8 / 10
Talking to You
Alfie Elkins is a chauffeur in London, and he spends the whole film talking to you. He turns to the camera in the middle of a seduction, a quarrel or a pub crawl and explains what’s going on, what he thinks of women, who he fancies this week and why none of them will ever tie him down. He’s cheerful, cocky and completely sure of himself.
Michael Caine plays him. The role made him an international star. He’s charming, funny and so relaxed on camera that you forget he’s talking to you. You like him, even as he’s saying appalling things, because he’s so frank about being a rotter.
Lewis Gilbert directed it, from Bill Naughton’s stage play, and it’s usually filed as a swinging sixties comedy. That undersells it badly. It’s a film about a man slowly realizing he’s wasted his life.
For Writers
Alfie talks directly to the camera throughout, telling the audience his version of events. The film then shows scenes that contradict what he says.
A first-person narrator who addresses the reader directly can be charming, persuasive and unreliable all at once. The trick is to let the reader see the gap between what the narrator claims and what happens. That gap becomes the story.
If you’re writing in first person, give your narrator a confident opinion about something, then show a scene that quietly proves them wrong. Don’t comment on it. Let the reader notice, and they’ll start reading everything the narrator says more carefully. That’s when a first-person story gets really interesting. For more, see my article on point of view in fiction.
The Women
Alfie goes through women like cigarettes. There’s Siddie, a married woman he sees on the side. There’s Gilda, a sweet, devoted girl who has his baby and whom he won’t marry. There’s Annie, a young hitchhiker he takes in and treats like a housemaid, and Lily, the wife of a friend he meets in a sanatorium. And there’s Ruby, a rich, brassy older American played by Shelley Winters, who gives him as good as he gives her.
Each of them sees something in him, and each of them gets hurt, some a little, one terribly. Gilbert doesn’t hide any of it. Alfie tells you it’s all harmless fun, and the camera shows you it isn’t.
The women are the conscience of the film, and several of them are wonderfully played. Julia Foster’s Gilda is heartbreaking, and Vivien Merchant’s Lily, in a handful of scenes, earned an Oscar nomination.
Malcolm
The one relationship that gets to Alfie is with his son, Malcolm, Gilda’s baby. Alfie didn’t want him, but he finds himself taking the boy to the park, buying him toys and loving him. Then Gilda marries a decent, dull bus conductor who’ll take care of them both, and Alfie is pushed out.
There’s a scene where he watches his son through the railings of a church, as the boy goes off with his new family, and Caine’s face tells you everything. It’s the first time you see Alfie realize that his freedom has cost him something he can’t get back.
Lily
The darkest part of the film involves Lily, who becomes pregnant by Alfie and arranges an illegal abortion in his flat. Abortion was still a crime in Britain at the time. Denholm Elliott plays the abortionist, a cold, seedy, matter-of-fact man, and the scene is quiet and chilling.
Afterwards, Alfie sees what’s happened, and he breaks down for the first time. He goes to talk to a friend and cries, and when he turns back to the camera, he’s not joking any more. It’s one of the most powerful moments in sixties British cinema, and it turns a comedy into a tragedy in one scene.
The film was made just before abortion was legalised in Britain in 1967, and it’s often credited with helping to shift public opinion. It handles the subject with seriousness and compassion, and it doesn’t let Alfie off the hook.
For Writers
After the abortion, Alfie breaks down for the first time, and when he turns back to the camera, he isn’t joking. The narrator’s voice changes, and the film changes with it.
Find the moment in your story where your narrator’s defences break. Write it in a different tone, plainer, quieter, without their usual tricks, and see how the reader responds. Short sentences. No jokes.
The most powerful turning point for a narrator can be a moment where their usual voice fails them. If your narrator is always glib, the scene where they can’t manage a joke will hit the reader hard. Build the voice consistently, so its collapse means something. Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint covers this well.
What’s It All About?
By the end, Alfie has been dumped by Ruby for a younger man, lost his son, hurt nearly everybody who cared about him and ended up alone on a London bridge at night. He turns to the camera one last time and asks what it’s all about. He doesn’t know. He’s still a little cocky, still trying to be cheerful. But he’s lonely, and he knows it now.
That’s a brave, bleak ending for a film that started out as a lark. There’s no punishment, no redemption and no lesson spelled out. Just a man who’s finally started to see himself, too late to fix much of it.
For Writers
The film ends with Alfie alone, asking what it’s all about. No punishment, no redemption, just self-knowledge that comes too late.
Try ending your story with your protagonist understanding their mistake, without fixing it. Let the reader carry the cost out of the book. Resist the urge to add a hopeful epilogue or a final lesson. The silence after the recognition is where the reader does their own thinking, and that’s what makes an ending stay with them for years.
Not every story needs a neat moral or a dramatic comeuppance. Sometimes the truest ending is a character finally seeing themselves clearly and realizing there’s no way to undo what they’ve done. That quiet recognition can be more devastating than any punishment.
Swinging London
Gilbert captures London in the mid-sixties beautifully, from the smoky pubs and cramped bedsits to the parks, sanatoriums and grand hotels. It’s more working-class than the glossy swinging-London films of the time, and it feels real. Sonny Rollins wrote and played the jazz score, loose, sexy and melancholy.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the famous song Alfie for the film. Cilla Black sang it in Britain, and Cher recorded a version for the American release. It was nominated for an Oscar and became a standard, sung by just about everybody since.
How It’s Aged
Some of Alfie’s attitudes are grim to sit through today, and some viewers find the first half too pleased with its charming cad. The film’s middle is episodic, and a few of the women get little more than a scene.
The film knows exactly what Alfie is, though, and it makes him pay for it. It’s funny, cruel and truthful in a way sixties films rarely were, and Caine is marvellous. Skip the 2004 Jude Law remake. It misses everything that matters.
Craft Note
Craft Note
Alfie uses direct address to seduce the audience the same way Alfie seduces women. The viewer is charmed, then made complicit, then forced to watch the damage. By the end, the cheeky voice that made the film fun has become the thing that condemns him.
A narrator’s charm can be a trap, for the other characters and for the reader. Letting the reader enjoy the narrator’s company before revealing the cost makes the eventual reckoning more powerful.
If your protagonist is charming but harmful, let the reader like them first. Then show, one scene at a time, the people their charm has hurt.
What It’s All About
Yes. It’s an 8: a cheeky, funny and ultimately sad film about a London charmer who doesn’t realize what he’s losing until it’s gone, with Michael Caine at his most magnetic. It’s much darker and better than its reputation as a swinging-sixties romp.
Frequently Asked Questions
This film appears on one of my film lists