Thursday, April 5, 2012

Alphaville (Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution) 1965 *1/2

ALPHAVILLE

This is what happens when a director thinks he’s brilliant and people take him at his word. 

French director Jean-Luc Godard is an ego-maniac who is often identified as one of the preeminent members of La Nouvelle Vague (New Wave).  Yet, unlike other stalwart members such as Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, and Jacques Demy, Godard never learned how to play well with others. As such, he destroyed a very valuable friendship with Truffaut and often found himself without financial backing for his cinematic visions.  Personally, I find it to be a universal crime that Truffaut died relatively young at the age of 52, but Godard, at 81, still continues to make films.  I’ll take a Truffaut movie over a Godard one any day. 

lemmAlphaville (1965) is a satiric science-fiction noir that attempts to say something about the dehumanizing effects of modernization.  Literally transported from author Peter Cheyney’s books and countless French films,  Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is the “hero” of the picture.  A chain-smoking secret agent who sports a trenchcoat and a fedora, Godard’s Caution is nothing like the detective you would’ve seen in Cheyney’s novels or you might of watched in the earlier Lemmy Caution films.  As such, fans of both were outraged when they saw what Godard had done to their beloved character.  Gone was the optimistic strong detective; and, in his place audiences found a bitter nihilistic man who they viewed as depressing.  I’ve never read any of the novels or seen any of the earlier films, but I can attest to the fact that Caution is a downer. I never once found myself rooting for him nor did I ever see why any woman, let alone one played by Anna Karina, would be attracted to him.  In Lemmy Caution, Godard created a new type of character: the anti-anti-hero. I, for one, was not impressed.

The story is classic Godard—which means the plot is thin (to say the least) and heavily reliant on rambling, nonsensical conversations.  Caution is on an intAlphaville_017-1-1024x820ergalactic mission (he’s from the Outlands) to find a missing agent (played by Akim Tamiroff) and the creator of Alphaville, Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon).  Once he accomplishes these things he is then supposed to destroy (by quoting poetry!) Alpha 60, a tyrannical supercomputer that has banned such words as “love” and “conscience”, and orders the executions of those who cry or show any real type of emotion.  Caution’s mission becomes somewhat complicated when he becomes fascinated with von Braun’s daughter (Karina). It sounds sane enough, but that’s because I, not Godard, wrote the plot synopsis—it’s anything but logical. 

Improvisation works in certain situations (such as comedy), but I don’t think it should be recommended when attempting to make some semblance of a science fiction film.  I read once that Godard asked his assistant director, Charles Bitsch, to write a screenplay for the film after producer André Michelin demanded he have something to show to prospective German backemcders. Bitsch, who was quite unfamiliar with the Caution books, wrote a 30-page treatment which Godard didn’t bother to read before he passed it onto Michelin.  None of Bitsch “screenplay” ever made it to the screen and the German backers demanded their money back.  This is what it was (and still is) like to “work” with Godard. 

Still, if you can look past the pretentiousness of the flashing lights and signs that are supposed to be meaningful (but just irritated me), there is one nice thing about the film: its excellent cinematography at the hands of the great Raoul Coutard.  The principal photographer of such stalwart films as Z (1969), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), and Jules et Jim (1962), Coutard knew how to capture strikingly memorable images.  I suspect the primary reason I like such Godard films as Contempt (1963) and Breathless (1960) is bealpha5cause Coutard was the cinematographer.  The most impressive thing about Alphaville is the opening four-minute sequence of the film, where Caution enters his hotel and the camera tracks his every move from the entryway to his own hotel room. It is an unedited tracking shot that follows him through an elevator and winding corridors--a miniature version of Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil (1958). Visually, it is a stunning picture, but everything else, in my opinion, is lacking. 

And, speaking of Welles, I think he said it best in his analysis of Godard: "His gifts as a director are enormous. I just can't take him very seriously as a thinker—and and that's where we seem to differ, because he does. His message is what he cares about these days, and, like most movie messages, it could be written on the head of a pin." For someone who thinks he has so much to say about society Godard has a really poor way of conveying it.  If you, and perhaps a few others, are the only one who can decipher what you are trying to say, how useful is it really?

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12 comments:

  1. Goddard is all about style over substance. He's all about making an artistic statement rather than a statement about the world or people. I have to keep myself there mentally when I watch his movies or I find myself immediately frustrated.

    Goddard has become for me a walk through an art gallery. Look at how pretty, look at how interesting, look at how it might change how I view the art...but in this case not how I view the world.

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    1. I agree that he is very stylistic. Yet, I also think while he's attempting to make an artistic statement that he is also trying to make a philosophical one as well.

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    2. unfortunately the non-existant philosophical statement always seems to involve young girls unshaved pussies being flashed, godard stole from his mother and truffaut, told Karina to stop working when they moved in together, constantly represented women as whores just when they were desparately trying to gain enough respect to enter the workplace, oh, and then there's the handicapped girl who has to do a horizontal star shape in front of a old wanked director like him...my typing is art you ignorant masses bow down and worship me! thats godard and agree, he should be long gone.

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    3. Wow...that was a mouthful of unhappiness to ward Godard. Did you work for him once?

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  2. I was watching this recently and I wasn't sure if I should be laughing or not. I just knew it was critically acclaimed, but not why. I was sitting there wondering if this was supposed to be a parody of both noir and science fiction because the scenes were so over the top. After finishing the film I'm still not sure if I was supposed to be laughing, although I suspect not.

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    1. Chip, I'm gonna go with NOT. It is over the top, but it wouldn't be Godard if it wasn't.

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  3. Kim, Thank you, for your awesome review, to a film I have never heard of.

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    1. This sounds a bit like a backhanded compliment, Dawn. LOL! Still, I wish I could recommend the film, but I want you to watch more foreign films (this would just drive you further away from them).

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  4. Kim, when I was reading about films as a kid, I thought ALPHAVILLE sounded cool. When I saw it, I thought it was stupid. I'm not sure if Godard was having a good laugh on viewers or not. Of course, I've never seen any of the other films in the Lemmy Caution series and, based on Eddie's performance (or non-performance), I have no desire to do so. Have you seen GERMANY YEAR 90 NINE ZERO, Godard's 1991 hour-long follow-up with Constantine reprising his role?

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    1. Rick, I haven't ever watched an entire post-1970s Godard film--only clips (and some of those were too much). It just went off the rails when Truffaut stopped helping him. What a waste of talent.

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  5. Well I am happy to see I am not the only one not too pleased with Alphaville. I also think he did not indend it as a joke (he is way too self-obsessed for that), it just comes out that way.

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    1. Godard sometimes makes me very angry. Oh, I wish he had been more like Truffaut.

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