Alphaville (1965)

[Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution]

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff

Synopsis:
A secret agent poses as a journalist to destroy a tyrannical supercomputer.

Impressions:
I'm going to grant that I'm an uncultured Philistine. Now that we've established that, I can say that I found this movie to be boring, obtuse, pretentious, and kinda stupid. Supposedly it's meant to be a counter-statement to sci-fi movies that were all special effects and no substance. We instead have a sci-fi with pretty much no special effects and about as much substance unless you're the type who gets your skirt blown up easily by pseudo-intellectual banalities masquerading as profundity. I've seem jokes about French movies being superficially "deep" in the manner of pretentious art school students who mask their vacuity with loads of bull. I know I'm unloading a lot of invective here, but that's because I opted to sit through all 100 minutes rather than stopping after the first ten to write this review. I suppose if you don't have a budget, establishing your sci-fi setting by dialog alone is a fair trick. This mostly plays out like a 40s-era film noir that was redubbed with only the barest trappings of the setting in the set dressings. I suppose I can be charitable and just say that I'm not the audience for this. The film does seem to have had an influence on a lot of sci-fi to follow, so I guess there's that. I certainly can't recommend it, but I suppose if you want to appear sophisticated at dinner parties, you can give this a watch and come up with clever vaporings about Godard's genius. Natasha's joke about the tiny man in the cafe was pretty good, though. Best part of the movie, actually, but not quite worth 100 minutes, though.

Rating:
Avoid It