Review of Alphaville (1965) by Gregor S — 26 Apr 2009

Godard takes us to the future and another galaxy (that can be accessed by car and looks a lot like a 60s Paris) where people behave as though in Kafka's The Trial and the machine, Alpha 60, which constructed & rules the city & its inhabitants, took extensive notes from 1984 on how to do so.

I enjoyed the strange and sometimes beautiful images, women and architecture, the funny but disjointed pastiche of genre cliches, but although disorientation is intentional, I found the film loses it's way in places. Best for me is a great performance from Eddie Constantine, who flips between determined, switched on agent and bewildered traveller lost in a city that refuses to provide for him the kind of standard film noir setting in which his character belongs.