Exhibit 1
Last week's Love in the Afternoon.


Exhibit 2
Then we watched Alfie (1966), one of the best movies we've seen recently. Maybe that dates us. Michael Caine was excellent of course, and it was nice to see Denholm Elliott. Sonny Rollins' score was great. The worst thing about it was what Diane Selkirk calls the "remarkably unfunny barroom brawl", but that was interesting for a couple of shots of one man protecting another, and who finally fled to the ladies' room. I've also got to agree with her here:

As the sexually predatory Alfie makes conquest after conquest, his delightful asides allow us to both laugh and wince (in recognition?) at his misogynism. Interestingly, the film�s first person narration inclines us to relate to and identify with the protagonist, and for much of the film you like the man despite his faults.Yet director Lewis Gilbert doesn�t let Alfie, or us, off the hook, as his complex characterization of a pond-shallow man takes us to unexpectedly morally and emotionally complex places....in the end, Alfie is too insubstantial to realise that he�s doomed to continue his lonely life of transitory pleasures, because he�s incapable of seeing why he�s not happy.

Strange thing: Cher's "Alfie--what's it all about?" was listed in the credits, but not played on the video we watched.

Exhibit 3
Last night I watched the Simpsons, which I'd taped last Sunday. The unexpectedly grim background was Homer's excessive drinking: at the beginning we hear that last week's family activity was an intervention, and then Homer realizes how much his drinking has hurt Marge. After another binge at Moe's, Marge comes to the hospital to take him back.

So what is it with women who love these selfish men? On the other hand, there is an evolution of the male psychology. The 1957 movie (which had to be set in France presumably because they couldn't stand the idea of a woman sleeping around) is the most sentimental time, with the assumption that a woman can cause such a man to change his ways. Although the 1966 movie shows the philanderer with a smidgen of conscience, he just doesn't get it. And Homer is the most desperate of all, horrified when he thinks Marge doesn't love him, a vulnerability underlined by the other lonely, suicidal men in the apartment house he stays in, whose moaning and howling drives him into the arms of gays. I guess that's progress.

Update
Exhibit 4
Five Easy Pieces (1970). I've got to agree with Andrew Hicks, who labels it an angst-ridden drama and Nicholas Sylvain, who finds Jack Nicholson's Robert Eroica Dupea a most unlikable character. He can't seem to fit in anywhere, so he behaves like a self-indulgent boor, or as Michael W. Phillips says, "an enigmatic male main character who doesn't express any emotion except the odd moment of rage". (Once again, the women he meets are willing to put up with it.) Most critics seem to have liked the acting, particularly Nicholson's, but I find it a little overdone, particularly the histrionics of physically lashing out. And the famed Chicken Salad Scene (which in fact I don't remember hearing of) is typical smart-ass stuff that a lot of Americans seem to think is funny, but that I find annoying. His refusal to accept restaurant policy is probably supposed to fit it with ideal of the person who's unwilling to accept what society traditionally has to offer. Similarly, the aimless nature of the narrative is meant to reflect the aimless nature of his life, but instead I found it boring. I found Alfie a far better movie.