Movies - Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution

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	Movies - Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution

:For other uses, see Alphaville.

Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution is a 99-minute 1965 science fiction film (dystopia) directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Howard Vernon and Akim Tamiroff. Several scenes incorporate concepts from La Capitale de la Douleur (The Capital of Pain), a book of poems by Paul Éluard.

Plot details

The plot is simple - Lemmy Caution (played by Constantine), an 'outland' agent, arrives in the futuristic city of Alphaville to search for missing agent Henry Dickson. The city is under the control of Professor von Braun and run by the Alpha 60 computer system. Love, poetry, emotion and so on are outlawed for the inhabitants of the city creating an inhuman and alienated society. Caution enlists Natascha (Anna Karina), the daughter of von Braun, to help him.

Godard uses this straightforward SF scenario to produce a bizarre, messy film deliberately unbalanced in its action. The film is dark in terms of physical lighting as well as in its use of elliptical philosophical dialogue and cynical humour.

Alphaville is a totalitarian futuristic society controlled by a powerful computer that decides everything out of logic. We are told that there is no commander and that orders are merely what "emanates from logic". People should not ask "why", but only say "because", trusting into the implicitly logical conclusions of the computer. People who act illogicaly are executed (in a swimming pool). We are told that Swedes, Germans and Americans assimilate well.

Caution is a parody of an American private eye: wearing a trench-coat and photographing people carelessly he is defiantly erratic in the logical city, dominated by the Alpha 60 computer which he has sworn to destroy. Caution's love for Natascha introduces emotion and unpredictability into the city that the computer has crafted in its own image.

The film was shot in 1960s Paris, the night-time streets of the capital becoming Alphaville with modernist glass and concrete being used for interiors, reflecting the problems of the future onto contemporary France. There are no special effects to enhance the science fiction elements of the film. Originally, Godard apparently wanted to title the film Tarzan versus IBM.

The film also features its version of George Orwell's Newspeak.

Characters

Lemmy Caution

As a journalist he calls himself Ivan Johnson, claiming to work for Figaro Pravda and always wears a huge tan overcoat where he keeps various items. He carries a camera with him always and photographs everything he sees, particularly the things that would be ordinarily unimportant to a journalist. As a spy he kills many people particularly in bizarre circumstances, and the fights/shots themselves are displayed in such an unusual way that the intended purpose is surely not clarity. He falls in love with Natasha Von Braun, and kills Alpha 60 and Professor Von Braun at the end of the film. The opposition of his role to logic (and that of other dissidents to the regime) is symbolized by quotations to Eluard.

The Lemmy Caution character is borrowed from the hard-boiled novels of British author Peter Cheyney, and Eddie Constantine had in fact played the role of Lemmy Caution in earlier French films based on those novels.

Natascha Von Braun

She is the daughter of Professor Von Braun, although she says herself "I have never met him". She is a citizen of Alphaville, and when questioned says she does not know the meaning of "love" or "conscience". She works as a programmer for Alpha 60. She discovers, with the help of Lemmy Caution, that she was actually born outside of Alphaville, and the film ends with her touching phrase "Je vous aime" ("I love you").

Alpha 60

Alpha 60 is a huge super-computer created by Von Braun, with supposedly large intelligence capabilities. He converses with Lemmy Caution several times throughout the film, and his voice is seemingly ever present, serving as a sort of bizarre narrator. Caution "kills" him by telling him a riddle that involves something Alpha 60 can not comprehend: poetry. However, the creation of the "character" of Alpha 60 is not based on logic alone and is not without knowledge of poetry. In fact, many of its lines are actually quotes from Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges. The opening line of the movie, as others, is an extract of his essay "Forms of a Legend". Other references throughout the movie are made by Alpha 60 to the essay "A New Refutation of Time" by the same author.

Prof. Vonbraun

The Professor was originally known as Leonard Nosferatu (a tribute to F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu), however, Caution is repeatedly told that Nosferatu no longer exists. The Professor himself talks infrequently, referring only vaguely to how he hates journalists, and offering Caution the chance to join Alphaville, even going as far as offering him his own "Galaxy". When he refuses Caution's enticement to go back to the 'outlands', Caution kills him with a pistol shot.

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