I’m pretty much done with the films of Jean-Luc Godard but I just had to watch this one which I believe is his only one that can be considered truly science-fiction. Godard’s films are famously obtuse but this one is pretty transparent to me about a secret agent who infiltrate a technocratic dictatorship. Everything in it, its themes, its ideas and concepts has been done to death by now. It is still impressive as a very early showcase of these tropes and how Godard appropriates plain old Paris to look dystopian is fascinating. My least favorite part is the utter ineffectiveness of the security apparatus of the police state. Godard isn’t an action movie director of course, so what passes for action scenes in here are just laughable.

A man who identifies himself as a journalist named Ivan Johnson arrives in the city of Alphaville. He checks into a hotel, is welcomed by a woman who seems to be a prostitute, casually fights and kills a man who is sneaking around and goes about the rest of his stay with no one remarking on it. The authorities assign Natacha von Braun to serve as a liaison but seem to allow him go about as he pleases. He recognizes her as the daughter of Professor von Braun, the dictator of Alphaville. She acknowledges that he is her father but says that she has never met him. This is just one of the many strange practices and rules that are enforced in Alphaville, aimed at destroying human emotion and sentiment in favor of cool reason. In reality, Johnson is a secret agent named Lemmy Caution sent to search for a previously assigned agent and to either capture or kill Professor von Braun. Alphaville is a centralized, totalitarian state run by an AI called Alpha 60 that was designed by von Braun. Caution works for the outlands who are concerned about Alphaville’s growing power and aggression.

Nothing about the setting itself really makes sense and there is a gaping disconnect between the words used by the characters and what we actually see. Caution and von Braun talk about galaxies and worlds but the former really just arrives in Alphaville in his Ford Galaxie car and there are no real signs of advanced technology beyond the old-fashioned mainframes that are supposed to represent Alpha 60. Alphaville itself is supposed to be an entirely new city or even world built from the ground up. Yet we see that it has ancient, run-down buildings while it can’t have been more than a couple of decades old judging from the age of Natacha von Braun and her father. As usual, it’s the atmosphere and style that matters more than concrete details. At the same time, Godard is making fun of traditional gumshoe detectives and the superspy James Bond. So armed only with a tiny handgun, Caution is able to shoot his way through anyone who stands in his way in Alphaville with contemptuous ease. Even if this is just Godard being Godard, I find myself irritated by the laziness so I’m marking it down for the poor production values.

Thematically, the film fields all of the usual arguments: how an orderly, planned society run on logical and rational principles descends into a cold and heartless dystopia where those who don’t conform are either executed or perish miserably on their own. Caution effectively defeats the sentient AI by quoting poetry, the authorities decide which words are and aren’t allowed, periodically expunging banned words from the dictionary that they call a Bible, and of course the ultimate cure is the power of love. Even if we’ve seen all this before, it’s good to remember that this was made in 1965 and can be considered to have been pushing the envelope back then. What disappoints me is that the film depicts a police state but waters down the hard power that makes such states work. I suppose Godard finds that aspect intellectually uninteresting but the execution scene he films is more comical than scary as there is no blood whatsoever and all of the policemen, security guards and goon in Alphaville are totally incompetent. It’s hard to consider Von Braun to be a malevolent dictator when he has no security detail to speak of and seemingly not much of an instinct for self-preservation. Due to this, I have difficulty taking this film seriously despite the subject matter. It’s just a light-hearted, fantastical romp.

Godard’s films are usually quite obtuse to me so it amuses me how this is completely obvious to me. I suppose it’s because this is all such old hat for me. I also want to point out that the New Wave is all about being avant-garde but every artist out there working in every format always rails about the inhumanity of rational societies. What would be really interesting is if someone made a film or something that valorizes orderly societies.