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Alphaville
 
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Alphaville

Eddie Constantine (Actor), Anna Karina (Actor), Jean-Luc Godard (Director) | Rated: Unrated | Format: DVD
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)

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Additional Features

Criterion's DVD release of Alphaville can almost be considered 'Godardian' in and of itself. Almost in keeping with the director's minimalist ideals, this DVD has no added "extras." Criterion instead focused their sole attention on greatly improving the visual and audio qualities of the film. This new digital transfer was created from a 35mm fine grain master made from the original negative. Though there are manipulated letterboxed additions available, this DVD is presented in the film's originally intended 1.33:1 aspect ratio and French Mono 1.0 soundtrack. Though a little grainy in spots, this is without a doubt the best Alphaville has ever looked. One could even argue that the visual faults add to Alphaville's grittiness. Though a commentary would have been a nice extra to this complex film, it is the vast technical improvements that make this Criterion DVD a worthwhile addition to any film fan's collection. --Rob Bracco

Amazon.com Essential Video

As the French New Wave was reaching its maturity and filmgoing had evolved as a favorite pastime of intellectuals and urban sophisticates, along came Jean-Luc Godard to shake up every convention and send highfalutin critics scrambling to their typewriters. 1965's Alphaville is a perfect example of Godard's willingness to disrupt expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making sociopolitical statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-'60s Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds on Godard's strictly low-budget terms, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the dehumanizing effect of technology, willful suppression of personality, saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. For most people Alphaville, like many of the director's films, will prove utterly baffling. For those inclined to dig deeper into Godard's artistic intentions, the words of critic Andrew Sarris (quoted from an essay that accompanies the Criterion Collection DVD) will ring true: "To understand and appreciate Alphaville is to understand Godard, and vice versa." --Jeff Shannon
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Customer Reviews

38 Reviews
5 star:
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4 star:
 (5)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
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1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (38 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars French only edition, Jan 16 2012
This review is from: Alphaville (DVD)
The DVD with the black and white case is a French only edition, and comes with no extra features at all, and no English subtitles. Do not be fooled into thinking, as I was, that this is the Criterion edition of this great film. I think the sellers of the disc above should make it a lot clearer and prevent this waste of time and money. This order should have been as satisfying as my other recent purchases on Amazon. Instead it was disappointing, and there was no reason for that.
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5.0 out of 5 stars The Beauty of Individuality Exemplified, Jan 16 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Alphaville (VHS Tape)
It is a rare thing to see a film that not only shows one what life is, but espouses a concrete vision of what life should be. Even more rare is a film which does this by situating characters in a world where one would not want to live thereby isolating the very essence of what makes on human. Godard's Alfaville not only accomplishes this feet but it creates an artistic embodiment of all that true individuality stands for. More potent than 1984 and just as beautiful as novels such as Atlas Shrugged, Alfaville shows one who is willing to watch and listen the true value and purpose of freedom and the ominous results when that freedom is removed from their lives. The music, cinematography and overall directing could only be done by an individual who's sense of life is majestic and bordering on, if not completely genius. This is not only great science fiction but it is art at its highest ideal, a work that makes me proud to be human.
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4.0 out of 5 stars An Analysis of Genre, Dec 15 2003
By 
Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Alphaville (DVD)
As usual with Godard moments stand out. In this film the most absurd sequence involves a diving platform in what looks to be an eastern bloc recreational center and a number of black sweatered and bereted revolutionaries with sub-machine guns standing on the pool deck spraying the divers as they dive. Whats it all mean? Well I suppose you could say its Godards way of commenting on the wests ability to turn even political oppression into mass entertainment.

I like a number of Godard films: Breathless, My Life To Live, Contempt, Pierrot Le Fou, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary, In Praise of Love --still Alphaville remains kind of a hard one for me to get into. Perhaps because I am not too keen on science fiction. It seems the people who like this film are the ones who like science fiction in general. To me science fiction is full of cliches and so is film noir and so to me it seems Godard is using these genres to address cultural cliches -- and yet he is also making pointed comments on modern culture as he does so. You can always count on a Godard film to be smart and even though its not one of my favorites Alphaville is no exception to that rule.

Anna Karina looks great as always. Unfortunately for Lemmy Caution she is the daughter of Alphaville's overlord. No one really believes the future will look like a parking garage nor that a super-computer will run our lives and that people will become vacant automatons. Only a handful of early twentieth-century authors thought the future was leading us toward Alphaville. In the context of the swinging sixties sci fi just looks campy and noir even campier. Whats going on in Godards head? Hard to say in this film. To me its funny, but a surprising amount of people seem to take this sci fi stuff seriously.

I think the new wave band of outsiders enjoyed genre hopping because it gave them a chance to flex their movie knowledge. Plus genres come loaded with rules which the new wavers can then subvert -- so that is the fun of Alphaville, subversion of genre and in this case its a double dose of subversion because Godards subverting two genres, sci fi and noir. I think its interesting to note that in both of these genres men and women relate in steretypical and fatalistic ways -- and the new wave was about being hyper-conscious of these film conventions. Perhaps what Godard is really saying is that in order to invent life anew we must break free of these conventions. This is of course something his characters often fail to do although in some films they try.

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