Alphaville (1965)

Lack of good storyline.

Better Late Then Never

An action-packed slog

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An Audacious Amalgamation of Literature and Film, Goddard's Movie is bursting with Pop Cultural references. With a Philosophical Conceit, a Very Low-Budget, and Unlimited Energy from the Director, the Film was extremely Derivative and Influential. No Mean Feat.There are Incomprehensible Things, like one would likely Find in the Future, much of it doesn't make a whole lot of linear sense. The Hero (Detective, Secret Agent, Journalist), plucked Iconically From Film-Noir, says He drives a Ford Galaxy. It's actually a Mustang.This is a Tongue in Cheek Homage and its Strength is the Sharp, Flashing, Expressionistic Sets and Lighting. The Director's Expressionism comes from within the Camera and Not From SFX.There is much to Take In from "Alphaville". You can siphon Nuggets almost Everywhere and Constantly, and its Blend of Styling, both Literary and Cinematic, are that of Sci-Fi, Film-Noir, Comic Books, Orwell, Kafka, Welles, and others. It's Goddard's Bouillabaisse. A Tasty Treat of Film-As-Art. Stimulating, Bizarre, Unique, Avant-Garde, Funny, and Entertaining.

Snobbies gonna loves. This movie is really bad : annoying, bad direction, bad actors, bad scenario, bad costumes, bad sceneries, bad anticipations, bad science fictions, everything is so wrong... This is not science fiction. Just some poor, really poor, projection of the 50's technology. This movie is just ridiculous, the science fiction label is clearly here a simple marketing argument. Include the love story is a total fail, the drama is not a drama, it's just boring as hell. If you want to watch some great Godard movies, have a look to "Pierrot Le Fou", because Alphaville is probably the worst Godard film ever.

In a near future, the American secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) travels to Alphaville posing as the journalist Ivan Johnson from the Figaro-Pravda newspaper. His mission is to find the missing agent Henry Dickson (Akim Tamirof) and to convince Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon) to come with him to Nueva York. Prof. von Braun is actually Leonard Nosferatu and has created the powerful computer Alpha 60 that has conceived the inhuman dystopian society of Alphaville, where love, conscience, poetry and emotion have been banished and words are systematically eliminated from the dictionary. Alpha 60 is also omnipresent and Lemmy has the assistance of Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina), who is the daughter of von Braun. Soon he falls in love with Natacha but he needs to complete his mission before leaving Alphaville."Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy" is my favorite Godard movie and maybe his most digestible film despite being weird. This is the third time that I see this sci-fi noir (last time was on 07 September 2001) and it is still an intriguing story that resembles George Orwell's 1984, inclusive with the idea of rewriting the dictionary removing words related to emotions and including new ones. The scary atmosphere gives the sensation of nightmare and the sets and locations are ahead of time. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Alphaville"

I am really afraid to say anything negative about this film, given the incredibly low level of critique demonstrated by the people here who didn't like it, but...I have never thought that this was anywhere near the best of his '60s films. But I jumped at the chance to see it on the big screen again yesterday. I hoped to revise my opinion. Which I did not.People who do not understand why the Paris of the moment when the film was made is used to represent a future dystopia should be condemned to never watching a film outside of the Mainstream ever again. The point is blindingly obvious: dystopia is all around us. Using music and lighting and camera movement to represent that, rather than relying on triumphantly gaudy and expensive production design, shows that Godard is a filmmaker down to the tips of his toes. He learned so much from the American directors who had no recourse to expensive sets and had to use shadows and fog...I'm thinking of Lang on Man Hunt, Mann on G - Men. Of course, Ulmer on Detour, etc.All this is amazing. And there are great set pieces (the swimming pool, for example). And the use of the same couple of bars of music, over and over, is great, too.Look, I don't need to believe in the relationships and the ideas in Godard films in order to enjoy them. Karina and Constantine was perhaps a very inspired mismatch. And I've read and studied lots of Brecht. But Alphaville just doesn't SWING for me the way most of the others from this time do. But, you know what? I'm going to watch it again.