Jean Luc Godard movies often require a lot of effort. Many feel the rewards for such investments range from minimal to nonexistent. He's become kind of a joke over the years and much of it is justified. Godard usually comes off as incredibly pretentious, with an unbearable ego.
I can't help but admire someone who completely disregards any notion of conventional filmmaking and commercial potential. Godard seems to have a sadistic streak of challenging his potential viewers to the point of torture. Or maybe it's more of a streak of masochism.
Jean Luc Godard's early work is his most accessible. In fact he was the toast of culture and cinema, thanks to groundbreaking movies like Breathless, Band of Outsiders, and Contempt.
I haven't watched all his movies, but my favorite so far is Band of Outsiders, also known as A Band Apart. Quentin Tarantino loved the movie so much he named his production company after it. The famous dance sequence in Pulp Fiction was obviously inspired by a similar scene in Band of Outsiders. When Godard, ever the provocateur, expressed contempt for Tarantino's work and described it as null and dishonest, Quentin stated that he had outgrown Godard's work.
I've had the Kino Blu-ray of Alphaville for quite some time, but I was waiting for the right moment. Indulging in mostly horror for the month of October, I was more than ready for an obtuse art picture to re-align my sensibilities.
Alphaville is one of the oddest films of its time and it still has the power to befuddle casual movie watchers. It's ostensibly a science fiction story set on a distant planet, though there are no futurist props or special effects of any kind.
Eddie Constantine is Lemmy Caution, a noirish secret agent who travels to the planet Alphaville. He does so in a Ford Mustang, though he calls it a Galaxie 500.
Alphaville is shot on the streets of Paris, in and around modern architecture that indeed looked futuristic in '65. Lemmy makes the acquaintance of a mysterious woman, played by Godard's muse Anna Karina.
Lemmy's mission is to neutralize the creator of a super computer called Alpha-60. Alphaville is a technocratic dictatorship where individual thoughts are illegal. Emotions like love, poetry, and imagination are treated as illnesses that must be eradicated or destroyed altogether.
Lemmy is captured and is questioned by Alpha-60, which dispassionately explains its dictates. He is told that the logical progression of civilization is its own destruction and Alpha-60 is the logical source to bring it about.
Kind of disquieting in the age of ChatGPT and OpenAI, isn't it? In fact, it's damned near terrifying.
There's a lot to take in with Alphaville. As with many great works of art (and yes, Alphaville is a masterpiece), multiple viewings are recommended.
Godard was, in his way, a seer. Realizing the direction society was heading, he set the dystopian world of Alphaville in contemporary Paris. Much like the way George Orwell called his novel 1984. Rearrange the numbers and you get 1948, the year in which he wrote his cautionary tail.
Intelligent people with imagination and poetry in their hearts look to the arts for warning signs of things to come. We as a society ignored the prognostications of George Orwell, Jean Luc Godard, and other visionaries, most of whom worked in the field of science fiction.
Even if all that isn't reason enough to watch Alphaville, the movie is gorgeous to behold. The black and white photography, the radical use of light, camerawork, and editing make Alphaville a work of brilliance even without the social implications therein.
As a little bonus, I followed Alphaville with Betaville, a 1986 short film from Alyce Wittenstein. Wittenstein was part of the New York Underground scene, but her work isn't as grimy and horrifying as that of most of her contemporaries.
Betaville is an amusing homage to the Godard classic. The basic premise follows Alphaville as a droll private dick and his companion drive to his old hometown of Betaville and find it has been usurped by fashion police. It's a nice satire about how revolutions are ultimately compromised by fashion mandates. You can find it on You Tube.
Written by Mark Sieber
I can't help but admire someone who completely disregards any notion of conventional filmmaking and commercial potential. Godard seems to have a sadistic streak of challenging his potential viewers to the point of torture. Or maybe it's more of a streak of masochism.
Jean Luc Godard's early work is his most accessible. In fact he was the toast of culture and cinema, thanks to groundbreaking movies like Breathless, Band of Outsiders, and Contempt.
I haven't watched all his movies, but my favorite so far is Band of Outsiders, also known as A Band Apart. Quentin Tarantino loved the movie so much he named his production company after it. The famous dance sequence in Pulp Fiction was obviously inspired by a similar scene in Band of Outsiders. When Godard, ever the provocateur, expressed contempt for Tarantino's work and described it as null and dishonest, Quentin stated that he had outgrown Godard's work.
I've had the Kino Blu-ray of Alphaville for quite some time, but I was waiting for the right moment. Indulging in mostly horror for the month of October, I was more than ready for an obtuse art picture to re-align my sensibilities.Alphaville is one of the oddest films of its time and it still has the power to befuddle casual movie watchers. It's ostensibly a science fiction story set on a distant planet, though there are no futurist props or special effects of any kind.
Eddie Constantine is Lemmy Caution, a noirish secret agent who travels to the planet Alphaville. He does so in a Ford Mustang, though he calls it a Galaxie 500.
Alphaville is shot on the streets of Paris, in and around modern architecture that indeed looked futuristic in '65. Lemmy makes the acquaintance of a mysterious woman, played by Godard's muse Anna Karina.
Lemmy's mission is to neutralize the creator of a super computer called Alpha-60. Alphaville is a technocratic dictatorship where individual thoughts are illegal. Emotions like love, poetry, and imagination are treated as illnesses that must be eradicated or destroyed altogether.
Lemmy is captured and is questioned by Alpha-60, which dispassionately explains its dictates. He is told that the logical progression of civilization is its own destruction and Alpha-60 is the logical source to bring it about.
Kind of disquieting in the age of ChatGPT and OpenAI, isn't it? In fact, it's damned near terrifying.
There's a lot to take in with Alphaville. As with many great works of art (and yes, Alphaville is a masterpiece), multiple viewings are recommended.
Godard was, in his way, a seer. Realizing the direction society was heading, he set the dystopian world of Alphaville in contemporary Paris. Much like the way George Orwell called his novel 1984. Rearrange the numbers and you get 1948, the year in which he wrote his cautionary tail.
Intelligent people with imagination and poetry in their hearts look to the arts for warning signs of things to come. We as a society ignored the prognostications of George Orwell, Jean Luc Godard, and other visionaries, most of whom worked in the field of science fiction.
Even if all that isn't reason enough to watch Alphaville, the movie is gorgeous to behold. The black and white photography, the radical use of light, camerawork, and editing make Alphaville a work of brilliance even without the social implications therein.
As a little bonus, I followed Alphaville with Betaville, a 1986 short film from Alyce Wittenstein. Wittenstein was part of the New York Underground scene, but her work isn't as grimy and horrifying as that of most of her contemporaries.
Betaville is an amusing homage to the Godard classic. The basic premise follows Alphaville as a droll private dick and his companion drive to his old hometown of Betaville and find it has been usurped by fashion police. It's a nice satire about how revolutions are ultimately compromised by fashion mandates. You can find it on You Tube.
Written by Mark Sieber
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