Alphaville (1965)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”
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3 films that influenced Alphaville
What critics say influenced Alphaville
Jean-Luc Godards 1965 conceptual masterpiece is a hardboiled, Pop Art, sci-fi gloss on Jean Cocteau s Orpheus and George Orwell s 1984, using bits and pieces of contemporary Paris to evoke a totalitarian future.
Godard’s evocation of German expressionism also reveals a debt to Fritz Lang’s science-fiction (and place-named) landmark “Metropolis.”
Honestly, Alphaville deserves to be put in the company of Lang's Metropolis for this alone.
The film instantly made him one of the world’s most talked-about filmmakers and for the next seven years, he would crank out 15 feature films (not to mention a number of shorts), including such masterpieces as “Vivre sa Vie,” “Contempt,” “Alphaville” and “Weekend,” in arguably the most astonishingly sustained burst of creativity in the history of film before abandoning traditional narrative film (or at least his version of it) to spend a decade or so making increasingly challenging works that fused together his combined interests in formal experimentation, and radical politics.
First up, Ben and I took a look at Breathless , the film that, along with Francois Truffault's 400 Blows, blew the roof off the joint back in 1960, kicking off the Nouvelle Vague and recreating cinema.
No movie, not even Breathless, better exemplifies the syncretic quality of Godards early genius.
Before he loved anything else, Jean-Luc Godard loved genre: He famously dedicated his first feature film, "Breathless," to Monogram Pictures, one of the monarchs of Poverty Row B-picture production.
One might even say Alphaville is part of a spiritual trilogy, along with Breathless and Made In USA – the trio sharing an early-Godard-doing-riffs-on-the-American-gangster-pictures-he-loved feeling.
"Alphaville" was Godard's ninth feature, made only five years after his first, "Breathless" -- one of the great bursts of creativity in film history.