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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