Film Forum

France, 1965
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Anna Karina,  Eddie Constantine, Akim Tamiroff
Approx. 99 min. DCP.

In ALPHAVILLE, hints of emotion are cause for liquidation and “people should not ask ‘why,’ but only say ‘because’.” New mission for hard smoking and drinking, babe-chasing Lemmy Caution, incarnated by American expat singer Eddie Constantine in seven previous pulp film thrillers — but here a disillusioned agent in a Bogartian trenchcoat: a trip to the future, trekking through space to find missing agent Akim Tamiroff, track down Howard Vernon’s Professor “von Braun,” aided by prof’s daughter Anna Karina, and square-off in a final showdown with “Alpha-60.” Godard creates an eerie sense of sci-fi alienation with striking b&w shooting — sans artificial light — by the great Raoul Coutard on the all-location-shot wintry streets of Paris ’65. But Karina has the last three words. Original title: TARZAN VS. IBM.

Presented with support from the George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema

Reviews

“A dazzling amalgam of film noir and science fiction. Raoul Coutard’s camera turns contemporary Paris into an icily dehumanized city of the future.”
– Tom Milne, Time Out