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Alphaville is a 1965 black-and-white French science fiction film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Its original French title is Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution). The film stars Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Howard Vernon and Akim Tamiroff. The film won the Golden Bear award of the Berlin Film Festival in 1965. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (600x827, 82 KB) The 1965 French poster. ...
Jean-Luc Godard (French IPA: ) (born 3 December 1930) is a French filmmaker and one of the most influential members of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave. Born to Franco-Swiss parents in Paris, he was educated in Nyon, Switzerland, later studying at the Lycée Rohmer, and the...
Jean-Luc Godard (French IPA: ) (born 3 December 1930) is a French filmmaker and one of the most influential members of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave. Born to Franco-Swiss parents in Paris, he was educated in Nyon, Switzerland, later studying at the Lycée Rohmer, and the...
Anna Karina and Eddie Constantine in Jean-Luc Godards Alphaville Eddie Constantine (born Edward Constantinowsky in Los Angeles, California, October 29, 1917 - died Wiesbaden, Germany, February 25, 1993) was an expatriate American actor and singer who spent his career working in Europe. ...
Anna Karina in the Jean-Luc Godard film My Life to Live (1962) Anna Karina (born Hanna Karin Blarke Bayer September 22, 1940) is a Danish born film actress who works in France. ...
Akim Tamiroff (October 29, 1899, Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia - September 17, 1972, Palm Springs, California) was an actor of Armenian ethnicity, trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. ...
Paul Misraki (January 28, 1908 - October 29, 1998) is a French composer for films and songs, etc. ...
Raoul Coutard is a French cinematographer who has contributed to over seventy five films. ...
Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1965 Gregorian calendar. ...
Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
October 25 is the 298th day of the year (299th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1965 Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1965 Gregorian calendar. ...
Black-and-white or black and white) can refer to a general term used in photography, film, and other media (see black-and-white). ...
This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ...
Jean-Luc Godard (French IPA: ) (born 3 December 1930) is a French filmmaker and one of the most influential members of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave. Born to Franco-Swiss parents in Paris, he was educated in Nyon, Switzerland, later studying at the Lycée Rohmer, and the...
Anna Karina and Eddie Constantine in Jean-Luc Godards Alphaville Eddie Constantine (born Edward Constantinowsky in Los Angeles, California, October 29, 1917 - died Wiesbaden, Germany, February 25, 1993) was an expatriate American actor and singer who spent his career working in Europe. ...
Anna Karina in the Jean-Luc Godard film My Life to Live (1962) Anna Karina (born Hanna Karin Blarke Bayer September 22, 1940) is a Danish born film actress who works in France. ...
Howard Vernon Howard Vernon (15 July 1914 - 25 July 1996) was a Swiss actor. ...
Akim Tamiroff (October 29, 1899, Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia - September 17, 1972, Palm Springs, California) was an actor of Armenian ethnicity, trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. ...
The Berlin International Film Festival, also called the Berlinale, is one of the most important film festivals in Europe and the world. ...
Alphaville combines the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir. Although set far in the future on another planet, there are no special effects or elaborate sets; instead, the film 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 represent the city's interiors. In addition, the characters refer to twentieth century events; for example, the hero describes himself as a Guadalcanal veteran. Look up genre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
This article is about the philosophical concept and literary form. ...
Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
This still from The Big Combo (1955) demonstrates the visual style of film noir at its most extreme. ...
City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) The Eiffel Tower in Paris, as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ...
Operation Watchtower On August 7, 1942, the 1st Marine Division performed an amphibious landing east of the Tenaru River. ...
Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, a trenchcoat-wearing secret agent. Constantine had already played this role in dozens of previous films; 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 futuristic sci-fi dystopia, the technocratic dictatorship of Alphaville. For the Walt Disney Company film, see Trenchcoat (movie). ...
Peter Cheyney (1896 - 1951) was a British author of hard-boiled fiction. ...
Technocracy (techno for technology and cracy for power) is an organizational system in which decision makers and political leaders are selected on the basis of technological knowledge —often because of some conflict or competition where technological escalation is a constant feature. ...
Forms of government Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box: A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by a dictator. ...
Plot summary
Lemmy Caution is an agent from "Outland". He poses as a journalist named Ivan Johnson, and claims to work for the Figaro-Pravda. He wears a tan overcoat that stores various items. He carries a camera with him and photographs everything he sees, particularly the things that would ordinarily be unimportant to a journalist. Despite the futuristic setting, references made in the film still set the action in the Twentieth Century; e.g. Caution's self-representation as a Guadalcanal veteran, as well as a series of milestone dates. Le Figaro (English: ) is one of the leading French morning daily newspapers. ...
Pravda (Russian: , The Truth) was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991. ...
Caution is, in fact, on a series of missions. First, he must search for missing agent Henry Dickson; second, he must capture or kill the creator of Alphaville, Professor Von Braun; lastly, he must destroy Alphaville and its dictatorial computer, Alpha 60. Alpha 60 is a sentient computer system created by Von Braun which is in complete control of all of Alphaville.
Alpha 60 outlaws 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 60's 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 a smile on the face) 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 "Bible" in each room: actually a dictionary that is continuously updated when words that are deemed to evoke emotion become banned. As a result, Alphaville is an inhuman, alienated society of mindless drones - many the apparent victim of re-education campaigns by Alpha 60 that are implicitly reminiscent of Nazism and Communism. Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. ...
The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, a making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ...
Emotional redirects here. ...
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903[1][2] – 21 January 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. ...
Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwells novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. ...
This article contains a trivia section. ...
National Socialism redirects here. ...
Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production. ...
Alpha 60's dictates have had some surprising results. Caution is told that men are killed at a ratio of fifty to every one woman executed. He also learns that Swedes, Germans and Americans assimilate well. Images of the E = mc² and E = hf equations are displayed several times throughout the film as a symbol 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. 15ft sculpture of Einsteins 1905 E = mc² formula at the 2006 Walk of Ideas, Germany In physics, mass-energy equivalence is the concept that all mass has an energy equivalence, and all energy has a mass equivalence. ...
The Planck Postulate (or Plancks Postulate) was used by Max Planck in his derivation of his law of black body radiation. ...
An equation is a mathematical statement, in symbols, that two things are the same (or equivalent). ...
The storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 during the French Revolution. ...
As an archetypal American private eye anti-hero in trench-coat and weathered visage, Lemmy Caution's old-fashioned machismo conflicts with the puritanical computer (Godard originally wanted to title the film Tarzan versus IBM.[1] The opposition of his role to logic (and that of other dissidents to the regime) is represented by faux-quotations from La Capitale de la Douleur (The Capital of Pain), a book of poems by Paul Éluard. In literature and film, an anti-hero is a central or supporting character that has some of the personality flaws and ultimate fortune traditionally assigned to villains but nonetheless also have enough heroic qualities or intentions to gain the sympathy of readers or viewers. ...
1914 Edition of Tarzan of the Apes Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, and then in twenty-three sequels. ...
IBM redirects here. ...
La Capitale de la Douleur (The Capital of Pain) is a book of poems by French surrealist poet Paul Éluard. ...
It appears that this entire article has been copied and pasted from http://www. ...
Caution enlists the assistance of Natasha Von Braun (Anna Karina), a programmer of Alpha 60 who is also the daughter of Prof. Von Braun (although she says "I have never met him"). Natascha is a citizen of Alphaville, and when questioned says she does not know the meaning of "love" or "conscience". Caution falls in love with her, and his love introduces emotion and unpredictability into the city that the computer has crafted in its own image. Natascha discovers, with the help of Lemmy Caution, that she was actually born outside of Alphaville. (Interestingly enough, the city name is given as Nueva York -Spanish for New York instead of either the original English name or the French literal rendering "Nouvelle York"). Anna Karina in the Jean-Luc Godard film My Life to Live (1962) Anna Karina (born Hanna Karin Blarke Bayer September 22, 1940) is a Danish born film actress who works in France. ...
NY redirects here. ...
Professor Von Braun was originally known as Leonard Nosferatu (a tribute to F. W. Murnau's film 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 offering Caution the chance to join Alphaville, even going so far as to offer him his own galaxy. When he refuses Caution's enticement to go back to the 'outlands', Caution kills him with a pistol shot. F W Murnau Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (December 28, 1888 - March 11, 1931) was one of the most influential directors of the silent film era. ...
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror in German) is a German Expressionist film shot in 1922 by F.W. Murnau. ...
Alpha 60 converses with Lemmy Caution several times throughout the film, and its voice is seemingly ever-present 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 its lines are actually quotes from the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges; the opening line of the film, along with others, is an extract of Borges's essay "Forms of a Legend" and other references throughout the movie are made by Alpha 60 to Borges's "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 Caution's riddle. Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer. ...
At the end, as Paul Misraki's musical score reaches its crescendo, Natascha realizes that it is her understanding of herself as an individual with desires that saves her, and destroys Alpha 60. The film ends with her line, "Je vous aime" ("I love you").
Influences Jean Cocteau was one of the artists who exerted significant influences on Godard's films,[2] and parallels between Alphaville and Cocteau's 1950 film Orpheus are evident. For example, Orphée's search for Cégeste and Caution's for Harry Dickson, between the poems Orphée hears on the radio and the aphoristic questions given by Alpha 60, between Orphée's victory over Death through the recovery of his poetic powers and Caution's use of poetry to destroy Alpha 60.[2] Moreover, Godard openly acknowledges his debt to Cocteau on several occasions.[3] When Alpha 60 is destroyed, for instance, people stagger down labyrinthine corridors or cling blindly to the walls like the inhabitants of Cocteau's "Zone de la mort", and, at the end of the film, Caution tells Natasha not to look back, like Orphée did to Eurydice.[3] Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. ...
Orpheus (French: Orphée) is a 1950 French film directed by Jean Cocteau and starring Jean Marais. ...
In Greek mythology, there were several characters named Eurydice (EurydÃkê, ΕυÏυδίκη). // The most famous was a woman — or a nymph — who was the wife of Orpheus. ...
The voice of Alpha 60, played by a man with a mechanical voice box replacing his cancer-damaged larynx,[4] descends from the hypnotic power of Mabuse's disembodied voice in the 1933 film The Testament of Dr Mabuse.[5] Electrolarynx device A mechanical larynx is a medical device used to produce clearer speech by those who have lost their original voicebox, usually due to cancer of the larynx. ...
Cancer of the larynx also may be called laryngeal cancer. ...
The larynx (plural larynges), colloquially known as the voicebox, is an organ in the neck of mammals involved in protection of the trachea and sound production. ...
Dr. Mabuse is a fictional character created by Norbert Jacques, made famous by the three films Austrian director Fritz Lang made about him over a period of almost 40 years. ...
The Testament of Dr Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) is a 1933 movie by director Fritz Lang, his second sound film, and the second to feature the villain Dr. Mabuse (if the first, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, is counted as one movie in two parts rather than as two...
See also There are two lists of French language films: Organized alphabetically by French title Organized alphabetically by title of English release // 2 ou 3 choses que je sais delle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her) 5x2 Ah! Si jétais riche (If I Were a Rich Man) Les...
Notes
References - Darke, Chris (2005), Alphaville (French Film Guides), University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252073290.
- Godard, Jean-Luc (1986), Godard on Godard: Critical Writings by Jean-Luc Godard, Da Capo Press, ISBN 0306802597.
External links - Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution at the Internet Movie Database
- The City of Pain - Alphaville
- Criterion Collection essay by Andrew Sarris
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