Alphaville

Also known as: Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution

Genre: science-fiction drama (in black and white)

With: Eddie Constantine (Lemmy Caution), Anna Karina (Natacha von Braun), Akim Tamiroff (Henri Dickson)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard (inspired by a poem by Paul Éluard)

Release: 1965

Studio: André Michelin Productions, Filmstudio, Chaumiane

Rating: -

MBiS score: 8.4/10 

 

In Memory of Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022)  

 

− Has no one ever fallen in love with you?

− In love? What's that?

 

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Story-line: in an unspecified future time, journalist Ivan Johnson is dispatched to another galaxy to interview a scientist. Truth be told, Ivan is really Lemmy Caution, a private detective sent to fulfill an important mission. With Lemmy as your guide, expect drama, weirdness and mayhem in the soulless, futuristic world of Alphaville.

Pluses: roguish acting by Eddie Constantine and suitably cold support from Anna Karina and cast, a tight, sketchy direction nurturing a mood of mystery and danger, a surreal screenplay that appears fluffy and nonsensical at first but gains in depth and relevance along the way, startling visuals evoking a world mostly cloaked in darkness, rinky-dink production values mixing the ultramodern and the low-tech, an effective, omnipresent musical score and a very satisfying ending.

Minuses: although some reviewers have panned ALPHAVILLE as either highbrow or boring, I found it interesting and even substantial.

Comments: in other roles as Lemmy Caution, the rugged-faced Eddie Constantine (1917-1993) has played Lemmy as a detached, smart-alecky snoop who thrives on comic-book violence. In this nightmarish, Orwell-inspired film, Eddie plays it dark and sardonic as if it was all an elaborate joke… and it really works! The odd and wonderful ALPHAVILLE − one of Jean-Luc Godard’s more accessible works − is the chilling indictment of a world that has succumbed to totalitarianism, conformism and misogyny. 

 

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