Alphaville
Jean-Luc Godard directs Alphaville, a 1965 black-and-white French science fiction film. The film stars Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution, a secret agent sporting a trench coat, and Anna Karina as Natascha Von Braun, a programmer of Alpha-60 (the computer system in control of all of Alphaville). Alphaville is a place in the future that is run by the computer system Alpha-60, which allows no “illogical” thought. Running what is believed to be an ideal system, Alphaville is a place that is devoid of any individualist concepts such as love or compassion. These concepts would be considered illogical and the punishment for having illogical thoughts in Alphaville is death.
Lemmy Caution shows up in Alphaville on a series of missions as an agent from the Outlands. He is first looking for a missing agent, then looking to capture or kill the creator of Alphaville and finally Caution must destroy Alpha-60 itself. Alpha-60 is represent throughout the film as a raspy voice spouting various dictates and ideals. One of these dictates is, for example, that people should not ask “why” but rather that they should say “because”. Further to that notion, there is a “Bible” in every room in Alphaville that is, in reality, a dictionary that contains a constantly updated list of words. Words that would conjure up emotions are removed.
The film itself works as a nice combination of science-fiction and film noir. The sci-fi angles are not the traditional stuff of Hollywood sci-fi, but much more subtle. Much of the “action” is shown off screen or through interesting shot selection from director Godard. In fact, the film was shot in its entirety in Paris and features no real special effects shots. The closest we get to Alpha-60, for example, is to see blinking lights and men in lab coats in a room. This minimalistic way of film-making is very effective in the context of the storyline.
Eddie Constantine is known for playing secret agent Lemmy Caution in a number of films. He’s actually an expatriate American actor and singer that headed off to Europe and became a big star in France. The character of Lemmy Caution is from Peter Cheyney’s novels, with many of them having been made into a variety of French B-movies. Godard’s Alphaville is the first Lemmy Caution film to put the hero into a different type of setting, however, as much of the other films feature Caution in roles where he would play Lemmy Caution up for laughs as the archetype of American cinema’s private eyes.
Alphaville is effective in that it utilizes minimalistic cinema techniques and the creativity of Jean-Luc Godard to develop a captivating and interesting storyline in a realistic future. Much of the film comes from Orwellian notions of what the future might be like and plays off of the fear of losing individuality and having to conform to some sort of technological aspect of time. Constantine’s Lemmy Caution is an interesting hero, in that he acts and stands against all that Alpha-60 is purveying in Alphaville. This makes for a great dichotomy, of course, and pushes the audience harder to root for Caution’s mission.
Alphaville often demands a lot from its audience, but it is also a fairly accessible film. Its simplicity may not resonate with viewers that are more apt to take in big budget Hollywood blockbuster science-fiction films, but there are many aspects of the film that function to effectively draw in interest to the characters, their plight and the vision of the future directed beautifully and simply by Godard.
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