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Michael Caine – 'from Alfie to Zulu'. Digger reviews
two of Michael Caine’s most famous films.
The early sixties was a time when regional accents in music, film
and TV became not just acceptable but almost mandatory. Upper or
middle-class accents were definitely out of fashion. Ironic, then,
that the King of Cockney, Michael Caine, made his cinematic breakthrough
playing someone from the Victorian officer classes.
As The Battle Of Britain was to do five years later, Zulu celebrates,
on one level at least, a famous British victory. But, more than
that, it is a memorial to the brave men on both sides and of all
ranks. Impressively produced by Caine’s co-star Stanley Baker,
who resists the temptation to elevate his own character and gives
the whole cast a chance to shine, the movie is nevertheless not
really a great vehicle for Caine to ‘strut his stuff’.
He performs well enough but the sparkle is not there - in his later
movies he is able to develop his characters and exude his personality
in bucketloads. Amongst the horrors of war there are some great
moments of sensitivity – the Welsh baritone fatally wounded
in the throat, the death of a calf which had been nursed by one
of the soldiers, both officers sickened and shamed by their first
engagement. This could almost be classed as an anti-war film although
it doesn’t try to make any judgements – after all, the
Zulu nation was as imperialistic and warfaring as the British at
that time. Unlike other sixties films which show their age and certainly
are a product of their times, Zulu is as fresh today as it was when
it was released in 1964.
Alfie
Michael Caine is Alfie. The posters for the movie were, for once,
accurate in their hype. Caine plays philanderer and bastard Alfie
so well that I find it unnerving – why do I like this character
so much? Almost childlike in some ways, he is an out-and-out rogue,
flitting from one relationship to another, using and abusing his
women in the process. He gets his come-uppance in the end and maybe
this, together with his what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach, allows
us to sympathise with him.
The pedigree of the female stars adds an extra fascination to Alfie.
Jane Asher was famously Paul McCartney’s girlfriend at the
time - we have her to thank as the inspiration for many of Paul’s
greatest love songs. Eleanor Bron had starred in Help! and was a
mainstay of the satire movement with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and
David Frost, as was Millicent Martin, previously song-bird on That
Was The Week That Was. Julia Foster and Shirley Anne Field both
carved out fine acting careers. But I can’t help thinking that
all of these ladies were rather under-used, certainly in British
film. I am sure that American equivalents would have been given
the full star treatment. Certainly, the only player whose career
was visibly accelerated by the film was Caine himself.
Digger ran the 1960s British Pop Culture website which is now
being integrated into this website
(photographs from author's personal collection)
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