“THE FUTURE IS NOW”

BY RAYMOND BENSON

If you’re familiar with the work of that French New Wave revolutionary, Jean-Luc Godard, you may not think that he was the type of filmmaker who would make a science fiction film. He did, though, in 1965, and he merged the genre with that of film noir to create a unique hybrid that also contains many of the jarring stylistic elements with which Godard loves to bombard his audiences.

Godard was the “bad boy” of the French New Wave. He seemed to take pleasure in angering viewers and being controversial by choice (unlike, say, Truffaut, whose films were decidedly more commercial and accessible). That said, though, there is much in Godard’s canon that can be not only shocking and challenging, but truly wonderful.

Such is the case with Alphaville.

Western audiences may not be familiar with the character of Lemmy Caution. He’s a private investigator of the Philip Marlowe/Sam Spade type, an American, created by British writer Peter Cheyney, and featured in nine novels published in the 1940s as pulp P.I. mysteries. The character also appeared in approximately fifteen motion pictures, made mostly in France, and were never on the radar of English-speaking viewers. American tough-guy actor Eddie Constantine moved to France after he found that he couldn’t get work in Hollywood, and there he enjoyed a career playing the kinds of roles one might associate with Robert Mitchum or Dennis O’Keefe. Constantine played the role of Lemmy Caution in seven French pictures, made as hard-boiled crime dramas, before Jean-Luc Godard made his version of a Lemmy Caution movie (how Godard obtained the rights to the character to make an art film that turns the detective genre on its head is also a mystery!).

Alphaville takes place in an unspecified dystopian future—Alphaville, the city, looks like Paris, and maybe it is, but now it’s run in an Orwellian-style aristocratic fashion. A computer known as Alpha 60 runs everything (and narrates the film), and people are not allowed to show emotion of any kind. Lemmy comes to Alphaville to destroy Alpha 60 and its creator, a shadowy scientist named “Professor von Braun” (is the similarity to Werner von Braun intentional?—probably!). Lemmy meets up with von Braun’s daughter, Natacha (Anna Karina) and, with an uneasy partnership, sets out on his convoluted mission.

The picture uses many traits of classic film noir (expressionistic lighting, trench coats, fedoras, handgun violence, a femme fatale, and good old cynicism and angst) with the paranoia and highly regulated environment of the dystopian future urban setting. The “futuristic” effect was accomplished by filming on location at “modern” buildings (for the time), providing the movie an added thematic aspect that we are already “living in the future.” Godard continues to rely on his signature radical editing techniques that can be discordant, but here it all works. In fact, Alphaville is one of the more enjoyable Godard films from the 1960s, albeit not something that would play well in Peoria, Illinois.

Kino Lorber Classics has released a restored 1920x1080p transfer that looks remarkably good, and it also features an audio commentary by noted film historian Tim Lucas. Extras include a Colin McCabe introduction to the picture, an interesting interview with Anna Karina (who was married to Godard during the director’s first five years of filmmaking), and the theatrical trailer.

Alphaville is a striking, oddball of a film that gets better with each successive viewing.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON