The terrible thing about most remakes is that they downgrade borrowed experience. I’ve never been a big fan of the 1966 Alfie, a precise, bittersweet portrait of a misogynistic cockney lady-killer in a sordidly downscale London. But it’s unequivocally a reflection of things that have been lived, above all by Bill Naughton (adapting his own play) and Michael Caine (whose cockney background helped make the title role indelibly his own). The special kind of music these two make together, under Lewis Gilbert’s efficient direction, matches the brashness of Sonny Rollins’s score and tenor sax solos.
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The remake is plainly something of a cheat—promising fantasy and titillation and lessons about life, but delivering little. Shyer substitutes Jude Law for Caine (and makes him more well-to-do), Mick Jagger for Rollins, and New York City for London. He actually shot the remake in London, reportedly to save money, and his Manhattan is so unspecific that nothing would have been lost if he’d opted for, say, Atlanta or Oshkosh. Both the original and the remake have a conventional moral agenda—to reveal the pathos of a charming rake and show that he’s ultimately more pitiable than enviable—but the original is grounded in observed reality rather than cobbled together out of elements that support a thesis. The remake seems inspired more by theories about lady-killers in general—such as the recurring notion that Alfie may be a repressed homosexual—than by observations about this particular lady-killer. Law’s notable skills as an actor are often wasted because he’s obliged to telegraph the script’s messages—making the movie more about attitude than character and the moralism of the undertaking more specious and hypocritical. Perhaps this is why over half the young preview audience I saw this with raced faster than usual for the exit the instant the final credits came on.
To put Simon’s swipe at “rabid avantgardists” in context, one should bear in mind that 1966 was the height of the impact of the French New Wave—a year when Jean-Luc Godard, Simon’s favorite bete noire, managed to shoot three important features as well as a major short. I’ve always thought the avant-garde impulses of a Godard (or a Michael Snow or a Stan Brakhage, for that matter) are inextricably tied to a desire to bring to art a greater resemblance to life, which includes an acknowledgment of complexity, ambiguity, and mystery. Simon’s suggestion that what there is to know about any type or individual is both quantifiable and exhaustible evokes the modest and boring brand of realism that both versions of Alfie aspire to.
Sexist male fantasies of conquering white heroes that were minted in the 60s—often fostered by wealthy and mythologized (as well as mythologizing) laissez-faire playboys and Ian Fleming fans such as JFK and Hugh Hefner—lurk behind both After the Sunset and the new Alfie, despite their radically different milieus. But the absence of guilt in After the Sunset makes for a relatively uncluttered hedonism, because the worlds to conquer are so modest, never involving much more than a beach or a cocktail lounge. If the pursuit of pleasure in After the Sunset is placed alongside the pursuit of self-gratification in Alfie, it’s not hard to see that Alfie‘s claim to a higher moral ground doesn’t make it more honest, sincere, or even moral—because neither movie could function on any level without its pornographic intent. So the question is which movie fulfills that intention better and more honestly. For sensuality without complications, Paradise Island beats an ersatz Manhattan hands down.
Directed by Charles Shyer
Written by Elaine pope and Shyer
With Jude Law, Marisa Tomei, Omar Epps, Nia Long, Jane Krakowski, Sienna Miller, and Susan Sarandon
After the Sunset ★★ (Worth seeing)
Directed by Brett Ratner
Written by Paul Zbyszewski and Craig Rosenberg
With Pirece Prosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, Naomie Harris, and Don Cheadle
