Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution

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.

Lemmy Caution, a French version of Sam Spade -- or perhaps a James Bond gone to seed -- is on a mission: "liquidate" the tyrannical Dr. Vonbraun, inventor of the "death ray" and the Orwellian supercomputer, Alpha 60. But to get Vonbraun, Lemmy must make the intergalactic voyage from his home in the Outlands (roughly, "Nueva York") to Alphaville (roughly, mid-Sixties Paris). He gets there via his Ford Galaxy. That's right -- a car. Are you with me so far?

The key to understanding Jean-Luc Godard's *Alphaville* is to realize that it is first and foremost a spoof. It spoofs nearly everything it touches: science fiction; comic-books; George Orwell; Aldous Huxley; American private-eye movies; spy movies; technology in general and computers in particular; romantic love as presented in cinema. If you sit down to watch this expecting a high-minded piece of French New Wave cinema, you're going to end up being put-off. Those familiar with Godard will perhaps be less put-off. After all, when was this guy ever really "high-minded", anyway? Godard was the prankster of the "Cahiers du Cinema" gang. Just listen to the score by Paul Misraki if you're looking for the tongue in the cheek. Even the putative theme of the movie, which is the priority of "love" and artistic creativity over logic and technology personified by the talking Alpha 60 supercomputer, is not taken too seriously. "Love" is personified by the beautiful dingbat princess, Natasha Vonbraun (Anna Karina), who doesn't even know what the word means. She's a child, as easily manipulated by Lemmy Caution as she is by the technocrats of Alphaville. Therefore, our rooting interest for humanity resides in Lemmy. Eddie Constantine reprises the role of Caution, a popular TV character in France during the Fifties, for Godard here: Lord knows what Constantine thought when he first read the script. The way he delivers the line, "This 'Alphaville' ought to be called 'Zeroville!'" gives a forceful indication of his bemusement. He submits to Godard's nouvelle vagueisms like a good soldier, delivering a fantastic performance in the process. Raoul Coutard's cinematography captures the heartlessness of the architecture in mid-Sixties Paris, which seemed to consist of blocky buildings blaring florescent lighting from every window, claustrophobic corridors, run-down apartments, and endless spiral staircases. It's a pitiless place, which perhaps was Godard's one serious statement amidst all the postmodern, meta-cinematic foolery: we're living in Alphaville already.

Altogether, this is Godard's most satisfying film. Despite all its detractors, *Alphaville* still survives (in a Criterion edition, no less). Classics always do.

Its hard to say exactly how much I liked Alphaville. Seeing it was a valuable experience, and at times was quite enjoyable. However, there was definitely a part of me that couldn't wait for it to be over.

Probably the best part of the movie was the general "vibe." I wholeheartedly approve of its all-around aesthetic. Using (at the time) contemporary Paris was, in my opinion, a genius move. It makes the film a lot more plausible- it's like saying, "The future isn't some phoney-baloney Jetsons stuff. It will probably look a lot like today." Plus, in my opinion, special effects are the #1 contributing factor to making a movie seem "dated", something that Alphaville doesn't need to worry about. Either way, JLG succeeds in giving us a bleak, antiseptic vision of the future. Unlike nearly all of the recent dystopic sci-fi, there's nothing whimsical about the future in Alphaville. It is cold and realistic.

However, I found that, at a lot of points, Alphaville tended to be rather slow. Usually, these slower parts occurred when the movie more or less gave itself over to philosophical speculation (such as the Alpha 60's long monologues), and pretty much abandoned the idea of keeping our attention. Don't get me wrong, I realize that the philosophical underpinnings are absolutely necessary to Alphaville- however, I think that JLG should have chosen to "show, and not tell." (Actually, I find this to be the case with a lot of sci-fi)

And I really don't understand the various action sequences in the film. (WHY would they have let him keep his gun, and take it with him when he's interrogated?) I would say that this particular element lends credence to the theory that the whole movie was meant as sort of a spoof.

In the end, I would probably recommend this film to my more open-minded friends, with the one proviso that they watch it early in the day, when they are less likely to fall asleep.

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.

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.