Alphaville

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.

What can you say that hasn't already been said. The dispassionate pastiche that is Lemmy Caution. The lethargy is exhilarating at times. The photography inventive and startling. The sound design unique and ground breaking. The acting superb. The music fantastique! Love it or get out of here!

I really like Alphaville. But I can understand why some would find it uninspiring or even boring. A Sci-Fi with no special effect. An intellectual feast in black and white. A movie that probably appealed to the crowd of the Quartier Latin. The story of a techno society. A society where people are killed if they act in an illogical way (ex. express sentiments). The episode of the pool is particularly good. The movie goes between two paradox: technology and poetry. But eventually, victory will prevail in the form of a «je vous aime».

Great lines in this one: «Dans la vie, il n'y a que le présent. Personne n'a vécu dans le passé et personne ne vivra dans le futur». Or this question by Alpha 60: «Quel est le privilège des morts?». Lemmy answers: «Ne plus mourir». This is just great!

On last word: Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina are both terrific in their role.

Out of 100, I give it 79. That's good for *** out of ****.

Seen at home, in Toronto, on November 12th, 2002.

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.

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.