Alphaville (lm)

For other uses, see Alphaville (disambiguation).

ated by von Braun which is in complete control of all of

Alphaville.

Alphaville: une trange aventure de Lemmy Caution

(Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution) is
a 1965 French science ction noir lm directed by JeanLuc Godard. It stars Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina,
Howard Vernon and Akim Tamiro. The lm won the
Golden Bear award of the 15th Berlin International Film
Festival in 1965.[1][2]

Alpha 60 has outlawed free thought and individualist concepts like love, poetry, and emotion in the city, replacing them with contradictory concepts or eliminating them
altogether. One of Alpha 60s dictates is that people
should not ask 'why', but only say 'because'. People who
show signs of emotion (weeping at the death of a wife,
or smiling) are presumed to be acting illogically, and are
gathered up, interrogated, and executed. In an image
reminiscent of George Orwell's concept of Newspeak,
there is a dictionary in every hotel room that is continuously updated when words that are deemed to evoke emotion become banned. As a result, Alphaville is an inhuman, alienated society.

Alphaville combines the genres of dystopian science ction and lm noir. There are no special props or futuristic sets; instead, the lm was shot in real locations in
Paris, the night-time streets of the capital becoming the
streets of Alphaville, while modernist glass and concrete
buildings (that in 1965 were new and strange architectural designs) represent the citys interiors. The lm is
set in the future but the characters also refer to twentieth
century events; for example, the hero describes himself
as a Guadalcanal veteran.

Caution is told that men are killed at a ratio of fty to

every one woman executed. He also learns that Swedes,
Germans and Americans assimilate well with Alphaville.
Images of the E = mc and E = hf equations are displayed several times throughout the lm as symbols of
the regime of logical science that rules Alphaville. At one
point, Caution passes through a place called the Grand
Omega Minus, from where brainwashed people are sent
out to the other galaxies to start strikes, revolutions,
family rows and student revolts.

Expatriate American actor Eddie Constantine plays

Lemmy Caution, a trenchcoat-wearing secret agent. Constantine had already played this or similar roles in dozens
of previous lms; the character was originally created by
British pulp novelist Peter Cheyney. However, in Alphaville, director Jean-Luc Godard moves Caution away from
his usual twentieth century setting, and places him in a As an archetypal American anti-hero private eye in
futuristic sci- dystopia, the technocratic dictatorship of trench-coat and with weathered visage, Lemmy CauAlphaville.
tions old-fashioned machismo conicts with the puritanical computer (Godard originally wanted to title the lm
Tarzan versus IBM).[5] The opposition of his role to logic
(and that of other dissidents to the regime) is represented
1 Plot
by faux-quotations from Capitale de la douleur (Capital
of Pain), a book of poems by Paul luard.
Lemmy Caution is a secret agent with the code number
Caution meets Dickson, who soon dies in the process of
of 003 from the Outlands. Entering Alphaville in his
making love to a Seductress Third Class. Caution then
[3]
[4]
Ford Mustang, called a Ford Galaxie, he poses as a
enlists the assistance of Natacha von Braun (Anna Kajournalist named Ivan Johnson, and claims to work for
rina), a programmer of Alpha 60 who is also the daughter
the Figaro-Pravda. He wears a tan overcoat that stores
of Professor von Braun (although she says I have never
various items such as a M1911A1 Colt Commander automet him). Natacha is a citizen of Alphaville, and when
matic pistol. He carries a cheap Instamatic camera (new
questioned says she does not know the meaning of love
in 1965) with him and photographs everything he sees,
or conscience. Caution falls in love with her, and his
particularly the things that would ordinarily be unimporlove introduces emotion and unpredictability into the city
tant to a journalist.
that the computer has crafted in its own image. Natacha
Caution is, in fact, on a series of missions. First, he discovers, with the help of Lemmy Caution, that she was
searches for the missing agent Henry Dickson (Akim actually born outside of Alphaville. (The city name is
Tamiro); second, he is to capture or kill the creator of given as Nueva YorkSpanish for New York instead of
Alphaville, Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon); lastly, either the original English name or the French literal renhe aims to destroy Alphaville and its dictatorial computer, dering Nouvelle York.)
Alpha 60. Alpha 60 is a sentient computer system cre1

4 INFLUENCES

Professor von Braun (the name is a reference to the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun[6] ) was originally
known as Leonard Nosferatu (a tribute to F. W. Murnau's
lm Nosferatu), but Caution is repeatedly told that Nosferatu no longer exists. The Professor himself talks infrequently, referring only vaguely to his hatred for journalists, and oering Caution the chance to join Alphaville,
even going so far as to oer him the opportunity to rule
a galaxy. When he refuses Cautions oer to go back to
the outlands, Caution kills him with a pistol shot.
Alpha 60 converses with Lemmy Caution several times
throughout the lm, and its voice is seemingly everpresent in the city, serving as a sort of narrator. Caution
eventually destroys or incapacitates it by telling it a riddle
that involves something Alpha 60 can not comprehend:
poetry (although many of Alpha 60s lines are actually
quotations from the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges; the
opening line of the lm, along with others, is an extract of
Borgess essay Forms of a Legend and other references
throughout the movie are made by Alpha 60 to Borgess
"A New Refutation of Time"). The concept of the individual self has been lost to the collectivized citizens of
Alphaville, and this is the key to Cautions riddle.

constructed. Buildings used were the Electricity Board

building for the Alpha 60 computer centre and the Hotel
Sotel Paris le Scribe.[7]
Constantine came to the lm through producer Andr
Michelin, who had the actor under contract. Constantine had become a popular actor in France and Germany
through his portrayal of tough-guy detective Lemmy Caution in a series of earlier lms. Godard appropriated the
character for Alphaville but according to director Anne
Andreu,[8] Godards subversion of the Lemmy Caution
stereotype eectively shattered Constantines connection with the characterhe was never again oered a
Lemmy Caution role and reportedly said that he was
shunned by producers after Alphaville was released.

The opening section of the lm includes an unedited sequence that depicts Caution walking into his hotel, checking in, riding an elevator and being taken through various corridors to his room. According to cinematographer
Raoul Coutard, he and Godard shot this section as a continuous four-minute take. Part of this sequence shows
Caution riding an elevator up to his room, which was
achieved thanks to the fact that the hotel used as the location had two glass-walled elevators side by side, allowing
At the end, as Paul Misraki's musical score reaches its the camera operator to ride in one lift while lming Conclimax, Natacha realizes that it is her understanding of stantine riding the other car through the glass between the
herself as an individual with desires that saves her, and two. However, as Coutard recalled, this required multidestroys Alpha 60. The lm ends with her line, "Je vous ple takes, since the elevators were old and in practice they
proved very dicult to synchronize.[8]
aime" (I love you).

Cast
Eddie Constantine Lemmy Caution
Anna Karina Natacha von Braun
Akim Tamirof Henri Dickson
Christa Lang 1st Seductress Third Class
Valrie Boisgel 2nd Seductress Third Class
Jean-Louis Comolli Prof. Jeckell
Michel Delahaye Prof. von Brauns assistant
Jean-Andr Fieschi Prof. Heckell
Jean-Pierre Laud Breakfast-waiter

Like most of Godards lms, the performances and dialogue in Alphaville were substantially improvised. Assistant director Charles Bitsch recalled that, even when
production commenced he had no idea what Godard was
planning to do. Godards rst act was to ask Bitsch to
write a screenplay, saying that producer Michelin had
been pestering him for a script because he needed it to
help him raise nance from backers in Germany (where
Constantine was popular). Bitsch protested that he had
never read a Lemmy Caution book, but Godard simply
said Read one and then write it. Bitsch read a Caution
book, then wrote a 30-page treatment and brought it to
Godard, who said OK, ne and took it without even
looking at it. It was then given to Michelin, who was
pleased with the result, and the script was duly translated into German and sent o to the backers. In fact,
none of it even reached the screen and according to Bitsch
the German backers later asked Michelin to repay the
money when they saw the completed lm.[8]

Lszl Szab Chief-engineer

Howard Vernon Leonard Nosferatu, a.k.a. Professor von Braun

4 Inuences

Jean Cocteau exerted signicant inuence on Godards

lms,[9] and parallels between Alphaville and Cocteaus
1950 lm Orpheus are evident. For example, Orphes
Despite its futuristic scenario, Alphaville was lmed en- search for Cgeste and Cautions for Harry Dickson, betirely in and around Paris and no special sets or props were tween the poems Orphe hears on the radio and the apho-

Production

3
ristic questions given by Alpha 60, between Orphes victory over Death through the recovery of his poetic powers
and Cautions use of poetry to destroy Alpha 60.[9] Moreover, Godard openly acknowledges his debt to Cocteau
on several occasions.[10] When Alpha 60 is destroyed, for
instance, people stagger down labyrinthine corridors or
cling blindly to the walls like the inhabitants of Cocteaus
"Zone de la mort", and, at the end of the lm, Caution
tells Natasha not to look back. Godard compares this
scene with Orphes warning to Eurydice, and it is also
possible to detect a reference here to the biblical ight
from Sodom.[10]
The voice of Alpha 60 was performed by a man with
a mechanical voice box replacing his cancer-damaged
larynx.[11] It is inspired by the hypnotic power of
Mabuse's disembodied voice in the 1933 lm The Testament of Dr Mabuse.[12]

4.1

Inuenced

The lm production company Alphaville Pictures, cofounded in 2003 by Danish director Christoer Boe, is
named after the lm.[13]

6 Notes
[1] Berlinale 1965: Prize Winners. berlinale.de. Retrieved
20 February 2010.
[2] MacCabe, Colin (2005). Godard: A Portrait of the Artist
at Seventy. Macmillan. p. 347. ISBN 0-571-21105-4.
[3] Brody, Richard (2009). Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. Macmillan. p. 233. ISBN
978-0-8050-8015-5.
[4] Prez, Gilberto (2000). The Material Ghost: Films and
Their Medium. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 358.
ISBN 978-0-8018-6523-7.
[5] Darke (2005), p. 10
[6] Darke (2005), p. 76
[7] Trenholm, Rich (19 November 2009). The future is now:
Sci- lms in real locations. CNET.
[8] Alphaville, priphries (The Outskirts of Alphaville), special feature, Alphaville DVD release, Studio
Canal/Universal, 2007
[9] Godard (1986), p. 277
[10] Godard (1986), p. 278
[11] Darke (2005), p. 39

Alphaville also inspired the London based organisation

[12] Darke (2005), p. 101
Alpha-ville, to create a festival that explores the intersection between art, society, and technology.
[13] Dawson, Nick (9 May 2007). Christoer Boe, Allegro".
Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 25 March 2015.

Jazz bassist and composer William Parker recorded

Alphaville Suite, inspired by the lm, in 2007.[14] German [14] Alphaville Suite. RogueArt. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
synthpop band Alphaville took their name from the lm. [15] Davis, Mike (2006). Planet of Slums. London: Verso. p.
The music videos from The Cranberries song "Linger"
117. ISBN 1-84467-022-8.
and Kelly Osbourne's "One Word" were inspired by this
lm.
Bryan Ferry's 13th studio album, Olympia, includes a
track titled Alphaville, which takes its name from this
lm. The track was written by Bryan Ferry and David A.
Stewart.
Haruki Murakami's novel After Dark features a motel
named after the lm.
There is also a high-end suburb outside of So Paulo that
is named after the lm.[15]

See also
List of French language lms
ALPHA 60, Swedish alternative rock band
The Sour Notes, who sampled passages from Paul
luard's Capitale de la Douleur in the lm, on the
song Your Pretty Sphinx Voice

7 References
Darke, Chris (2005). Alphaville. French Film
Guides. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois
Press. ISBN 0-252-07329-0. OCLC 60373616.
Godard, Jean-Luc (1986) [1972]. Godard on Godard. Trans. and edited by Tom Milne. New York;
London: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80259-7.
OCLC 263540986.

8 External links
Alphaville, une trange aventure de Lemmy Caution
at the Internet Movie Database
Alphaville at AllMovie
Alphaville at Rotten Tomatoes
The City of Pain - Alphaville
Criterion Collection essay by Andrew Sarris

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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