With: Eddie Constantine (Lemmy Caution), Anna Karina (Natacha von Braun), Akim Tamirof (Henri Dickson), Howard Vernon (Professor von Braun), Laszlo Szabo (engineer), Jean-André Fieschi (Professor Eckel), Jean-Louis Comolli (Professor Jeckel)
Director/Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard
Producer: André Michelin
Production co: Chaumiane, Filmstudio
Photography: Raoul Coutard
Editor: Agnès Guillemot
Music: Paul Misraki
REVIEWS

“Even when working with genre conventions in his early films Jean-Luc Godard had no interest in making conventional movies, and Alphaville, Godard’s sole venture into science fiction is no exception…

Pulp-fiction secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), a character originally created by British writer Peter Cheyney and which Constantine had already played in many films, travels to the dystopian, technocratic world of Alphaville… He poses as a journalist from the ‘Outlands’ with a secret mission to neutralise the mastermind of Alphaville, Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), and destroy Alpha 60, the super-computer that controls the city and its people, imposing its logical orientation on all aspects of social organisation.  Individualism has been all but eliminated in the logical world of Alphaville.  Thus in Alphaville emotion is forbidden, and anyone who reveals emotional behaviour, such as weeping, is arrested and executed in public spectacles…

​Despite the film’s futuristic setting, Godard uses no special effects and no sets, but only actual locations in Paris, the city’s modern (at the time) glass and concrete architecture convincingly signifying its dystopian vision.  The seemingly endless corridors of office buildings through which Raoul Coutard’s camera tracks indicates just how impersonal the world had already become.”

— Keith Grant, Sight & Sound

​Restoration by Studiocanal
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Palmerston North
Monday, 19 March, 6:00pm

Auckland
Monday, 23 April, 6:30pm

Whanganui
Monday, 21 May, 7:00pm
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Wellington
Monday, 28 May, 6:15pm

Canterbury 
Monday, 16 July, 7:30pm
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