Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville is a movie that’s haunted me, for better or worse, ever since I was a kid. In the ‘70s it would appear on one of the independent stations – I think it was channel 11 – usually around 2 a.m., and, like most movies shown on local TV, it was sliced and diced to make room for commercials and probably to excise the more prurient sequences. The movie, released in 1965, baffled me because it always pretended to be building toward something – only to fake me out time and time again by going absolutely nowhere. What’s even worse is that it goes nowhere so slowly. Ultimately, Alphaville strikes me as being hollow, preachy and dull – the quintessentially pretentious foreign movie.
Now that I’m an adult, able to appreciate the languid pace, cultural quirks and political focus of so much European cinema, the movie still strikes me that way.
Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, a character created by British pulp novelist Peter Cheyney. Caution is a shady detective – or perhaps a stoical spy trapped in a noir-drenched nightmare. There is something suitably menacing about Constantine’s pocked face as meets his tortured expression and almost flaunted inability to smile. Constantine plays Caution like Humphrey Bogart without the personality. The music in Alphaville consistently builds to a chilling near-crescendo for apparently no reason at all; the promised suspense is kept out of the movie. What matters in Alphaville are the shadowy mood, visual dissonance and its murky political undercurrent. (This film may be anti-dictatorship, among other things – but as long as it continues to be shown in the free world, it’s preaching to the converted.)
In the long run, Alphaville seems to be more anti-entertainment than anti-establishment. Ostensibly, Godard makes us work for our thrills – but there is nothing to really work for. For a movie to function as a puzzle, the pieces have to fit. Alphaville is merely puzzling. The plot is so complex and indirectly executed that it seems to melt in the heat of its own convolution.
Godard was among the crop of French “new wave” directors who came along in the ‘50s with the goal of bringing traditional cinema to its knees. His sense of poetic license has been absorbed by Quentin Tarantino, a fan, who also delights in breaking the rules without leaving cracks in the story. (Though the story in Alphaville is beside the point.) In parts of the film, the image goes negative or still, sound temporarily vanishes; the movie is littered with visual non sequiturs. But those are the aspects that intrigue me. I like the fact that Alphaville is supposed to be in some faraway galaxy – but looks unapologetically like Paris. I admire the way the setting is supposed to be the distant future, but Caution refers to having served in World War II. Though it’s the opposite of a popcorn flick – perhaps a caviar and Chardonnay flick – it’s a great way to waste a couple of hours – with the emphasis on “waste.” Certainly, I’ll give Alphaville another chance. If a good movie is a potato chip that you just can’t get enough of, Alphaville is an intellectual itch that you can never possibly reach. Incidentally, the film was released on a beautiful Criterion DVD – for those who want to live in Alphaville rather than just pay it a 2 a.m. visit.
Jordan Oakes is a local journalist who has written for publications such as St. Louis Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor. He has strong opinions that begin to atrophy if he doesn't exercise his right to express them. Tune in every Wednesday for another installment of Mediatribe - and if you missed last week's post, click here.
