Review: Alphaville (1965)

Jean-Luc Godard's future noir is opaque, obtuse, and at times flat-out tedious. It's also extremely ambitious and filled with ideas that have aged so well that the film feels more relevant than ever before. 

When secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) arrives in the space city of Alphaville, it looks and feels just like 1965 Paris. Instead of a ray gun and an elaborate communicator, he has a pistol and a cigarette lighter, which serve the same purposes. No doubt Godard was making the most out of the materials and locations he had on hand to keep this modestly-budgeted film affordable, but was he also commenting on the world of the mid-sixties and its jet-powered, atomic-fueled progress? Either way, the cinematography of mid-sixties Paris by Raoul Coutard is breathtaking.

In the film, a super computer named Alpha 60 has weeded out all undesirable qualities of life by turning the citizens into mindless automatons. Those who stray from the group think or show any emotion, such as a man who cries when his wife dies, are put to death. So many citizens have been killed by Alpha 60 that entire movie theaters with electric chairs were employed for efficiency. Questions such as "why" have been removed from public conscience. The inhabitants of Alphaville go about their lives without joy. Logic rules. 

If all of this sounds heavy-handed and intense, it certainly is. The film makes no effort to meet the audience half-way, and for the first 45 minutes of the film, first-time viewers will likely have no idea what's going on. It's not all humorless philosophizing, though. In real life, actor Eddie Constantine had played the Lemmy Caution character in a series of pulpy crime films dating back to the 1950s. The Caution character sprang from the pen of British writer Peter Cheney in 1936. By using Lemmy Caution as his secret agent AND by using the actor who had played Caution in seven previous screen adaptations, Godard is tapping into a history of pulp, noir, and even comics. Consider a scene in which Caution asks someone about Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon, as if they're real people. To Caution, they are; he has leaped from the printed page directly into this film, a character of fiction who seems to know that he's in a story. 

At the same time, Godard blends this low art with deep ideas. The character of Alpha 60 is an all-seeing, all-knowing god machine, voiced by a man who had his voice box replaced by a mechanical device. It's so grating that it's difficult to tolerate. Godard knows this, because he has mixed the computer's voice to a near-deafening level in the audio mix. But as the computer dictates why logic is infallible and free will must be destroyed to allow for a more efficient, technology-based life, Godard leans on the great philosophers and poets of the past. Who can deny the power of the words Alpha 60 utters when he quotes the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges:

"Our destiny is not frightful by being unreal. It is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. 

Time is the substance I am made of. 

Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river. 

It is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger. 

It is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. 

The world, unfortunately, is real. I am, unfortunately, Borges."

In the stifling voice of Alpha 60, the words are twisted into something different. Machines aren't capable of humanism, and in our modern world of AI and a singularity that we seem to be speeding toward at an alarming rate, they're words that are not to be taken lightly. 

Alphaville is many things: confounding, laborious, soporific...but also thought-provoking, innovative, and rewarding. It's all of these things, crafted by a creator who has no interest in holding our hands, providing solid answers, or presenting a traditional narrative. But without this film and its challenges, would we have Blade Runner or Fahrenheit 451? Perhaps the legacy of Alphaville is that it inspired a new generation of film fans and students, who internalized the messages of the film and put them into their own art. But then again, Alphaville still has something to say about our world, and its warnings grow more pertinent with each passing day.  

Alphaville comes to 4K from Kino Lorber with a beautiful new restoration, audio commentaries, and an illuminating interview with Anna Karina, the co-lead of the film who had just divorced Jean-Luc Goddard before this movie was filmed.