Remaking the Hegemonic British 1960s’ Male Icon for the New Millennium

Some of Sir Michael Caine’s most well-received and critically acclaimed films were made between 1966 and 1972. The characters he played contributed to creating a mythic British working-class male hero archetype for the 1960s: irresistible to women as well as tough, funny, and instinctively intelligent. These films portrayed the era of the ‘swinging sixties’ when British society was in flux – new technology, feminism, and the rise of the working class challenging the old world order. Or so the films suggest. In this chapter on nostalgia and masculinity, Wiltshire considers the reasons behind the glut of remakes and whether the timing relates to what some critics argue was a time of masculinity being in crisis, yearning for the ‘good old days’ of character heroes like Alfie.