don't get it, not funny, pretty sad + pathetic
I heard about the old Alfie, but since I wasn't born when it came out...I saw it for the first time last night and it was NOT what I expeced...comedy? (no)classic study of 60s manners" (no)"charming womanizer" (no)!! Not about the sexual revolution either...the sexual revolution came a BIT later with the introduction of the birth control pill, which freed people from the fear of pregnancy. Alfie obviously was unfamiliar with the concept of birth control.
---Spoilers-----
Alfie was a boorish control freak. The first woman he knocked up, Gilda, (after coyly telling us she was not to bright), who worked in a brewery, was left to fend for herself, and even though Alfie showed some interest in his son, there was not indication that he helped out financially or emotionally.
---Major Spoiler-----
I thought that there was supposed to be some redemption here, but with all the opportunities to turn around, Alfie never "got it". First Gilda marries some poor bus driver, who takes over the parental role for Alfie's son, then Alfie has a brush with mortality (tuberculosis) then Alfie AGAIN knocks up the wife of his roommate from the tuberculosis sanitarium and arranges an illegal abortion, then (here is where it gets truly, disgustingly pathetic) he waxes poetic over the tiny fetus left in his bed after the abortion.
How is this by any stretch of the imagination a form of *comedic* entertainment?? It makes a statement, all right, but it is not COMEDY!