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| AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK
CHARM OF THE LAW
Jude Law is 2004’s Alfie - a limo driver with a libido loose in Manhattan.
alfie
ALMOST 40 YEARS ON, ALFIE IS BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN. ELEANOR SINGER CHARTS
THE PROGRESS OF HIS MODERN-DAY
EMBODIMENT, JUDE LAW, AS HE MAKES
HIS AMORAL WAY THROUGH THE ‘SWINGING MANHATTAN’ OF 2004.
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How do you remake a classic? Well, says Charles Shyer (director, producer and writer of Alfie), for one thing, it’s a good idea to move it to somewhere different. New York, for example. “One of the ways to bring the film to a whole new audience is to bring Alfie to New York, making him a fish out of water,” says Eleanor Pope, who co-wrote and co-produces the film with Shyer. “To quote Sting, he’s ‘an Englishman in New York.’ He’s living his dream. But, under it all, he’s a little lost in the big city. With very few friends and no family, he is without any deep emotional anchor.” The result of moving the film to New York is thus to shift the focus ever so slightly and, in so doing, bring it right up to date.
Back in 1966, Michael Caine’s Alfie - created in a screenplay by Bill Naughton which had had its origins in a stage play of the same name - was the epitome of ‘swinging London’: an amoral ladies man whose only interest was in ‘pulling the birds’ and moving on. But things have changed a little in the intervening 40 years.
But the new film has as its star Jude Law, an actor who possesses the same brand of magnetism - the same easy charm that makes you go along with him even if you don’t entirely approve of what he is doing - that Michael Caine brought to the original Alfie.
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