"We should not ask 'why', but only say 'because' in the context of a Godard-ville."
Transmogrifying a nocturnal Paris into the dystopian titular state ruled under the technocratic totalitarianism of a sentient, omnipresent mega-computer called Alpha 60, Godard's Golden Berlin Bear winner, cunningly configures the time-honored one-man-against-the-machine trope with a novel spin, devises a Sci-Fi mise-en-scène without the usual tailor-made props, and in lieu seizing on futuristic Parisian architecture-scape to create the galaxy-away alienness while philosophizing his ideology of what differentiates men from logic-abiding supermachine.
American crooner-turned-actor, the tough-looking Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, a role he had played numerous times before in French B movies, being appropriated by Godard here asa secret agent from "the Outlands",infiltrates Alphaville as a journalist with a hard-as-nail aggression, also a shutterbug pertinaciously snaps the menagerie of its societal pathology, after seeking out a missing agent Henri Dickson (a jaded Tamiroof adds a layer of gnomic improbability upon the carnal decadence), whose total capitulation prompts him to exact hisultimate mission: to emancipate the city from the thralls of Alpha 60 and its alleged maker Prof. von Braun (Vernon).
Whisking Lemmy in and out sundry locations and peppering up the story-line with Godard-esque action fragments, jerky, spontaneous, whimsical and inconsequential, the hotel room scuffle in the opening is such a nonsensically "un-real" incident that one might question its occurrence when a broken window on the door appear intact in the next scene, ALPHAVILLE is Godard's knowing deconstruction-and-reconstruction of the venerated genre of its prescient-then, blasé-now central message, drawing on a faintly Borgesian inspiration to sound off in the traditional duality between the hero and the damsel-in-distress, here portrayed by Anna Karina's Natacha von Braun, supposedly, the daughter of Prof. von Braun, whose suppressed emotions are slowly awoken by Lemmy's ongoing interference, and “conscience” is the operative word here.
Dubbed with a gruff, mechanical, halting male voice, Alpha 60 exchanges many a colloquy with Lemmy covering a wide scope of topics, a verbal spar between rationalism and denialism, larded with Godard's protean experimentation of his cinematic languages (jump-cuts, negative prints , repeated motifs have long become Godard's norms) and Paul Misraki's fittingly atmospheric incidental music, ALPHAVILLE alternatively, intrigues, bemuses and entrances an armchair spectator with its anti-utopia
cognition and blithe distinction that is snugly in Godard's elements, and this agglomeration of nouvelle vague and futuristic noir may also archly suggest that audience should not ask "why", but only say "because" in the context of a Godard-ville.
referential entries: Godard's WEEKEND (1967, 7.7/10), CONTEMPT (1963, 7.3/10)
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