Alphaville. (15.)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 1965.
Starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff. Available to stream from the MUBI library, or to rent from the BFI Player. Black and white. 95 mins.
Having anticipation for a Godard film is a perilous position: he is one of cinema's most casually gifted talents, but generally delivers frustration and disappointment. If you'd like a football analogy, he's a Zlatan Ibrahimovic who insists on playing the N'Golo Kante role. For decades I've been meaning to see his sixties sci-fi pastiche, where black and white sixties Paris play the title role of the futuristic city. It seemed like a premise loaded with possibility and people that had seen it seemed to have actually enjoyed it. But even so, he'd find a way to make it miserable wouldn't he? But no, this is it, this is the Godard film that flies, that entertains or something very close, that is almost as enjoyable as you hoped it could be.
Though his name doesn't get thrown up that much in discussion of the film, Alphaville could almost be an adaptation of William Burroughs. Godard and Burrough are kindred spirits in that they are both artists where the good bits are scattered amongst heaps of tedium. Godard had no time for his junky milieu, but the way Alphaville tries to graft an abstract fantasy world over drab reality, a realm divided into zones and controlled by authoritarian regimes enforcing arbitrary laws is the essence of Burroughs. The swimming pool execution scene, where what looks like a female synchronised swimming team dive in to retrieve the corpses every time a prisoner is machine-gunned off the diving board, doesn't come from any of his books but is more Naked Lunch than anything in Cronenberg's film adaptation.
At the centre of the film is the hard-boiled detective Lemmy Caution (Constantine.) Caution was an already well-established trenchcoated figure in books and films, who Godard co-opted into his dystopia. To be honest, I assumed he was a Burroughs figure, only realising after that I had confused him with Clem Snide private asshole, who after Dr Benway is the character that reoccurs most in his fiction.
Godard borrows liberally and from all the best people; lines from Borges, ideas from Orwell, primarily the concept of Newspeak: words disappear, replace with new ones that describe new concepts. The idea of Humphrey Bogart taking on Big Brother sums up the film and Godard's appeal: when he's good his films have a carefree, limitless imagination. Alphaville feels like it was thrown together; one of those rare occasions when cinema seems nimble and spontaneous, rather than a lumbering army of technicians.
Alphaville is very much a film for now, our phenomenological present where large swathes of humanity are rebelling against the tyranny of their own eyes and refusing to be trapped by the drab constructs of reality. What is more 2020 than watching two people driving in a car toward the outskirts of Paris and being asked to believe that this is intergalactic space travel from Alphaville to the Outer Countries? It's a supreme piece of Orwellian doublethink; believing, despite the photographic evidence to the contrary, that black and white 60s Paris is another Galaxy. We're not just on a flat Earth, we're on a flat universe.
This is one of the films now available on MUBI.com new Libary section. They still have their curated 30 films and that still operates on a daily one in, one out policy, but beyond that, it now offers a section of other films that have been been on the site previously. You can work your way through at a more leisurely pace, without having to worry about how many more days they will be available for.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 1965.
Starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff. Available to stream from the MUBI library, or to rent from the BFI Player. Black and white. 95 mins.
Having anticipation for a Godard film is a perilous position: he is one of cinema's most casually gifted talents, but generally delivers frustration and disappointment. If you'd like a football analogy, he's a Zlatan Ibrahimovic who insists on playing the N'Golo Kante role. For decades I've been meaning to see his sixties sci-fi pastiche, where black and white sixties Paris play the title role of the futuristic city. It seemed like a premise loaded with possibility and people that had seen it seemed to have actually enjoyed it. But even so, he'd find a way to make it miserable wouldn't he? But no, this is it, this is the Godard film that flies, that entertains or something very close, that is almost as enjoyable as you hoped it could be.
Though his name doesn't get thrown up that much in discussion of the film, Alphaville could almost be an adaptation of William Burroughs. Godard and Burrough are kindred spirits in that they are both artists where the good bits are scattered amongst heaps of tedium. Godard had no time for his junky milieu, but the way Alphaville tries to graft an abstract fantasy world over drab reality, a realm divided into zones and controlled by authoritarian regimes enforcing arbitrary laws is the essence of Burroughs. The swimming pool execution scene, where what looks like a female synchronised swimming team dive in to retrieve the corpses every time a prisoner is machine-gunned off the diving board, doesn't come from any of his books but is more Naked Lunch than anything in Cronenberg's film adaptation.
At the centre of the film is the hard-boiled detective Lemmy Caution (Constantine.) Caution was an already well-established trenchcoated figure in books and films, who Godard co-opted into his dystopia. To be honest, I assumed he was a Burroughs figure, only realising after that I had confused him with Clem Snide private asshole, who after Dr Benway is the character that reoccurs most in his fiction.
Godard borrows liberally and from all the best people; lines from Borges, ideas from Orwell, primarily the concept of Newspeak: words disappear, replace with new ones that describe new concepts. The idea of Humphrey Bogart taking on Big Brother sums up the film and Godard's appeal: when he's good his films have a carefree, limitless imagination. Alphaville feels like it was thrown together; one of those rare occasions when cinema seems nimble and spontaneous, rather than a lumbering army of technicians.
Alphaville is very much a film for now, our phenomenological present where large swathes of humanity are rebelling against the tyranny of their own eyes and refusing to be trapped by the drab constructs of reality. What is more 2020 than watching two people driving in a car toward the outskirts of Paris and being asked to believe that this is intergalactic space travel from Alphaville to the Outer Countries? It's a supreme piece of Orwellian doublethink; believing, despite the photographic evidence to the contrary, that black and white 60s Paris is another Galaxy. We're not just on a flat Earth, we're on a flat universe.
This is one of the films now available on MUBI.com new Libary section. They still have their curated 30 films and that still operates on a daily one in, one out policy, but beyond that, it now offers a section of other films that have been been on the site previously. You can work your way through at a more leisurely pace, without having to worry about how many more days they will be available for.
