Review of Alphaville (1965) by Ricardo O — 26 May 2010

One of the most unconventional sci-fi films of all time, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (Alphaville, une Etrange Aventure de Lemmy Caution) fuses a hardboiled detective story with science fiction full of pulp characters and centers on a man named Lemmy Caution, played by Eddie Constantine. Caution, a hero Godard borrowed from a series of French adventure films, is a secret agent from "the Outlands" who poses as a journalist by the name Ivan Johnson, and claims to work for the Figaro-Pravda. He wears an ovecoat that stores various items and carries around a camera he uses to take pictures of just about everything. Caution has traveled to Alphaville, the capitol of a totalitarian state in another galaxy. He is there on a series of missions. He is to locate a missing agent named Henry Dickson; he must capture or kill the creator of Alphaville, Professor Von Braun; and he must destroy the almost-human computer Alpha 60 that is in complete control of Alphaville. Alpha 60 outlaws free thought and concepts like love, poetry and emotion in the capitol city, replacing them with contradictory concepts like not saying "why" and instead saying "because". People who show signs of emotion or are presumed to be acting illogical and are gathered, interrogated and eventually executed in bizarre manners such as having them walk up on to the diving pole of a swimming pool, shooting them and having a bunch of girls swim after the body. There are many themes in the film that recall the themes that are often called Orwellian. One is that there is a "Bible" in each room, although they are actually dictionaries that are continuously updated when words have been deemed to evoke emotion and become banned. Without emotion in the whole city, Alphaville is now an inhuman and alienated society of machines. Men are statistically more than women with a ratio of fifty to one. Their are constantly images of the E = mc² and E = hf equations displayed throughout the film as a symbol of the government of logical science that rules Alphaville. At a place called the Grand Omega Minus, people are brainwashed and sent out to other galaxies to start strikes, revolutions and student revolts. Caution's old fashioned ways are constantly conflicting with the ways of the all ruling computer. His opposition to logic is represented through quotations from a book of poems called The Capitol of Pain. Caution is assisted by Natacha Von Braun, played by Godard's beautiful first wife Anna Karina, a programmer of Alpha 60 who is also the daughter of Professor Von Braun, although she claims she has never seen him. When she is questioned by Caution she can not find the meaning of the words "love" and "conscience". Caution inevitably falls in love with Natacha and with his love, he has introduced emotions and unpredictability into the city. While Caution questions her place of birth, she finds out that she was indeed born outside of Alphaville in the city of New York - pronounced in Spanish as Nueva York instead of in English or in French. It is also revealed in their first encounter that Professor Von Braun was originally known as Leonard Nosferatu, but Caution is repeatedly told that Nosferatu no longer exists in Alphaville. The Professor offers Caution to join Alphaville, even telling him that he will make him a ruler of another galaxy but Caution asks the Professor if he will go with him back to "the Outlands" but he refuses and Caution shoots and kills him with his pistol. On numerous occasions Alpha 60 converses with Caution and he eventually destroys it by telling it a riddle that involves something that Alpha 60 can not comprehend, poetry. At the end, Caution saves Natacha from dying along with her fellow Alphaville comrades and they go off back to "the Outlands" as she says a phrase she has never said in her life, "Je vous aime" ("I love you").

Six years after making his feature film debut with Breathless and now entering his most prolific period of his career, Jean-Luc Godard came out with this blend of science fiction, noir elements and political satire and makes one of his most ambitious and unusual films of his career. Godard shot the film in a bizarrely transformed version of Paris, mostly at night, without using any special effects. The one effect Godard does use is have the shot as a negative with the blacks as whites and whites as blacks during the climax as Alphaville is being seemingly destroyed. Godard's film is very disturbing and very entertaining throughout and full of many of the cinematic techniques that made Godard famous. Like Godard's other films, it challenges the viewer and their perception of what film can do but is still recognizable in falling into the dystopian genre with the likes of Orwell's 1984. Like Godard's previous works, it is beautifully shot on sight with handheld cameras by cinematographer Raoul Coutard. Alphaville's influence can be seen in such preceding sci-fi films as 2001: A Space Odyssey (the super computer) and the dystopian worlds of Blade Runner, The Terminator, Brazil and The Matrix. Alphaville is a film that like most of Godard's other works will put some people off but for those willing to take all that is on screen in will be witness to one of the most unusual and mind-bending sci-fi thrillers to ever come out. For sci-fi fans and Godard fans alike, it is a must-see film! 10/10.