Even though Alphaville is about the midpoint in Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave, sixties filmography, it's really unsurprising to see him attempt to make a film that explores and subverts the general visual and narrative quips of your archetypal film noir story. The result is an interesting, if ultimately kind of droll, exploration from a filmmaking known for defying all convention and expectations like it's his job.
The film stars Eddie Constantine in the daunting lead role of Lemmy Caution, a secret agent who is entering a town called Alphaville, posing as a journalist named "Ivan Johnson," claiming to work for the Figaro-Pravda. Caution is on a several top secret missions, one of which involves searching for a missing secret agent by the name of Henry Dickson (Akim Tamiroff), another is to exterminate the creator of Alphaville, who is Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), and he has to destroy the computer that controls all of Alphaville, which is named the "Alpha 60." Alpha 60 was created by von Braun and controls all of Alphaville, making the city one of the most artificial cities in the world. Alpha 60 has completely dismantled the ideas of free thought, individualism, and self-satisfaction, making concepts like love, poetry, feeling, emotion, and mood nonexistent and stripping people down to the bare basic living, breathing, and speaking organisms.
Alphaville adheres to the aesthetic and visual chemistry of American film noir quite nicely, making its presence known through dark and brooding chic and familiar camera angles. Having this cold and extremely unique style mesh together with Godard's often deviant and unconventional cinematic structure make for two very fitting styles that mesh well in the presence of one another. This shows that while Godard is keen on replicating the well-known characteristics and visualizations brought together by film noir - such as extreme darkness, cold and isolated cityscapes, rain on empty streets, and heavy use of shadows and the unseen elements - he isn't afraid to continue doing what he has been doing, which is plugging in his style even where one would assume it doesn't fit.
As an exercise in style and the subversion of it, Godard's Alphaville can be granted a fairly high honor. However, despite a plot that really questions individualist freedom and the value placed on freewill, Godard does another alienating and disguising of that central idea in what seems to be a frustrating attempt to keep audiences within arm's length of the film at all times. There was never any specific connection between myself and the characters of the film, and because of that, I relied on style for the one-hundred minutes, finding nothing but guttural emptiness and a frustrating lack of interest in their motivations and interactions with one another. Even when the gorgeous, scene-stealer Anna Karina walks on screen, playing Natacha von Braun, the daughter of the professor and creator of Alpha 60, who is introduced to the complex emotions and feelings of love and happiness upon being introduced to Ivan Johnson, she doesn't make much of a splash like she did in Godard's earlier works like Breathless and Vivre Sa Vie.
Film noir has always been a genre of film that has alienated me, whether it was the classic Maltese Falcon or Godard's early venture into the area, I've always been completed turned off by the characters, the structure, and their motivation, with the only thing I can really find myself immersing in and embracing is the style and the genre's unique and beautiful visuals. Even with traditional, American film noir, I found a certain, almost indescribable emptiness to it, but put Godard, his filming techniques, and his convention-defying aesthetic inside an already cold and unwelcoming environment and you have me even further lost.
With all that being said, Alphaville is still lucky to have Constantine and Karina as its two core performers, both of whom usher in identifiable chemistry in the later scenes, and both work off one another in their ambiguous performances. Even Raoul Coutard's incredible cinematography compliments the film to a higher state than most films would get on cinematography alone, as he continues to emphasize his love for crisp, clean shots as well as holding nothing back in terms of visuals. Despite these golden attributes, Alphaville still gets brought down to a lesser level thanks to a story structure that finds ways to purposefully mystify, as well provide a viewer with frustrating attributes such as a grating narration in efforts to only make an already disconnecting story more disconnecting as it goes on. If there were ever a film to test your patience on how much you really like, appreciate, and understand it, here it is, in stone-cold celluloid.
Starring: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff, and Howard Vernon. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.
The film stars Eddie Constantine in the daunting lead role of Lemmy Caution, a secret agent who is entering a town called Alphaville, posing as a journalist named "Ivan Johnson," claiming to work for the Figaro-Pravda. Caution is on a several top secret missions, one of which involves searching for a missing secret agent by the name of Henry Dickson (Akim Tamiroff), another is to exterminate the creator of Alphaville, who is Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), and he has to destroy the computer that controls all of Alphaville, which is named the "Alpha 60." Alpha 60 was created by von Braun and controls all of Alphaville, making the city one of the most artificial cities in the world. Alpha 60 has completely dismantled the ideas of free thought, individualism, and self-satisfaction, making concepts like love, poetry, feeling, emotion, and mood nonexistent and stripping people down to the bare basic living, breathing, and speaking organisms.
Alphaville adheres to the aesthetic and visual chemistry of American film noir quite nicely, making its presence known through dark and brooding chic and familiar camera angles. Having this cold and extremely unique style mesh together with Godard's often deviant and unconventional cinematic structure make for two very fitting styles that mesh well in the presence of one another. This shows that while Godard is keen on replicating the well-known characteristics and visualizations brought together by film noir - such as extreme darkness, cold and isolated cityscapes, rain on empty streets, and heavy use of shadows and the unseen elements - he isn't afraid to continue doing what he has been doing, which is plugging in his style even where one would assume it doesn't fit.
As an exercise in style and the subversion of it, Godard's Alphaville can be granted a fairly high honor. However, despite a plot that really questions individualist freedom and the value placed on freewill, Godard does another alienating and disguising of that central idea in what seems to be a frustrating attempt to keep audiences within arm's length of the film at all times. There was never any specific connection between myself and the characters of the film, and because of that, I relied on style for the one-hundred minutes, finding nothing but guttural emptiness and a frustrating lack of interest in their motivations and interactions with one another. Even when the gorgeous, scene-stealer Anna Karina walks on screen, playing Natacha von Braun, the daughter of the professor and creator of Alpha 60, who is introduced to the complex emotions and feelings of love and happiness upon being introduced to Ivan Johnson, she doesn't make much of a splash like she did in Godard's earlier works like Breathless and Vivre Sa Vie.
Film noir has always been a genre of film that has alienated me, whether it was the classic Maltese Falcon or Godard's early venture into the area, I've always been completed turned off by the characters, the structure, and their motivation, with the only thing I can really find myself immersing in and embracing is the style and the genre's unique and beautiful visuals. Even with traditional, American film noir, I found a certain, almost indescribable emptiness to it, but put Godard, his filming techniques, and his convention-defying aesthetic inside an already cold and unwelcoming environment and you have me even further lost.
With all that being said, Alphaville is still lucky to have Constantine and Karina as its two core performers, both of whom usher in identifiable chemistry in the later scenes, and both work off one another in their ambiguous performances. Even Raoul Coutard's incredible cinematography compliments the film to a higher state than most films would get on cinematography alone, as he continues to emphasize his love for crisp, clean shots as well as holding nothing back in terms of visuals. Despite these golden attributes, Alphaville still gets brought down to a lesser level thanks to a story structure that finds ways to purposefully mystify, as well provide a viewer with frustrating attributes such as a grating narration in efforts to only make an already disconnecting story more disconnecting as it goes on. If there were ever a film to test your patience on how much you really like, appreciate, and understand it, here it is, in stone-cold celluloid.
Starring: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff, and Howard Vernon. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.