Agente Lemmy Caution: Missione Alphaville

Alphaville is an attack on the syndrome of Science Fiction films full of flash and color but devoid of ideas. They intentionally took an "Our Town" attitude toward special effects -- e.g. driving along in a car, with dialog indicating that they're in a spaceship; commenting on how beautiful the stars look when you can't see anything but the glare of streetlights, and so on. If there's a problem with this movie, it's that the ideas themselves are perhaps not really all that strong; the notion of a dystopian city ruled by an all powerful computer just doesn't seem that heavy, not even taken as some sort of symbolic allegory; but on the whole I think SF cinema would be in much better shape if it had learned the lesson of Alphaville (think "La Jette"). Minimalism is not a crime, which is why I find it very annoying that I need to babble for another couple of lines to convince IMDb.com that I've said enough to be worth logging as a movie review.

Forget about watching this if you have no patience for slow-moving drama, thought-provoking narratives, and/or philosophical discourse.

This film is however unique, virtually impossible to categorize and visually arresting. It's basically a film noir set in an Orwellian future with its lead character using emotion, jokes, philosophy and love to weeds doubts into the rule imposed by a mechanized society of tomorrow....and well it's much more than that too. Recommended to anyone who enjoys the qualities listed in the first paragraph.

ALPHAVILLE is basically Godard trolling the audience for 100 minutes. Visually, the film is super interesting-- I like the minimalist "future" aesthetic and the gorgeous monochrome photography. The actual story and characters are far less interesting than the visuals, though some of the parody is pretty amusing. The philosophizing is torture. So overall, I found this more interesting to think about afterward than to watch in the moment.

Based on a simple philosophical premise (Alphaville is a city where emotions are not allowed, everything is based on logic, everyone has a clear purpose imposed upon him, people that believe in ideals are executed etc), Jean-Luc Godard uses an arsenal of directorial tricks to transform this into a futuristic film-noir, a surrealist collage, a humanistic elegy, an off-beat comedy etc.

In the end, Alphaville doesn't quite fully achieve it's potential. Some of the sequences look amateurish, some of the verbose scenes are too much etc. But it's a worthwhile watch for any cinephille. And even so early in his career, Godard shows a healthy desire to turn the rules upside down.

Take a handful of what's happened in the past, use a variety of authors, novelists, from Science Fiction to Noir, with a space ship as a car, imagination, inspiration, and then cast.

It's not the most exciting film you've happened upon, and it can be rather heavy going more often than not, I'm not sure it's aged that well either if I'm honest. Packed full of ingredients that will consume more than one viewing to deconstruct, if you're a fan of the director you may enjoy the challenge, but I increasingly find his films a bit of a chore and only relevant as original for the time but not the space.