Alphaville (1965)

 Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville"

With his 1965 film "Alphaville," Jean-Luc Godard took a well known French film serial and converted it into a bizarre, sci-fi noir. The serial, which started out as a group of novels from British author Peter Cheyney, were adapted into French films in the 1950s and 1960s. These films starred French actor Eddie Constantine as the famous secret agent named Lemmy Caution. These pulp stories were somewhat of a proto-James Bond. Godard took this famous secret agent character and placed him on another planet for "Alphavilla," which completely turned the famous stories upside down.

When secret agent Lemmy Caution arrives in the galaxy capital of Alphaville, he learns that a computer named Alpha 60 has become a dictator of the human civilians. In a very 1984-esque fashion, humans are prohibited from displaying any emotion, as emotion has been deemed illogical. With the help of a young woman, played by Godard's muse and wife Anna Karina, Lemmy Caution destroys the computer the set the minds of the human inhabitants free. 

Although the film was set in the future in a far away galaxy, Godard made no effort to include any visual references to artificial science-fiction devices, sets, or design. In fact, Godard filmed in real Parisian locations. The reason for this was because Paris had just undergone many architectural changes, as buildings were beginning to look more modernist. The way Godard films his shots was also very anti-futuristic, as he simply employed a realist visual style. These modern and realist aspects of the film helped ground the film in a sort of modernist realism.

This modernist realism that Godard employs accentuates the parallels between the 'futurist' dystopia and the modern society of the 1960s. Throughout the film, the characters discuss how everything is becoming more technocratic through algorithmic processing, which thereby makes its society more 'logical.' It is apparent that this is a commentary of the modern state of the socio-political global order, as the post-war landscape was starting to become less emotional as technology increased the ability to make logical decisions. 

Despite the commentary on the modern state of the world, the futurist sci-fi was a bold step for Godard, whom had never made something as pulpy or genre-specific before. Many fans of the Lemmy Caution pulp series were turned off by this bizarre transition to a sci-fi genre for this typically noir-esque story. In fact, after the release of the film, many producers did not want to work with actor Eddie Constantine again, as they felt his Lemmy Caution character had been ruined by this newfound venture. Despite the controversy this caused, Constantine eventually revised his role of Lemmy Caution once again in 1980 with "Panic Time." 

All in all, I found "Alphaville" to be an engaging sci-fi noir. This was never in doubt, as I feel all of Godard's films are engaging at the very least, due to the avant-garde nature of his realization. However, I do feel as though "Alphaville" is a weak entry in the Godard catalog, as I felt that the sci-fi, mixed with the melodramatic noir, felt more like a pulpy B-picture. I know this is precisely the point of Godard's vision, but I just did not feel as enthralled by it as much.