Quick Review: Alphaville

[jeriendhal]

Alphaville

Summary: In French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 dystopian science fiction film, secret agent Lemmy Caution [1] is sent into the titular city in his space going Ford Galaxie to try and find its creator, Dr. Von Braun, and destroy the city's main computer, Alpha 60.

Review: In this film, using modernistic locations in Paris to depict the futuristic city, Godard proves that you don't need special effects or fancy sets to make a science fiction film. Unfortunately he also decided you didn't need a coherent plot or three dimensional characters either

(not that the latter two points ever stopped Michael Bay)





[1] No, seriously, that's his name. Apparently there was a whole series of flims about this character, played by American expat Eddie Constantine. At least until this movie effectively killed the franchise.

Comments

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

"Unfortunately he also decided you didn't need a coherent plot or three dimensional characters either"

Ouch.

I think perhaps I shall skip this film in spite of your glowing and highly favorable review. :p

This reminds me of an event when I was in high school that has lead to my rule of thumb, "If your chock full of violence film is boring two teenage boys... It has serious plot and characterization problems." Stemming from the rental of a gangster movie in which one of us eventually said, "Do you want to keep watching this? Or should we put Alien in?" and, "Oh! You're bored too? Yeah, put Alien in." When we popped the tape out we were shocked the movie was half over and we still had absolutely no idea what was going on other than people wanted to kill each other.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's very philosophical. Which translates to listening to the voice of the Computer meander on about life, as voiced by a man with an artificial larynx to make it ever more incomprehensible compelling.

Oh, and there were some rebels being executed during a women's swim meet. As in being forced to walk to the end of diving board and being shot while the women did sprints.

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

Wow, if anything it now sounds like an even less comprehensible movie.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

At some point, Godard became a self-parody. I didn't realize the seeds were visible this early.