This is an excellent, pretty frank and even-handed look at the life of a mid-1960s womanizing single man. The story and acting are excellent, utterly convincing, and interesting.
Alfie's character is very well-developed and portrayed; rather than being a single-dimensional icon or stock generalization, he is complex. Alfie is sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time. He is a chauvinist who cares little for the people (primarily women) in his relationships, avoids emotional attachments or long-term relationships with women who seem to want them, lives in the moment for himself, uses women, has them cook for him, etc. Yet at the same time he also shows some consideration for them and at least appears to want them to do what they want, be free, etc. He in some ways wants (or at least truly thinks that he wants) the women to live by the same rules he does. He also clearly never has any intention to hurt people, which he also states quite clearly. However, he clearly does not think about how his actions do hurt people and he is too focused on himself, while he may at first think that he wants the women to be as "free" as he, but in reality he doesn't as he realizes only too late how hurtful it is when women treat him the way he has treated them. This dichotomy in his character is handled with great subtlety and care, and the way he comes to realize how hurtful it is to be in a relation with someone like him is perfect. It is also developed excellently with his first-hand look at how his actions hurt women whom he professed never to want to hurt, when he sees the pain that he admits he never wanted to know about. Meanwhile, throughout the movie he is slowly (very slowly at first) beginning to realize what he is missing by shutting the women out and cutting his ties with them when they get too close. The final scenes of the film where each of these realization hits home one after the other is handled perfectly.
The film is also an excellent look at the time, on the cusp of radical social change with respect to gender and sexuality and the specifics of the story appear utterly out of place and unconvincing in the modern remake. There is, moreover, no real point in remaking such an excellently executed classic as this.
Finally, I want to add that, although the comparison never seems to be made, I find this film to be somewhat similar to La Dolce Vita in some of the overall themes (pointlessness, pain, etc., of superficial relationships and living solely in the moment), yet this film is handled far better. Obviously, the films are not entirely on the same points, with La Dolce Vita dealing with other elements as well and in a different country, etc., but some of these basic points are very close, and the approaches are also very similar: showing the stream of changing, empty relationships and the failure to grasp at the chances for a full, meaningful relationship, that in the end ultimately leave the character without any meaningful life or direction, lost and lonely. I also find Alfie to be more gripping and watchable as La Dolce Vita, for all its strengths, sags pretty badly in the middle and never really quite hits things on the head.
Alfie's character is very well-developed and portrayed; rather than being a single-dimensional icon or stock generalization, he is complex. Alfie is sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time. He is a chauvinist who cares little for the people (primarily women) in his relationships, avoids emotional attachments or long-term relationships with women who seem to want them, lives in the moment for himself, uses women, has them cook for him, etc. Yet at the same time he also shows some consideration for them and at least appears to want them to do what they want, be free, etc. He in some ways wants (or at least truly thinks that he wants) the women to live by the same rules he does. He also clearly never has any intention to hurt people, which he also states quite clearly. However, he clearly does not think about how his actions do hurt people and he is too focused on himself, while he may at first think that he wants the women to be as "free" as he, but in reality he doesn't as he realizes only too late how hurtful it is when women treat him the way he has treated them. This dichotomy in his character is handled with great subtlety and care, and the way he comes to realize how hurtful it is to be in a relation with someone like him is perfect. It is also developed excellently with his first-hand look at how his actions hurt women whom he professed never to want to hurt, when he sees the pain that he admits he never wanted to know about. Meanwhile, throughout the movie he is slowly (very slowly at first) beginning to realize what he is missing by shutting the women out and cutting his ties with them when they get too close. The final scenes of the film where each of these realization hits home one after the other is handled perfectly.
The film is also an excellent look at the time, on the cusp of radical social change with respect to gender and sexuality and the specifics of the story appear utterly out of place and unconvincing in the modern remake. There is, moreover, no real point in remaking such an excellently executed classic as this.
Finally, I want to add that, although the comparison never seems to be made, I find this film to be somewhat similar to La Dolce Vita in some of the overall themes (pointlessness, pain, etc., of superficial relationships and living solely in the moment), yet this film is handled far better. Obviously, the films are not entirely on the same points, with La Dolce Vita dealing with other elements as well and in a different country, etc., but some of these basic points are very close, and the approaches are also very similar: showing the stream of changing, empty relationships and the failure to grasp at the chances for a full, meaningful relationship, that in the end ultimately leave the character without any meaningful life or direction, lost and lonely. I also find Alfie to be more gripping and watchable as La Dolce Vita, for all its strengths, sags pretty badly in the middle and never really quite hits things on the head.