ALFIE DARLING

Kay, 1975, 102 days, Colour.

Alan Price, Jill Townsend, Paul Copley, Joan Collins, Annie Ross.

Directed by Ken Hughes.

Michael Caine made a big impression in 1966 in his role as Alfie. (Remade in 2004 starring Jude law.) This sequel in the middle of the 1970s style was not successful. It was written by Bill Naughton, writer of the original story (and Spring and Port Wine, The Family Way). Adaptation for the screen is by the director, Ken Hughes (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Cromwell).

Alfie is a truck driver, working with his partner, played by Paul Copley. A lot of the film shows trucks driving round France and the UK, and a lot of car driving as well. He is the self-confident young man, with a girl in every port. That seems to be is only aim in life.

He encounters a woman who takes his fancy, who drives faster than he, turns out to be a magazine executive. He continues to pursue her, beginning a relationship with her, eventually proposing and her being taken aback, his pride being hurt. She gives some thought to the matter and eventually agrees – and the film opts out with an unsatisfactory ending, her dying in crash.

While the film presents the picture of the promiscuous young man, his cavalier attitude towards women with a touch of the misogynists, seeing them as some kind of an immediately conquered, there is also a lot of dialogue, especially on the part of the women, criticising his attitudes, suggesting that sex does not equal love… It is interesting to note these parts of the dialogue in terms of feminism and women’s movements at the time.

Musician-composer, Alan Price (O Lucky Man) offers a straightforward performance, not particularly nuanced in terms of the challenges made by the women in his life. He has a relationship with an older married woman played by Joan Collins.

There was a series in the UK in the 1970s, Confessions of… This film follows something of the pattern for a Confessions of a Truck Driver.