Alphaville combines the genres of dystopianscience fiction and film noir. There are no special props or futuristic sets; instead, the film was shot in real locations in Paris, the night-time streets of the capital becoming the streets of Alphaville, while modernist glass and concrete buildings (which in 1965 were new and strange architectural designs) represent the city's interiors. The film is set in the future but the characters also refer to twentieth-century events; for example, the hero describes himself as a Guadalcanal veteran.
Expatriate American actor Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, a trenchcoat-wearing secret agent. Constantine had already played this or similar roles in dozens of previous films; the character was originally created by British crime novelist Peter Cheyney. However, in Alphaville, director Jean-Luc Godard moves Caution away from his usual twentieth-century setting and places him in a futuristic sci-fi dystopia, the technocraticdictatorship of Alphaville.
Plot
Lemmy Caution is a secret agent with the code number of 003 from "the Outlands". Entering Alphaville in his Ford Galaxie,[3] he poses as a journalist named Ivan Johnson and claims to work for the Figaro-Pravda. Caution is on a series of missions. First, he searches for the missing agent Henri Dickson; second, he is to capture or kill the creator of Alphaville, Professor von Braun; lastly, he aims to destroy Alphaville and its dictatorial computer, Alpha 60. Alpha 60 is a sentient computer system created by von Braun, portrayed using an actual Bull Gamma 60 computer in the movie,[4] which is in complete control of all of Alphaville.
Alpha 60 has outlawed free thought and individualist concepts like love, poetry, and emotion in the city, replacing them with contradictory concepts or eliminating them altogether. One of Alpha 60's dictates is that "people should not ask 'why', but only say 'because'". People who show signs of emotion are presumed to be acting illogically and are executed. There is a dictionary in every hotel room that is continuously updated when words that are deemed to evoke emotion become banned. As a result, Alphaville is an inhuman, alienated society.
Images of the E = mc2 and E = hf (the equations of, respectively, special relativity and quantum mechanics) are displayed several times to refer to the scientism that underpins Alphaville. At one point, Caution passes through a place called the Grand Omega Minus, from where brainwashed people are sent out to the other "galaxies" to start strikes, revolutions, family rows, and student revolts.
As an archetypal American antihero private eye, in trenchcoat and with weathered visage, Lemmy Caution's old-fashioned machismo conflicts with the puritanical computer. The opposition of his role to logic (and that of other dissidents to the regime) is represented by faux quotations from Capitale de la douleur ("Capital of Pain"), a book of poems by Paul Éluard.
Caution meets Dickson, who soon dies in the process of making love to a "Seductress Third Class". Caution then enlists the assistance of Natacha von Braun, a programmer of Alpha 60 and daughter of Professor von Braun. Natacha is a citizen of Alphaville and, when questioned, says that she does not know the meaning of "love" or "conscience". Caution falls in love with her, and his love introduces emotion and unpredictability into the city. Natacha discovers, with the help of Lemmy Caution, that she was actually born outside Alphaville.
Professor von Braun was originally known as Leonard Nosferatu, but Caution is repeatedly told that Nosferatu no longer exists. The Professor himself talks infrequently, referring only vaguely to his hatred for journalists, and offering Caution the chance to join Alphaville, even going so far as to offer him the opportunity to rule a galaxy. When he refuses Caution's offer to go back to "the outlands", Caution kills him.
Alpha 60 converses with Lemmy Caution several times, and its mechanically-produced voice is seemingly ever-present in the city. Caution eventually destroys or incapacitates it by telling it a riddle that involves something that Alpha 60 cannot comprehend: poetry. The concept of the individual self has been lost to the collectivized citizens of Alphaville, and this is the key to Caution's riddle.
At the end, Natacha realizes that it is her understanding of herself as an individual with desires. The film ends with her line "Je vous aime" ("I love you").
Howard Vernon as Professor von Braun/Leonard Nosferatu
Production
“Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon) has invented the omniscient computer that rules the lives of the Alphaville citizens...The dominating computer, reducing life to ‘logic’...replaces the individual’s will with a tranquilized submission...In Alphaville, by computer decree, killing is a spectator sport. At a swimming pool, illogical [disobedient] men...are blindfolded and made to stand on diving boards. They are shot and fall into the water, whereupon girls with knives dive into the pool and hack at the bodies. All this is greeted with polite applause from the tranquilized onlookers. The atmosphere is totally unemotional.” - Film historian Gordon Gow in Suspense in the Cinema (1968).[5]
Despite its futuristic scenario, Alphaville was filmed entirely in and around Paris and no special sets or props were constructed. Buildings used were the Electricity Board building for the Alpha 60 computer centre and the Hotel Scribe.[6]
Constantine came to the film through producer André Michelin, who had the actor under contract. Constantine had become a popular actor in France and Germany through his portrayal of tough-guy detective Lemmy Caution in a series of earlier films. Godard appropriated the character for Alphaville but according to director Anne Andreu,[7] Godard's subversion of the Lemmy Caution "stereotype" effectively shattered Constantine's connection with the character—he reportedly said that he was shunned by producers after Alphaville was released. Constantine didn't play Lemmy Caution again until Panic Time in 1980.[8]
The opening section of the film includes an unedited sequence that depicts Caution walking into his hotel, checking in, riding an elevator and being taken through various corridors to his room. According to cinematographer Raoul Coutard, he and Godard shot this section as a continuous four-minute take. Part of this sequence shows Caution riding an elevator up to his room, which was achieved thanks to the fact that the hotel used as the location had two glass-walled elevators side by side, allowing the camera operator to ride in one lift while filming Constantine riding the other car through the glass between the two. However, as Coutard recalled, this required multiple takes, since the elevators were old and in practice they proved very difficult to synchronize.[7]
Like most of Godard's films, the performances and dialogue in Alphaville were substantially improvised. Assistant director Charles Bitsch recalled that, even when production commenced, he had no idea what Godard was planning to do. Godard's first act was to ask Bitsch to write a screenplay, saying that producer Michelin had been pestering him for a script because he needed it to help him raise finance from backers in Germany (where Constantine was popular). Bitsch protested that he had never read a Lemmy Caution book, but Godard simply said "Read one and then write it." Bitsch read a Caution book, then wrote a 30-page treatment and brought it to Godard, who said "OK, fine" and took it without even looking at it. It was then given to Michelin, who was pleased with the result, and the "script" was duly translated into German and sent off to the backers. In fact, none of it even reached the screen and according to Bitsch the German backers later asked Michelin to repay the money when they saw the completed film.[7]
Influences on the film
Louis-Ferdinand Céline is directly referenced by Caution in the taxi, when he says "I am on a journey to the end of the night" (Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932). Also, the use of poetry to combat Alpha 60 as a sentient being echoes the attitudes of Céline in a number of his works.
Henri Bergson is also referenced by Caution when being interrogated by Alpha 60, when he answers "the immediate data of consciousness " (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, 1889) when asked his religion. Bergson's rejection of idealism in favour of felt experiences parallels Caution's conflict with the logical Alpha 60.
Another reference to French poetry is made by Caution when speaking to Alpha 60, saying that when it will solve his riddle it will become "[his] like, [his] brother," echoing the famous last line of Charles Baudelaire's To the Reader in Flowers of Evil.
Jean Cocteau exerted significant influence on Godard's films,[9] and parallels between Alphaville and Cocteau's 1950 film Orpheus are evident. For example, Orphée's search for Cégeste and Caution's for Henri Dickson, between the poems Orphée hears on the radio and the aphoristic questions given by Alpha 60, between Orphée's victory over death through the recovery of his poetic powers and Caution's use of poetry to destroy Alpha 60.[9] Godard also openly acknowledges his debt to Cocteau on several occasions.[10] When Alpha 60 is destroyed, for instance, people stagger down labyrinthine corridors and cling to the walls like the inhabitants of Cocteau's Zone de la mort, and, at the end of the film, Caution tells Natacha not to look back. Godard compares this scene with Orphée's warning to Eurydice, and it is also possible to detect a reference here to the biblical flight from Sodom.[10]
In "The Prisoner" 1967 TV series, the lead character says "I am not a number. . .I am a free man" similar to Caution's frequent defiant statements. The question "who is number one?" is frequently asked, but never answered. We can conclude that it is the computer that controls the Village. Number One corresponds with the letter Alpha, the name of the computer controlling Alphaville.
Haruki Murakami's 2004 novel After Dark features a love hotel named after the film. The book is also set entirely at night and the narrative voice often takes the shape of a camera.[17]
The music video for the 2005 Kelly Osbourne song "One Word" is an homage to Alphaville. It was filmed in black and white and restages multiple sequences from the film, including many specific shots, and also recreates many of the film's distinctive costumes, sets and locations.[18]
The 2009 song "Your Pretty Sphinx Voice" by The Sour Notes includes sampled passages from Paul Éluard's "Capitale de la Douleur", as recited in the film.
Bryan Ferry's 2010 album Olympia includes a track titled "Alphaville", which takes its name from this film.
The name of a Finnish movie production company Villealfa comes from the movie. Also, the name of Aki Kaurismäki's character in an early Mika Kaurismäki movie The Liar is Ville Alfa.
New York-based experimental metal band Imperial Triumphant's 2020 album is named Alphaville.
Bally's 1966 pinball machine Capersville was inspired by the film.
Reception
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On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Alphaville received an approval rating of 91% based on 46 reviews, and an average rating of 8.36/10. Its consensus reads, "While Alphaville is by no means a conventional sci-fi film, Jean-Luc Godard creates a witty, noir-ish future all his own."[20]Time Out London gave the film a positive review, calling it "a dazzling amalgam of film noir and science fiction".[21]
^Gow, Gordon. 1968. Suspense in the Cinema. Castle Books, New York. The Tanvity Press and A. S. Barnes & Co. Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card No: 68-15196. Pp. 119-120
