Alphaville

Alphaville (1965)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard (RIP)

Starring: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff… and this is all the credited actors in the film; no kidding

From: Several different French & Italian companies

While I wish this would have been a movie I actually enjoyed & this is two months late, “RIP Jean-Luc Godard” still will be said here.

Due to the Spooky Season and other reasons, it’s taken me two months to see something from the late director. Before last night I had only seen his earliest features which were quirky yet I had fun w/ all of them. The very idea of a film noir and science fiction being combined together certainly intrigued; I know most will proclaim or at least think various quibbles over how I disliked this more than most but I’ll explain what turned me off.

It didn’t take long for me to reject the film. This takes place sometime in the future on another planet… which not only suspiciously looks like Paris, our “hero” is seen driving a Ford and nothing futuristic is actually shown. WTF is this crap… even if this is in another part of the multiverse, it was a nonsense story they literally made up on the spot and the lead is a hardboiled detective who is a dick even if Lemmy Caution is one hell of a name. He holds onto his attache case as if it contains his internal organs and isn’t interested in an attractive French girl in her underwear OR Anna Karina at the beginning. Honestly, that’s the most science fiction aspect of this movie! Oh, and I could have done without the BLARING musical score.

Alphaville is controlled by a sentient computer named Alpha 60 which has outlawed free thought and emotion; that’s nice and all, although Orwell did do it better. Poetry is a key plot point; I won’t say why except that it makes the voicebox-sounding artificial being look pretty dumb because it itself often quotes poetry! I’d rather not get started on the “profound” and haughty dialogue, which this is chock-full of. There is something with Alphaville the movie I’m clearly missing, yet I’ll probably never find it… which is not something I’ll be heartbroken over. I’m better off considering this as “pretentious twaddle”, note that apparently much of Godard’s filmography after this could be categorized as same, and instead realize that there are plenty of directors from the past whose filmography I should do a deeper dive on instead.