Alphaville (1965)

Alphaville, considered to be one of Jean-Luc Godard's best films left me going "Huh?" long after the credits were finished.  Perhaps I am not smart enough to fully understand nor appreciate this film, but I will try my best to give a full, yet basic run down of the particulars while providing a few key things that I thoroughly enjoyed about this "classic".

The story centers around a man named Lemmy Caution ( I love this name) that is sent to investigate and dispose of a computer called Alpha 60 that controls free thought and eradicates individuals that oppose his supreme way of thinking in a town called Alphaville...how appropriate.  The story alone seems interesting enough to grab one's attention, but the pacing of the movie and the delivery of the lines made me want to pull out what little hair I have left.  One scene in particular left me so puzzled that a month after seeing this movie I still don't fully understand it.

Lemmy after arriving at his hotel room in Alphaville is greeted by a woman, of which I presume to be something of a prostitute that is sent to "assist" Lemmy with his needs. While in the room a seemingly random guy bursts inside and tries to kill Lemmy with a gun.  Being as casual as if brushing his teeth, Lemmy proceeds to fight this individual and kill him.  No fuss is made and no general discussion is brought to the forefront as to why the person would want to kill him in the first place.  The entire movie operates under this pace of antici...........pation, but never gets resolved nor explained.  There are more scenes that follow this same general pace and lack of understanding.  Most of the dialogue is so coded and existential that I felt stupid and left out of something that I desperately wanted to know, much like an inside joke. I imagine this film was made with an outlandish amount of metaphors strung throughout that are relevant for the time, but don't seem to enhance the film.  At least not for myself.

OK, enough of me bashing this film.  There were certainly a few things that I did enjoy, most of which was the set and the costuming of the characters.  This film came out in 1965 and the outfits, makeup, etc that everyone wears screams this time period.  There were no costumes that were particularly unusual, but just seeing how intricate the details were on each of them could provide someone not around in the 60's (like myself) an idea of what people used to wear then.  Perhaps the best thing in this movie were the closeups and cut scenes utilized throughout the film.  I just wish I could have understood what they were saying during these intense scenes.  The voice of the computer Alpha 60 is nothing short of amazing.  An incredibly deep, raspy, slow voice spoken entirely in French is enough to watch the film.  According to Wikipedia, the gentleman that played the voice for Alpha 60 was someone that had a mechanical voice box....interesting little factoid there if you can fully trust Wikipedia.  No similar information could be found on IMDB however.

This film is certainly not for the casual movie watcher, but if you enjoy obtuse and thick dialogue with spurts of absolutely bizarre situations then find yourself a copy of this movie and drink a Red Bull before watching...