 1966, that was not common.

But we don’t go to see “Alfie” to draw a sociological comparison between two films; most of the people who see it on opening night won’t know it’s a remake at all. It’s funny sometimes and finally sad sometimes and sweet sometimes on its own terms.

He learns that lying to women is lying about them to himself. Law has his best scenes when he keeps grinning through his growingly grim and depressing lifestyle. He has sold himself on life as a ladies’ man and beginning to realize he is his only customer.

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