Alphaville (1965)

One of my all time favorites.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is a delightful mix of Film Noir and Science Fiction. Better in so many ways than BLADERUNNER, and excels in atmosphere without any special props or futuristic sets. Eddie Constantine is pitch perfect as Lemmy Caution, secret agent 003 posing as Ivan Dixon and recently arrived in the technocratic dictatorship of Alphaville. He is on a mission to find a fellow agent who has gone rogue, to neutralize Professor von Braun, the architect of Alphaville and to rescue Natasha von Braun with emotion, love and poetry.These are the very things that the computer overlord Alpha 60 has outlawed along with free thought and individualism. We watch Caution carry out his assignments with a deadpan, no nonsense reserve. While he moves through the dystopian world of Alphaville, the computerized voice of Alpha 60 with its television eyes everywhere serves also as the narrator of all the proceedings. But our hero Caution fights his mechanical adversary with jabs of verse as Alpha 60 helplessly photographs the messy violent acts that 003 commits that defies and short circuits the collectivized logic of Alphaville.This is cinema with all the crudeness of a real independent film. It is surprisingly literate right from the start, referencing Jean Cocteau's 1950 film ORPHEUS. At its core, it champions what true science fiction should be; a triumph of human values over technological hardware and gadgetry. The Film Noir elements are all seamlessly blended with ideas that are fascinatingly presented in Caution's confrontation with Alpha 60. They become engaged in a battle of wits that ends with the secret agent posing a riddle to the talking mechanical brain that confounds its computerized community reasoning.The miracle is how director Jean-Luc Godard can do so much with so little. He has no such resources as Industrial Light and Magic and yet plainly demonstrates that he does not need them. He resorts to the poetry of Jorge Luis Borges and allies his hero with Natasha who slowly awakens to the possibilities of free emotion in love as unpredictable and irrational as this may prove to be. There is indeed something about Caution's anachronistic presence in this dystopic wonderland that somehow throws its citizens out of synch with his mission objectives.There is no mention of the myth David and Goliath and yet the contest between Caution and Alpha 60 can easily be seen in this light. Alpha 60 is the giant that is all-knowing with eyes everywhere and the story is told according to his viewpoint. Lemmy Caution armed with no more than a camera, human fists, a gun and a book of poetry takes on the megalithic might of this mechanical being. A classic case of Man versus the Machine and the System. But in the end, beyond the camera, headlocks and punches, bullets and blinding flashes of verse there comes three little words that provide the payoff.'Je vous aime' and we are cruising back into the Outlands...

Now we have a movie that has the look of the old Twilight Zone movies created by Rod Serling. This might have been good for a late 1950's movies but today the look is much different especially for "Star Trek and "Star Wars". Remember Jean-Luc Godard can be very cerebral.He doesn't specialize in Science Fiction. That's why there isn't the action one expects to find. Cerebral films usually appeal to the critics but not to the average person.I could not give the film more than a 9.5 star rating. See the film and form your own opinions.

"Something's not in orbit in the capital of this galaxy." Secret Agent Lemmy Caution has the mission of infiltrating the technocratic society of Alphaville, controlled by a supercomputer ordering its citizens through various methods (including violence and indoctrination) to incorporate logic instead of emotion in every part of their everyday lives. Can a riddle of poetry from Caution be the key to undermining this computer, Alpha 60, and halting their plans to obliterate any other "galaxies" (cities, societies) not in line with their "religion of logic"? I have to admit that "Alphaville" isn't one of my personal favorite Godard films, but I see why it is highly regarded. To me, the photography is its greatest asset. Wisely, to make sure that his vision of Alphaville being a futurecity, Godard shoots almost exclusively at night. That the way the architectural design of certain buildings favors possible cities of the future in 1965 on the inside, allowing us not to recognize that Alphaville is just Paris going through "an architectural renaissance" thanks to nighttime photography only emphasizing its windows and brief examinations of certain exteriors of the selected hotels and Alpha 60s "control centers" where Caution visits cleverly allows Godard to get away with a sci-fi film succumbing to noirish sensibilities. That an "outsider" (those who arrive in Alphaville are considered "from the Outlands") can pollute the mechanical operation of life for the people of Alphaville through using intellect (that is the irony of the city's downfall) to inject a virus so that it self-destructs amused me to no end.I just think that a film which shows a society robotic in its movements, ideology, and functions day to day due to the influence of logic, including a hero which really acts and behaves, ironic enough, similarly, without much fire in the direction or plot to energetically show us their defeat—directed in logic, mechanically by Godard—could be a detriment to the message supposedly conveyed: that love and emotion, freedom, are key to us each as individuals, thinking for ourselves, living for ourselves, allowed to dictate our own lives without the need of control over how and *why* we feel and operate as we do. That Alphaville's sheep fall into decline once Alpha 60 is debilitated by Caution's influence (those working in the control center think that Caution can help them defeat the Outside galaxies they're up against), spinning around or clutching to structures, seemingly unable to move or function without *guidance* does comment on the need to be individuals instead of under the control of any higher superior (government? Corporate entity? Religious philosophy?). All we need is love. Love is all we need.Eddie Constantine made a living out of Mike Hammer tough guy noirish anti-heroes, and he doesn't stray from that in Alphaville. He shoots those that threaten him, and in an early scene Lemmy batters an Alpha 60 stooge sent to incapacitate him in his hotel room. He incapacitates another stooge who tries to stab him in an elevator. Another instance, he roughs up yet another Alpha 60 agent, eventually running over his head! As this is a Godard film in the early-to-mid 60s, Anna Karina is a major part of the plot. She's the daughter of the creator of Alpha 60 (Jess Franco alum, Howard Vernon), eventually a romantic love interest of Caution. Caution needs to talk with her father, perhaps kill him if he continues to work in concert with the computer to execute dangerous plans for other "galaxies". Karina could be argued (or agreed) by cineasts as one of the key actresses working in the early 60s in the world. Her work with Godard offers an impressive package of characters, allowing her a lot of freedom and range due to the content and room to improvise. Plus, she always looks fantastic and it never is a surprise the camera worships her. Godard obviously understood what he had with her, even if their relationship was volatile. Their output together, a string of successes that live on to this day, during this period of passion and volatility continues to hold up rather well, even if a product of its time. I won't lie, though, as this is such a clinically, dry, and matter-of-fact approach in its direction, I had a hard time really latching onto it. It is really nice looking, like its lead actress in it. Godard had learned from the masters; the noirish influence is alive and well.

In a near future, the American secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) travels to Alphaville posing as the journalist Ivan Johnson from the Figaro-Pravda newspaper. His mission is to find the missing agent Henry Dickson (Akim Tamirof) and to convince Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon) to come with him to Nueva York. Prof. von Braun is actually Leonard Nosferatu and has created the powerful computer Alpha 60 that has conceived the inhuman dystopian society of Alphaville, where love, conscience, poetry and emotion have been banished and words are systematically eliminated from the dictionary. Alpha 60 is also omnipresent and Lemmy has the assistance of Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina), who is the daughter of von Braun. Soon he falls in love with Natacha but he needs to complete his mission before leaving Alphaville."Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy" is my favorite Godard movie and maybe his most digestible film despite being weird. This is the third time that I see this sci-fi noir (last time was on 07 September 2001) and it is still an intriguing story that resembles George Orwell's 1984, inclusive with the idea of rewriting the dictionary removing words related to emotions and including new ones. The scary atmosphere gives the sensation of nightmare and the sets and locations are ahead of time. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Alphaville"