In its opening credits, Jean-Luc Godard’s neo-noir is alternately titled "Alphaville, A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution." The secondary caption is an allusion to the Peter Cheyney pulp novels on which the film is loosely based. It sounds like a kids’ sci-fi adventure story a la “Flash Gordon.”
Instead, the low-budget, black-and-white, picture is a unique mix of noir and science fiction elements that Godard inventively blends into a dystopian polemic about an authoritarian world known as "Alphaville." A giant narrating computer called the Alpha 60 dictates all domestic and foreign policy. Goddard used an actor without a larynx, speaking through a voice box, for the computer's otherworldly intonation.
This is more “1984” than “Flash Gordon.”
In this strange reality, days are short and nights are long. Darkness and long shadows pervade. Authoritarian-enforced logic tramples out emotion and imagination. Goddard's canny use of newly built modern architecture in and around Paris transports the audience to the off-kilter narrative terrain. More and more words are banned on a daily basis. Male citizens are publicly exterminated at a ratio of 50 to one against females. "Brainwashed agitators" are sent to other galaxies.
The ruddy-faced Eddie Constantine plays Ivan Johnson a.k.a. Lemmy Caution. Pretending to be a journalist working on assignment for Figaro-Pravda, Lemmy acts on a mission to assassinate Alphaville's mastermind, Professor Vonbraun, before dismantling the Alpha 60 computer brain.
By his own admission, Lemmy is in love with "gold and women." The chain-smoking Constantine provides an unattractive version of the Philip Marlowe archetype. Tongue-in-cheek humor is also at play. Mr. Johnson arrives through "galactic space" in white Ford Mustang he asserts is a "Ford Galaxie." Direct references to Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon come with a knowing wink of earnest delivery.
The enigmatic Anna Karina plays Natasha Vonbraun, a flirty call-girl spy who also happens to be Vonbraun's renegade daughter. Romantic sparks fly between Lemmy and Natasha. Natasha is curious about the "outer countries" that she hopes Lemmy will help her escape to.
Many aspects of Goddard's pop culture treatise come across as heavy-handed and naive. The Alpha 60 computer asks Lemmy, "What transforms darkness into light"? The tired protagonist combatively responds, "poetry." Goddard’s gutter intellectual is essentially flipping the bird at the machine that could crush him like a bug. It's a final act of defiance that pays off for our hero because he's just plain meaner than anyone else in the movie.
"Alphaville" is a cinematic touchstone that influenced films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Brazil," "Blade Runner" and "The Matrix." Modern audiences may be tempted to overlook the significance of Goddard's groundbreaking vision, but that doesn't detract from its lasting influence on film and on popular culture.
