Alfie (1966) - DVD

Alfie has all the women at his feet. This confident London playboy never doubts himself and believes he has life all figured out. He follows a simple hedonistic philosophy, which he openly shares with the audience: if you want something, take it—feelings don’t matter. But his life is about to become complicated. One of his girlfriends is pregnant and has no intention of giving up the child, and cracks begin to appear in Alfie’s boundless pragmatism. Directed by Lewis Gilbert and based on the play by Bill Naughton—who also wrote the screenplay—the film is a briskly told character study of a man who embodies the free-spirited attitude of the emerging 1960s. Its amoral protagonist is not evil and has no desire to hurt anyone; he simply fails to realize the emotional devastation he leaves behind in his pursuit of pleasure. The film stands or falls on the performance of Michael Caine, whose role as Alfie catapulted him to international stardom. In addition to an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, the film received four further nominations, won the Jury Special Prize at Cannes, and took home the Golden Globe for Best English-Language Foreign Film.