--- title: "Alfie" year: 1966 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/alfie" fi1m_score: 79 critics_score: 69 critics_reviews: 7 published: "2026-09-20T04:40:13.132631+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T04:40:13.519180+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Alfie (1966) Directed by Lewis Gilbert · 1h 54m · MPA PG · Comedy, Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 79** · Critics 69 from 7 reviews *In a sentence:* Michael Caine explains women to us for two hours, and somewhere in the second he stops being funny > Michael Caine talks to the camera for 114 minutes and we listened to every word, laughing for an hour and then wishing we had not. Lewis Gilbert’s film is baggier than its admirers admit and harder than its reputation as a swinging romp. ## Synopsis London, the mid-sixties. Alfie Elkins (Michael Caine), a chauffeur with a good suit and a car that is not his, spends his evenings with other men’s wives and tells us about it, turning to the camera to explain his rules. Siddie (Millicent Martin) is married and meets him in the front seat by the river. Gilda (Julia Foster) is single and devoted, cooks his dinner without complaint, and cannot get him to say he loves her, because he does not see why he should. Alfie wants a life of women and no attachments. Then Gilda tells him she is pregnant, and a kind bus conductor called Humphrey (Graham Stark) starts paying her attention. Alfie keeps talking, and keeps insisting none of it touches him. ## Review Alfie Elkins (Michael Caine) drives other people’s cars, sleeps with other people’s wives, and tells us about it. Lewis Gilbert’s film, from Bill Naughton’s screenplay of his own play, is built on that one device: a man turning to the camera, mid-seduction or mid-excuse, to explain what he is doing and why it is perfectly reasonable. For the first hour it is a comedy about a charmer. For the second it is about what the charmer costs everyone around him, and the second hour is what makes the film worth your evening. Caine is the whole show, and he knows it, and the remarkable thing is how little he does. He never raises his voice. He tells us his rules about women, never let them get their hooks in, a bird is a bird, in the tone of a man passing on a tip about the horses. He is funny because he believes every word. Watch him laid up in hospital with a bad chest, already sizing up the nurses, or being told by Eleanor Bron’s doctor that he needs rest and hearing the word convalescence as a promise of leisure. The performance dates from the year after *The Ipcress File* and it is the better of the two. The women are not decoration, which is where the film is smarter than its own tagline. Julia Foster’s Gilda, the plain girl who cooks for him and asks for nothing, is the best thing in it after Caine. She watches him with a patience that is not stupidity, and when she finally acts on what she has seen, the film does not need to underline it. Millicent Martin’s Siddie is all lipstick and lunch hours. Jane Asher’s Annie scrubs his flat until he cannot stand the cleanliness. Shelley Winters, as the wealthy American Ruby, is the thinnest of the threads, played broad where the others are played small, and her scenes are where we looked at our watch. Otto Heller shoots a London of damp pavements by the river, a launderette, a hospital ward with the radiators on, and Alfie’s bedsit with its one good jacket hung on the door. He keeps the camera at Caine’s eye level for the asides, so we are always the mate he is talking to over a pint. Thelma Connell cuts between the women as briskly as Alfie moves between them, then lets the later scenes run long enough to hurt. Sonny Rollins’s tenor saxophone carries the film in and out of Alfie’s moods; it struts under the early scenes and goes quiet when he does. There is a scene in the second half, in Alfie’s room, involving Vivien Merchant’s Lily and Denholm Elliott, that we will not describe. We can say that it is played almost without dialogue, that Merchant does more with a cup of tea than most actors manage with a speech, and that Caine’s face afterwards does something it has not done in the previous ninety minutes. We laughed at Alfie for an hour and then, in that room, felt we had been slow to see what was in front of us. The film makes its point there once and does not repeat it. Not all of it holds. The structure is a string of episodes, and the stretch with Shirley Anne Field’s Carla could be lifted out without anyone noticing the join. The asides sometimes tell us what Heller’s pictures have already shown. Graham Stark’s Humphrey, the bus conductor who is kind to Gilda, and Alfie Bass’s Harry, the husband in the next hospital bed, are barely sketched, though Stark makes his decency land in about four lines. And some of the talk about birds has aged the way that talk does. You will have to decide whether the film is laughing at Alfie or with him, and the answer changes from scene to scene, which we think is the point. Gilbert would hand the camera to another talker in *Shirley Valentine* (1989), and that film is warmer and softer and wants to be liked. This one does not. Among the British films of its decade about working men and the women they use, it is the one that gives the women the last look. See it for Caine and Foster, and stay for the scene with Vivien Merchant. It runs 114 minutes and carries a 15, and the certificate is earned by one quiet scene rather than by any of the bedroom doors. *Fi1m score 79, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics take to Alfie, and nearly all of them take to Michael Caine. The praise clusters on his performance as the Cockney womaniser who talks straight to the camera: breezy and insolent, low-key, charming in a way several reviewers find troubling rather than winning. Lewis Gilbert’s direction is called sure-handed, and the film is read as a moral fable with more shadow in it than its reputation for sixties fizz suggests. The abortion scene is singled out again and again as the moment that still shocks, and Julia Foster and Vivien Merchant get a share of the notices. The spread is narrow apart from one loud dissent. The New Yorker finds the jokes tired, the irreverence old-hat and Caine’s Cockney implausible, though it allows a couple of funny scenes and welcomes the turn to harsher material. Later writers see the film as a landmark of the British New Wave; the earliest ones merely find it amusing and moving. ### Reviews we read (7) - **Radio Times**, David Parkinson (4/5): The critic notes it was one of the most talked-about British films of 1966 with five Oscar nominations. It still has much to say about differing male and female views of relationships, with the abortion scene retaining its shock value; Michael Caine's monologues convey troubling charm and naivety, and supporting performances by Julia Foster and Vivien Merchant stand out. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-g5rfas/alfie/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, James Powers (80/100, inferred): The critic calls the film an amusing, moving and meaningful picture that will be a big box-office success. Gilbert directs with a sure hand, and Michael Caine delivers a compelling screen personality through his low-key style. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/alfie-review-1966-movie-1032305/) - **Empire**, Ian Nathan (70/100, inferred): Lewis Gilbert’s intelligent and funny satire of swinging-sixties London rests on Michael Caine’s earthy charm as the cockney lothario who addresses the camera directly. The film is a moral fable whose shadows give it deeper meaning than its fizzy reputation suggests, making Jude Law’s later remake seem foolish. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/alfie-review/) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film more effective and intense than the stage play, praising Michael Caine's breezy yet insolent performance as the self-serving Cockney and the expert cast, while highlighting the shocking impact of the abortion scene and the direct-to-audience asides that add wit. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1966/08/25/archives/screen-alfie-story-of-a-cockney-antihero-begins-run-heremovie-more.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): The review praises Michael Caine's powerfully strong, sardonic performance as the amoral anti-hero and the humorous, tangy, raw dialogue and situations that ultimately prove moving, while noting the shrewd sense and sharp moral behind the alley-cat philosophy. [Read](https://variety.com/1965/film/reviews/alfie-1117796727/) - **The New Yorker**, Renata Adler (30/100, inferred): The review notes the film is full of genuine actors but criticizes the tired jokes, old-hat irreverence, and Michael Caine's implausible Cockney portrayal, while appreciating the restful shift to harsher, tragic elements and a couple of genuinely funny scenes. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/08/27/adapted) - **Collider**, TanChun Watkins (85/100, inferred): The critic highlights the film's role as a pioneering British New Wave work that authentically depicted Cockney culture and challenged social taboos around sex and relationships in 1960s London. Michael Caine's charismatic yet flawed lead performance is singled out as groundbreaking for establishing a new kind of anti-hero in British cinema. [Read](https://collider.com/alfie-movie-michael-caine/) ## Details - **Director:** Lewis Gilbert - **Director:** Lewis Gilbert - **Screenplay:** Bill Naughton - **Cinematography:** Otto Heller - **Editor:** Thelma Connell - **Music:** Sonny Rollins - **Producer:** Lewis Gilbert - **Cast:** Michael Caine as Alfie Elkins; Shelley Winters as Ruby; Millicent Martin as Siddie; Julia Foster as Gilda; Jane Asher as Annie; Shirley Anne Field as Carla; Vivien Merchant as Lily Clamacraft; Eleanor Bron as The Doctor - **Runtime:** 1h 54m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 24 August 1966 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Romance - **Budget:** $500,000 - **Box office:** $19 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $12.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, BE, BG, CH, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FR, GB, HR, HU, IE, IN, IT, JP, LT, NL, NO, RO, RS, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1967: Best Actor (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Saturday Night and Sunday Morning* (1960): Albert Finney’s Arthur Seaton is Alfie’s northern cousin, angrier and just as careless with women - *Darling* (1965), Fi1m 70: The same London seen from the other side of the bed, with Julie Christie doing the using — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/darling.md) - *Il Sorpasso* (1962): Vittorio Gassman charms a shy student across Italy in a sports car; the bill comes later - *Shampoo* (1975): Warren Beatty’s hairdresser sleeps his way through Beverly Hills and finds it does not add up - *Shirley Valentine* (1989): Gilbert gives the direct address to a Liverpool housewife, and she is far better company --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/alfie