Film Screening:

Alphaville
(Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, 99 min, France, in French w/ English subtitles, B&W, DCP)

-- Introduced by Alex Cunningham (AMI) & Hank Okazaki (AMI)!

In Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard fuses a hardboiled detective story with science fiction. Lemmy Caution, a hero Godard borrowed from a series of French adventure films, comes to Alphaville, the capital of a totalitarian state, in order to destroy its leader, an almost-human computer called Alpha 60.  Void of any flashy special effects, Alphaville uses 1960s Paris to depict the city of the future. Combining a series of conventions from several genres (science fiction, film noir, crime films), Godard’s imagery is dense with references to history and cultural texts and often anti-illusionist. Godard succeeds in making Brechtian science fiction with social satire and critique.

-- “Both derivative and prophetic, this New Wave dystopian fable both looks back at the history of cinema and forward to its future. Hail, Lemmy Caution, father of Rick Deckard.” -- James Verniere, Boston Globe

ALPHAVILLE - Trailer from Rialto Pictures on Vimeo.

Sponsors: The Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).

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