Alphaville Une Etrange Aventure De Lemmy Caution

Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy 1965, 98 minutes

Special agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) travels across space and time (in a white Ford Galaxy!) to the city of Alphaville. His mission is to investigate the disappearance of fellow agent Henri Dickson and to bring back Professor Von Braun (Howard Vernon), the man responsible for creating the Alpha-60 computer which rules Alphaville on techno-fascist lines. Weeping is outlawed, conscience and love have been erased from the lexicon and the populace are tattooed for easy identification.

Hardly the sci-fi purists ideal film then, Godard's Alphaville offers the eclectic mix of ideas, cultural and filmic references that is typical of his work - where else would you find Paul Eluard's surrealist poetry rubbing shoulders with the character Harry Dickson, a continental version of Sherlock Holmes? - but in a sort of pulp fiction or comic-strip format that is more readily accessible to the uninitiated.

The presence of Vernon and especially Constantine is Godard's nod to the gangster and film noir films from which Alphaville draws much of its inspiration. Constantine was an American born, naturalised French actor famed for his portrayal of the Lemmy Caution character in a series of crime movies. Vernon was also a regular in these films and had worked with a wide range of directors including, most relevantly, Jean-Pierre Melville (Silence de la Mer) and Fritz Lang (Die Tausend Augen Des Doktor Mabuse, a similarly paranoid exploration of technology).

Godard's avoidance of conventional science fiction architecture, in favour of what was actually available within Paris 1965, is his way of commenting on the city, what it was doing to its inhabitants, and what they were in danger of becoming; all themes further explored in Two or Three Things I Know About Her.

Review by Keith H Brown
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98