ALPHAVILLE Movie Review

Alphaville, a Strange Case of Lemmy Caution
Alphaville, une Etrange Aventure de Lemmy Caution

In the history of motion pictures there have been innumerable ways of imagining the future. Yet even when examining the medium's entire first 100 years, it is entirely possible that there has never been a vision as bleak or as radically beautiful as that which was conjured by Jean-Luc Godard in his 1965 pulp fiction opus about a future controlled by a giant, all-encompassing, emotionless computer. Godard was able to realize his vision using “found materials”—that is, the city of Paris at night, automobiles as spacecraft, neon-lit office corridors as futuristic bastions of power. Trench coated detective Lemmy Caution (American actor Eddie Constantine) had been the hero of other French crime films, and Godard hit upon the concept of taking this well-known and well-worn character—known not as a genius but a man of action—and placing him matter-of-factly in the fantastic setting of Alphaville. Lemmy's mission is to get to the bottom of the disappearance of the agent who preceded him and to bring back, dead or alive, one mysterious Professor Von Braun. When Lemmy meets the professor's beautiful daughter (Anna Karina), all bets are off as Lemmy's Raymond Chandler-style, pistol-packing code of behavior runs smack into the nightmarish emotional controls imposed by Alphaville's gigantic controlling computer. Alpha 60. Alphaville was photographed in glistening black and white by the great cinematographer Raoul Coutard, and it is a visionary work of such startling visual density that certain images, ones that may only make sense on a subliminal level, will nevertheless remain with the viewer for years. In a single astonishing leap, Godard not only anticipated the science-fiction mania that would engulf the cinema a decade later, but surpassed most of it on both an intellectual and a visual level without ever even imagining what a computer-generated special effect was. I'm still not certain what Alphaville adds up to (Lemmy wasn't either), but I've never experienced a rain-soaked night in a big city without recalling it. Godard understood that the future is now.

NEXT STOP … Weekend, Le Samourai, Blade Runner

1965 100m/B FR Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff, Howard Vernon, Laszlo Szabo, Michel Delahaye, Jean-Pierre Leaud; D: Jean-Luc Godard; W: Jean-Luc Godard; C: Raoul Coutard; M: Paul Misraki. Berlin International Film Festival ‘65: Golden Berlin Bear. VHS HMV, SNC, MRV