Empire (Australia) - The Reviews, Part 1
I spent four, largely happy years at the Australian incarnation of Empire magazine. Here are just a few examples of my writing from that time. More to follow...
Alfie (1966, Lewis Gilbert)
Prior to 1966, Michael Caine was largely known for a cult turn in The Ipcress Film, a supporting turn in Zulu and countless walks-ons in forgettable films. Alfie changed the former Maurice Micklewhite’s standing at a stroke.
“Michael Caine is Alfie” read the posters. And anyone with any knowledge of Caine’s womanising antics during the ‘60s (he shared a flat with fellow lady-killer Terence Stamp) wouldn’t have much difficulty spying similarities between actor and character.
As important as it was in putting Caine on the map, Alfie isn’t quite the ‘swingin’ London’ snapshot you might remember it being. Indeed, for all the laughs and bedroom antics, this is actually quite a bleak film with an ending that can only be described as uncertain and a leading character who is less a bloody good bloke than
a self-satisfied bore.
As Alfie isn’t less of a film for sacrificing farce for kitchen sink drama, the fact Caine’s character isn’t an Austin Powers blueprint makes him of genuine interest rather than curiosity value. Alfie Ekins is, in fact, a contender for the title of lounge lizard extraordinaire. Going through women the way Oliver Reed went through pints, Alfie realised that he can sponge most of what he needs off of the women he romances.
He doesn’t want anything as sensible as a relationship, and when the prospect of fatherhood rears its head, Alfie contemplates a trip to the abortionist’s rather than
the registry office.
An utterly reprehensible character, Alfie would be unpalatable were he not played with immense charm. A performance to rival his work in The Man Who Would Be King, Caine copes especially well with the straight-to-camera monologues, managing to make Alfie’s pearls of wisdom (“Get a woman laughing and that’s all you get”) sound like genuine pieces of advice rather than cocksure observations.
Caine isn’t the only one hitting his straps here. The supporting cast - which reads like an A to Z of 1960s British actresses - are uniformly excellent. Hats should also be tipped to Lewis Gilbert, one of the most versatile directors ever to come out of the UK (he followed-up Alfie with You Only Live Twice) who’s as at home coaxing fine performances as choreographing action scenes.
With its Burt Bacharach theme song and a cameo from Paul McCartney’s then-girlfriend Jane Asher, Alfie is obviously a product of the 1960s, but it isn’t an artefact. Rather this is a picture that was way ahead of the game. For at a time when promiscuity was par for the course, Alfie dared to suggest that living like a Lothario had its minus points. It’s this sort of insight that means the film is still pertinent all these years on from its original release.
And how many years has it been exactly? Fifty-seven! Now what’s that all about…?
5/5
Kelly’s Heroes (1978, Brian G Hutton)
There was a time long before September 11th when war wasn’t hell - it was downright swell! Brian G Hutton certainly considered the battlefield to be a playground. In 1968, he used WWII as a backdrop for his ace ‘guys-on-a-mission’ movie Where Eagles Dare. And in Kelly’s Heroes, Hutton seized on the Allied campaign in France as an opportunity to create a caper movie to rival The Italian Job.
Where Eagles Dare veteran Clint Eastwood stars as the eponymous Kelly, a lieutenant bent on recovering a cache of Nazi gold. Needing help to pull off the scheme,
he enlists gruffalo soldier Big Joe (Telly Savalas), wise-ass Crappgarr (stand-up
Don Rickles) and tank sergeant Oddball (Donald Sutherland) who has a serious acid problem, despite the fact LSD wasn’t freely available in occupied France.
It sounds like a dry-run for Three Kings but Kelly’s Heroes is, actually a satisfying blend of other hit movies. Scripted by Italian Job writer Troy Kennedy Martin, Hutton’s movie effortlessly mirrors that film’s cheekiness, while the presence of Sutherland and Eastwood can’t help but recall The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare respectively.
Kelly’s Heroes is more than just an efficient homage, however. Besides being very funny, it contains sequences that straight action dramas would kill for. And as Clint Eastwood - the man is one of the great comic actors of his generation. No, really.
4/5