A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #25: Jean-​Luc Godard’s Alphav­ille.

Watch­ing this film, one of the first things I real­ized is that Jean-​Luc Godard has no idea how to make con­vinc­ing sci­ence fic­tion. The next thing I real­ized was that Godard was merely using enough of the sci­ence fic­tion idiom to dis­play and enact his dialec­tic bat­tle between love and logic. From this point of view, the incon­sis­ten­cies and patho­log­i­cal inabil­ity to fully sus­pend dis­be­lief are of sec­ondary con­se­quence to observ­ing philo­soph­i­cal gym­nas­tics that only the French are capa­ble of. Alphav­ille is a city con­trolled by a com­puter called Alpha 60, whose goal is to remake human­ity in his own image, purely log­i­cal and with­out even the slight­est abil­ity to express emo­tion. Alpha 60 also sounds like you’d expect a guy who smokes through a stoma to talk. Thank God the Inter­galac­tic Secret Agent Lemmy Cau­tion has been sent from the Out­lands to do a lit­tle recon, kill a man and destroy Alpha 60 if he can. As a bonus he gets to sleep with Anna Karina.

Since this was shot in the 60s it feels pretty dated, because the sci-​fi is cul­tural, it becomes anachro­nis­tic in its set­ting; whereas some­thing like The Day The Earth Stood Still brings in all the sci­ence fic­tion from an extra-​terrestrial source, and while dated, remains believ­able. Alphav­ille is more on the order of Philip K. Dick­ian, psy­cho­log­i­cal trauma fraught with para­noia. Alpha 60’s omnipres­ence facil­i­tates cul­tural com­par­isons to Orwell’s 1984 and David Bowie’s song Sav­iour Machine. At the same time, the 60s were the per­fect time to find visual cog­nates to reflect the tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment of soci­ety. You’ve got to think in that frame of mind to rec­og­nize build­ings that look like punch-​cards though. Much like sci-​fi from that period couldn’t pre­dict per­sonal com­puter or the dig­i­tal age, and you end up with space­men using slide-​rules.

At one point Lemmy is inter­ro­gated by Alpha 60 to deter­mine whether he can be suc­cess­fully assim­i­lated or whether he should be exe­cuted. He man­ages to present the com­puter with a conun­drum that even­tu­ally short cir­cuits the thing, simul­ta­ne­ously free­ing and destroy­ing most of the inhab­i­tants of Alphav­ille. The ones who had become fully log­i­cal and emo­tion­less, who had for­got­ten words like weep­ing and red­breast, went mad and died when the lights went out. Only those with some emo­tional bear­ing left to them had the abil­ity to sur­vive the death of logic in the face of uni­ver­sal poetry wielded by the ugly crag of a man called Lemmy Cau­tion. Light is both safety net and the yoke of logic in Alphav­ille, and it is only in the dark recesses of inter­galac­tic space, and in the human heart that emo­tion can find the strength to triumph.

• Cri­te­rion Essay by Andrew Sarris
• Cri­te­rion Con­trap­tion Review
• Cin­e­matic Reflec­tions Review
• Strictly Film School Review
• Epis­te­mol­ogy in Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville
• PIF Mag­a­zine Review
• Video:
  • Watch the Trailer
  • Watch a Clip
  • Watch the Whole Movie