Alphaville: Godard's 1965 Break-up Tech Noir

As always there are spoilers ahead! (And the podcast is much more fun if you've seen the film first.)

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Jean-Luc Godard is potentially the most prominent of the French New Wave directors. In the mid-60s his mind turned to science fiction and the result was a visually striking, choatic film about a dystopian world in which logic rules and love is punished.

If you find the film confusing you are not alone and I have two brilliant academic brains to help us out.

Roger Luckhurst is a Professor at Birkbeck, University of London. He has written/edited numerous articles and books on cultural history and film.

Douglas Morrey is an associate professor of French at the University of Warwick. He has a special interest in the French new Wave on which he has written extensively, including the 2005 book Jean-Luc Godard.

CORRECTION: In the podcast I mention Roger citing Alphaville having an image from Chris Marker's La Jetée but the image is actually Marker's photograph which is in the credit sequence but doesn not feature in La Jetée.

The book of poetry in the film Capitale de la douleur (Capital of Pain) is written by Paul Elouard.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:40 French New Wave in 1965

03:38 Godard's influences for Alphaville

11:31 Eddie Constantine: The illogical Noir hero

16:43 Lemmy Caution and fascism 

18:05 Alienation and confusion

25:52 Godard's technique and budgets

30:07 Sound design

32:30 The swimming pool execution scene

39:26 Love, poetry and Godard's divorce

47:00 Godard and women

49:30 Legacy

53:57 Recommendations

 

Recommendations:

• The Trial written by Franz Kafka and made into a film by Orson Wells released in 1962.

• Weekend (1967) by Godard.

 

NEXT EPISODE!

Next episode we will be talking about Planet of the Vampires, the low budget 1965 dubbed delight by Mario Bava. The film is campy (and for me quite hilarious) as well as being famed for inspiring Alien (1979). (Perhaps a little overstated in this regard?) You can find the film to rent on Amazon, Apple, Flixfling and may find it on free platforms with ads in your region. You can check the JustWatch website for more details.