Review of Alphaville (1965) by Drew S — 26 Aug 2010

Alphaville is a textured, surreal grandfather to many science fiction films before it, which makes its unchallenging ending all the more disappointing. In light of the more cogent, hard-hitting themes that preceded it, "love conquers all" seems awfully sophomoric for Godard. That said, this is a provocative, beautifully lensed, appropriately unusual mixture of Fahrenheit 451 and Chinatown...a city teeming with danger, and a sinister inhuman monarch sitting atop it all, monitoring its citizenry's every move and feeling and action. For his apparently very limited budget, and the apparent lack of any constructed sets to depict a futuristic world, Alphaville does an amazing job creating its setting - the city seems polished in a jarring way, shadowy and harshly bright in alternation. The plot isn't quite as lucid, a rather hazy tale of governments at war and double crossing, as if Godard needed a backdrop on which to hang his emotional parable.

Anna Karina is stunning here. In her I see a bit of Marion Cotillard (though I guess I have that backward); beautiful, intelligent, perhaps a bit passive. She exudes a convincing naivete when confronted with concepts that have never been introduced to the people of Alphaville. Her character is deceptively important to the plot, even though she seems incidental; in some ways, she's the biggest culprit for the awkward double blind ending. Eddie Constantine does fine, but I don't think the movie is all that preoccupied with him so much as his mission and the theater of operations in which it takes place. Most sinister, however, is the voiceover of the scarcely-seen computerized head of Alphaville, Alpha 60. Apparently played by a man with a mechanical voice box, his guttural French non-sequiturs are immensely discomforting.

An excellent, fresh little bit of New Wave. Perhaps not for everyone in light of its narrative obtuseness, but I found that it gave ample opportunity and subtext for a creative audience to make of it what they will.