Outside Counsel

To Alfie last night,  the season finale of Hallwall's fine Jazz Noir series, expertly curated by Ed Cardoni. A few years back we had a bit of a Michael Caine retrospective chez Big Pink and I recalled being struck by the Sonny Rollins soundtrack. I am not as thoroughly versed in Rollins-ology as I should be, but it appears that the music on the soundtrack, although composed for the movie, is not the same as the music that appears on the impulse! album: different sidemen, and come to find out Oliver Nelson was the arranger and conductor on the LP, working with a 10 piece band. I do not have the sense that Rollins was a collaborator on the movie in the same sense that Miles was onAscenseur pour l'échafaud-- the soundtrack on the latter is as important as the actors, and is very nearly a character in its own right-- but Gilbert uses Rollins' music effectively to convey the urban atmospheric, just as he uses the industrial London backgrounds to suggest the inner landscape of the title character. It is interesting that the title character would probably not have been a Sonny Rollins fan, and it is likewise interesting that although we never really get a good look at Ruby's lover we already know he is younger than Alfie because we are shown the guitar. Rock and Roll was at that moment poised to take over from jazz as a badge of authenticity in film, I think.

What to make of the movie? Well, it seems to me that it mostly gets carried by the strength of the performances-- Caine's Alfie is despicable, naturally, but he also manages to display enough vulnerability to make us understand his attraction. I think it is notable that although the women he seduces gradually lose patience with him, at the end we find ourselves liking him more than we have at any other point in the movie. One way that Gilbert shows us this, it seems to me, is during the infamous abortion sequence. Throughout the movie we are addressed by Alfie directly as he seeks to justify himself, and indeed, at the start of the scene he breaks the fourth wall to explain that procuring the abortionist was "the least I could do." We then see that he means it: Lilly has brought all of the money-- £25. Alfie doesn't stay for the procedure, but later borrows the money from his friend. We see him secretly slip the money into Lilly's purse, in perhaps the sole decent act he performs in the entire movie. He is subsequently rejected, twice, and this also shows us something we hadn't seen. Does this redeem him in our eyes? Not quite, I think. The movie ends, as it began, with a shot of a scruffy dog, which we are meant to see as a surrogate for Alfie, just a hound, on the hunt. Is Alfie more self aware than the dog? Just barely.

The way it works with Netflix in our household is that I'll see a reference to a movie that looks like it might be interesting and add it to the queue. Then A. will think to herself, "It has been several months since we have seen X," and she will add something. Then LCA will add something, and then CLA will come home and shuffle the whole works so we have three full seasons of "One Tree Hill" or something. Occasionally one of my picks sneaks through and percolates to the top, but by the time it does I have no idea why I thought the movie sounded interesting. Thus it was that "Zulu" appeared in our mailbox. It wasn't until the words, "and introducing Michael Caine" appeared in the credits that I had any notion of what might have piqued my interest. And, to be honest, I'm not so sure that's what it was. Caine has mostly only been notable to me in the past by reason of his ubiquity. Come to find out I've been under-rating him. He is fine in "Zulu", which is a better movie than I'd have ever guessed, but what really jumped out at me was how pretty he was-- he looks like an English Robert Redford. We've embarked on a little Michael Caine festival now-- I'd never seen "Alfie" before, and now that I have I'm starting to get it. Caine's oeuvre is vast and sequel-filled, but he is a real pro, a pleasure to watch, even when the movie itself is nothing much. When he has something to work with, as he did in "Alfie", he brings all kinds of nuance. It is a happy thing to find something like that-- an artist with a large body of work that you can dive into and enjoy. I read novelists like that once, and I suppose I will again at some point-- Sir Walter Scott, or Anthony Trollope-- someone with a long shelf that I can work my way through. For now an evening with "Get Carter" or "The Man Who Would Be King" will suffice.