Because you must always have a favorite movie star, I have always had a favorite movie star. After John Wayne died in 1979, Charles Bronson was my favorite movie star. After Bronson pretty much retired in 1990, Gene Hackman became my favorite movie star. Then Hackman left the scene in 2004, and I awarded all my “favorite movie star” delegates to Sir Michael Caine, where they remain.
Michael Caine turned 90 this week. I can hardly believe it.
Caine was born in 1933, and like his irreplaceable contemporaries — Robert Duvall (Born 1931) and Clint Eastwood (born 1930) — he keeps on keeping on. How fortunate we are for that.
If you read Caine’s superb 1992 autobiography, What’s It All About?, you’ll discover that his true contemporaries were legends like Peter O’Toole and Terence Stamp and that he grew frustrated watching their careers explode while he scraped along…
But he hung in there, and stardom finally arrived at the ripe old age of 31 with Zulu (1964), a supporting role he basically lucked into. Zulu ended up being a box office hit (and is now rightly regarded as a classic), and in it, Caine proved he was something special: a true actor who was also a movie star, a leading man capable of character roles. But, most of all, there is his depth, a bottomless reservoir of Something’s-Going-On-Down-There-And-Something’s-Going-To-Happen. Without opening his mouth, Caine’s mere presence gives his every character a history and emotional life.
You can’t take your eyes off him.
Caine’s range is legendary. He can be hilarious, terrifying, wimpy, brutal, hapless, competent, romantic, menacing, bumbling, graceful, grotesque, or suave. Caine can carry a movie or show up in a supporting role and steal it. He’s the whole package. Most of all, he presents himself as an ordinary bloke, which makes him accessible. But there’s nothing ordinary about what he brings to the screen.
Like most actors who have been around for decades, Caine’s done his share of junk, but who else could have elevated Jaws: The Revenge (1987)?
In 2000, a wise Queen Elizabeth knighted Michael Caine into Sir Michael Caine. He’s been married to Shakira Caine since 1973 (he fell in love while watching her in a coffee commercial) and only ever seems interested in one thing: delivering… delivering for his director, his co-stars, and his audience.
Caine is a two-time Oscar winner and an international treasure. Here are some of his non-blockbuster films I treasure…
The movie that made Caine a star is a superb reenactment of the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift, where 150 or so British soldiers somehow withstood an attack by 4,000 Zulu warriors. Caine isn’t the star, but as the arrogant and insecure officer who becomes a man over the course of the battle, the movie is all his.
Caine plays the now-iconic Harry Palmer, a bespectacled anti-James Bond. More bureaucrat than intelligence officer, Harry is our sloppy protagonist who works in a dingy office, lives in a dingy flat, and worries about things like balancing his expense account. The character was popular enough to power four sequels, all starring Caine.
For good reason, Caine is closely associated with Swingin’ 60s London. Alfie, one of the most moral movies ever made, is a devastating repudiation of that culture. Alfie is all swinger, and through him, we see the true cost of loveless sex—the cost in human life, in unborn human life, and on the soul.
Caine is beyond perfect as the selfish, charming, cheating, charismatic, pleasure-seeking narcissist whose lifestyle is infectious until the movie has the moral courage to reveal just how small and seedy and contemptuous Alfie truly is.
Caine brings all his movie star power and unspoken depth to the British gangster film of all British gangster films. Cold, calculating, and fearless, Jack Carter returns home to avenge his brother. Carter is the thing that just keeps coming, and not even the ladies are safe.
- The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Caine and co-star Sean Connery shine like the superstars they are in John Huston’s rollicking adaption of Rudyard Kipling’s infectious adventure about two former British soldiers tired of the lack of criminal opportunities in the British Empire. And so, they resolve to take a treacherous journey to a place where modernity dares not go, and in this place, they will serve as kings.
The chemistry between Caine and Connery sells this swashbuckler in a way unseen since the days of Errol Flynn. This is also a movie with plenty to say about ego, friendship, loyalty, and, yes, colonialism.
Brian DePalma’s sexy-as-hell take on Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is a classic all its own and one the Woke Censors would never allow to be made today.
Caine plays Dr. Robert Elliott and—without ruining anything—totally sells it.
The movie that made me a lifelong Michael Caine fan is a heartrending take on My Fair Lady, with Caine in the Henry Higgins role and a fetching Julie Walters (in her screen debut) as our Eliza Doolittle.
Rita (Walters) is a married, working-class hairdresser who wants something more from life than a gang of kids, a husband with no ambition, and Friday nights at the pub. She senses a wider world filled with beauty and art, so she signs up for night classes.
Her tutor is Oxford literature professor Frank Bryant, a cuckold alcoholic who despises the snobbery and pretensions of university culture.
Against his will, he tutors Rita into something he loathes and maybe falls in love with her.
Based on Willy Russell’s play, Educating Rita is thematically complicated, beautifully acted, and bittersweet.
- Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Caine won his first Oscar in Woody Allen’s masterpiece about three sisters searching for their place in the world. Married to Mia Farrow’s loyal, loving, and uncomplicated Hannah, Elliot is all middle-aged angst, a man who isn’t certain that the life he’s locked himself into is the one he wants. But, through Hannah’s sister Lee (Barbara Hershey), Elliot rediscovers his passion and zest for life, along with the youthful spirit that comes from an awkward crush and forbidden seduction.
Caine’s performance runs the gauntlet and steals the movie out from under a uniformly superb cast.
The second-greatest British gangster film ever made stars an Oscar-worthy Bob Hoskins as an ex-convict charged with guarding the beautiful and sad Simone, a high-end prostitute employed by Caine’s gangland boss Denny Mortwell.
Director/co-writer Neil Jordan takes you on a tour of a shabby subculture and then breaks your heart with a twist we should have seen coming but didn’t. Jordan brilliantly uses our knowledge of movies to yank the rug out from under us.
- Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
A timelessly funny comedy about rival con men (Caine and Steve Martin) and their mercenary quest to bilk a lovely young heiress (Glenn Headly).
Caine matches Martin laugh for laugh, which is saying something.
- A Shock to the System (1990)
A gem of a black comedy with a killer cast and killer script (adapted by my friend Andrew Klavan) about Graham Marshall (Caine), a milquetoast advertising executive who suffers one indignity too many, which turns him into a cunning sociopath. The business with the lighter is beyond ingenious, and Caine—even as Graham’s ruthlessness deepens and becomes petty—never loses the audience. Our complicity, our vicarious satisfaction in watching this warlock mow down everyone who stands in his way, defines “guilty pleasure.”
And what a cast… Elizabeth McGovern, the always fabulous Peter Riegert, Swoosie Kurtz, Will Patton, and a young Jenny Wright showing all the promise that, sadly, never was.
A terrific ensemble about four aging friends on a road trip to honor a friend’s final request. Ray Winstone joins Caine, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, and Tom Courtenay in a charming and touching story full of affection, secrets, changing times, the relentless march toward mortality, and friendship.
Caine is perfect as an aging pensioner who’s just lost a wife to old age and a best friend to local hooligans. Unfortunately, the police are useless against a ruthless gang that terrorizes Harry’s housing project. Fed up, this former Royal Marine takes matters into his own hands, and the results are tense and glorious.
Sure, Bronson made five movies like this. However, Harry Brown still stands out because Daniel Barber beautifully directs it, and although Caine plays his age, you buy into everything that happens.
Happy birthday, Sir Michael, and here’s to many, many more…
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