Ponce Charming

Alfie. "Oi'm 'ere," says Alfie. "In the flesh." That's Alfie, dead to rights. Tall, blond and (barring a little latent acne) handsome, Alfie is a mildly repulsive sort of ponce charming from Eastcheap who can't be sure he's Don Juan until he's done 'em all.

Given the presence of a Cockney Casanova, Alfie's plot predictably unreels more like a score card than a scenario. Among the standard items is the eager middle-aged nymph (Shelley Winters) who entertains Alfie in a big bath tub. One of the more pathetic entries is the hen-shaped wife of a sick friend--they take char together, and then Alfie makes a grab at the old girl, just to "round off the tea nicely." And then there is the nubile nurse (Shirley Anne Field)--while Alfie is recuperating from overexertion in a TB sanatorium, she comes round every night with "something to put you to sleep."

Unhappily, the film too often has that very effect on the onlooker. True, Michael Caine (The Ipcress File) plays the sodding little spiv with a raucous charm that makes Alfie seem more interesting than he actually is. And it is also true that the script struggles loyally to endow Alfie with humor and humanity. After the friend's wife undergoes an abortion--a scene that takes place off-camera but was only with reluctance approved by the Valenti office--Alfie stares in horror at the unseen fetus of his unborn son. The audience is clearly expected to conclude that Alfie is sensitive, after all, because he doesn't like to see a fetus on his kitchen table.

Come off it, lads. A rat's a rat, and hanging a blue ribbon on the beast won't turn him into a prize Pomeranian.

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