Alphaville brings us Jean-Luc Godard’s first, and only that I’m aware of, foray into the world of science fiction. He presents to us the dystopic city of Alphaville, set an undefined number of years in the future on another planet, where our main character Lemmy Caution has just arrived from the ambiguous ‘Lands Without’. Posing as a journalist working on a newspaper story he checks into a hotel which offers complementary, unthinking prostitutes. He soon starts to ask questions and it becomes apparent he isn’t quite who he says he is (when are they ever?).
Godard directs with his usual post-modernist chic cool that anyone who’s seen any of his films before will be well-versed in. From the obliged quick cutting to the little photographic nuances (such as the regular shots of neon letters on the screen, and complete frame colour inversions) this film has a smorgasbord of visual niceties. Not being a director to act only on a pictorial level, there is also any number of cultural allusions, such as a duo of scientist types named Heckell and Jeckell, and a professor bearing the surname Nosferatu.
However, whilst there is all this contemporary hipness, the film’s main influence is clearly that of which the French New Wavers were often very fond of, namely Film Noir. Stylistically there are the dark tones, dramatic music, and gritty realism. Story has the classic mystery elements recalled from detective thrillers. Characterisation too falls in line, the lead, Caution, is a thoroughly pessimistic, downbeat individual, with the fashion sense of the typical private eye of the 40s. Moreover, Caution would not seem out of place in a Jean-Pierre Melville flick, like The Finger Man, with his remorseless maliciousness, clearly evidence of the senior French director’s influence on that particular epoch of cinema.
This dystopia shows an explicit and continual transference from a knowledge culture to that of a mechanised technocratic society where logic and reason rule. It’d be fair to assume that this is a stark message of caution (Lemmy Caution?) from Godard about our already technologically advanced existence, and its dehumanising effects; and furthermore its role in governance (a snapshot of a totalitarian state). Of course sci-fi with a political/societal message isn’t anything radically new (even then), whether it was Hollywood 50s B-movies and their commentary on the nuclear age, or similar authoritarian envisagings.
Article comments
1 - mpho
Nice review, Aaron. I watched Alphaville for the first time recently. It was not an easy film to sit through, but I sort of fell in love with it, even going so far as to download the screenplay from the Internet so that I could carefully absorb the dialogue. It's interesting that you mention Stalker, which is one of my favorite films, and one that made a much bigger impression on me than Citizen Kane and some of the otehr films I watched in my undergrad film class so many years ago. Neither Stalker nor Alphaville are easy sells to most of the viewing public.
2 - alpha
Alphaville is all you wrote and more. There is film noir -- it is Godard, after all. It predates a lot of films that owe it a debt of gratitude.
I think it great to see it reviewed and to see a new generation re-discovering it. However, I think it so far above Blade Runner which I have never been able to sit through and never liked Alien or its clones as much as I admire Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder. The George Lucas space opera (wonderful, the first 3) are another genre entirely.
All those years ago I did not label it "post-modernistic chic cool" but I saw it a few times and it was the symbol of the successful science fiction for a new world that was not the 50's American cold war fairy tales of un-named threats against our perfect society on which I grew up.
Ok. A few disagreements but who cares. It was a good review and an important one for a world that is re-discovering film direction, film noir, and some serious film making. At least some people are.
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
praise be! fantastic to see you on these parts, Sir Fleming, and a great review right here.
mpho makes a good point there about how this affected him more than the flicks that are supossed to affect us. don't get me wrong, i LOVE Kane, (although, course, Parker Kane had Fahey, but Welles couldn't do EVERYTHIN right) but it's the flicks that catch you by suprise that you remember, and that leave the biggest impression, i think. which is why i remember every frame of Dead Man's Shoes, and can't recall a damn line from Vertigo. ok, maybe i can, but you get the point.
4 - Aaron Fleming
Thanks for the comments guys.
mpho: Stalker is an amazing film, not like anything most people have seen before. It's wonderous how Tarkovsky can have a motionless shot of a small stream (for example) and maintain viewer interest. Sheer beauty.
And they're indeed not easy sells, that's perhaps what makes them particularly special, or what the lack of one-line-summing-up stands for.
alpha: Yeh it's far better than Blade Runner, shoulda made my opinion on that more clear. Oh and the Lucas reference refers to THX1138, which I forgot to state, should be rectified by an edit now.
Duke: definatly agree with that. Those films that you let your guard down on are very likely the ones that are gonna beat your face in with excellence, lack of preconceptions is a great thing.
5 - Bennett
Very nice premier, Sir Flemming! I'll be on the lookout for both of these films, they sound right up my alley.
Thanks!
6 - Eric Berlin
Welcome Sir Fleming. Sounds like a super cool flick, thanks for turning me onto it! Well penned review, indeed.
7 - Roland-Francois Lack
The sketch 'Anticipation', a contribution to the film The Oldest Profession, was science fiction, and Une femme est une femme, Made in USA and King Lear are all set in the future.
8 - Aaron Fleming
Fair enough Mr Lack, thanks for a constructive input.