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.