"Alphaville" (1965)

(Originally released as: Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution)

Starring: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff

First the Lowdown: It's Dick Tracy on Mars. In French. I'm fairly familiar with director Jean-Luc Godard's work in the cinema, and the man is pretty famous for a lyrical visual style and an uncompromising political viewpoint that borders on the preachy. Alphaville is interesting because it introduces two sci-fi elements that wouldn't be popularized in movies until years later.

First: The evil computer. Our nemesis in this film is a controlling, Big Brother-like supercomputer called "Alpha 60", that speaks in a gravelly, phlegmatic voice. When it speaks it sounds like that crabby great uncle of yours with the stoma in his throat. And this was 3 years before HAL 9000 would calmly reassure us that we could talk things out.

Second: The "future-noir" setting. Alphaville is filmed entirely in black and white and uses modern settings. Where technology is needed, the scenery still uses whatever technology was considered advanced at the time. (It doesn't hurt that most of the computers of that era filled the entire floor of an office building and were riddled with flashing lights and incomprehensible buttons and dials.) To make things even more "noir", our main character, Lemmy Caution, is a PI. Everything looks grey, pallid, and pretty moody. And this was 15 years before Blade Runner, mind.

Anyways, back to our original topic here. Our central character, Lemmy Caution, has been sent from "the Outlands" to Alphaville to find Professor Von Braun, the inventor of a death ray, and bring him back or kill him. As soon as Lemmy sets foot in his hotel room, he finds out that all is not as it seems in the pleasant city of Alphaville. Emotion is shunned and forbidden, in favor of cold, hard logic. (In fact the language of Alphaville is constantly being modified to prevent subversive thought.) A working-caste of Seductresses serve as both a means of entertaining as well as wringing information out of the unsuspecting.

As Lemmy seeks out his quarry he finds out that not only is the Orwellian computer, Alpha 60, controlling everyone's actions, but it is also protecting the Professor. Which ultimately brings Lemmy butting intellects with it.

It's pretty weird all around, but I wouldn't expect anything less from one of the founders of French New Wave cinema. (Check out the execution scene choreographed to synchronized swimming to get what I mean.) If you're looking for something straightforward and not as speculative, I'd look elsewhere. But it's a fun movie all around.

Line of the movie: "Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world."

Four stars: Close cover before striking.