Amazon.com Essentials:
As the French New Wave was reaching its maturity and filmgoing had
evolved as a favorite pastime of intellectuals and urban sophisticates,
along came Jean-Luc Godard to shake up every convention and send
highfalutin critics scrambling to their typewriters. 1965's
Alphaville is a perfect example of Godard's willingness to disrupt
expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making
sociopolitical statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority
of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective
yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most
modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-'60s
Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern
city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a
scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds on Godard's strictly
low-budget terms, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the
dehumanizing effect of technology, willful suppression of personality,
saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection
of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. For most people
Alphaville, like many of the director's films, will prove utterly
baffling. For those inclined to dig deeper into Godard's artistic
intentions, the words of critic Andrew Sarris (quoted from an essay that
accompanies the Criterion Collection DVD) will ring true: "To understand
and appreciate Alphaville is to understand Godard, and vice versa."
--Jeff Shannon
Amazon.com Essentials:
As the French New Wave was reaching its maturity and filmgoing had
evolved as a favorite pastime of intellectuals and urban sophisticates,
along came Jean-Luc Godard to shake up every convention and send
highfalutin critics scrambling to their typewriters. 1965's
Alphaville is a perfect example of Godard's willingness to disrupt
expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making
sociopolitical statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority
of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective
yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most
modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-'60s
Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern
city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a
scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds on Godard's strictly
low-budget terms, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the
dehumanizing effect of technology, willful suppression of personality,
saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection
of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. For most people
Alphaville, like many of the director's films, will prove utterly
baffling. For those inclined to dig deeper into Godard's artistic
intentions, the words of critic Andrew Sarris (quoted from an essay that
accompanies the Criterion Collection DVD) will ring true: "To understand
and appreciate Alphaville is to understand Godard, and vice versa."
--Jeff Shannon
