Alphaville was an interesting movie. For starters I watched it in French and got some needed French practice. This was an interesting Sci-fi film because it took French “detective noir,” stories and went in an interesting direction. Had I been younger and more ignorant while watching this film I would’ve just assumed it was a spy film, (which, at the heart it is,) with no real allusions to Sci-fi.
What I thought was cool about this film and with a lot of sci-fi films in general are the gadgets that they use. Sometimes these gadgets become a reality. For example the way Alpha 60 communicates with Lenny Caution throughout the film is very reminiscent of how a cell phone works. This film was also made roughly 30 years before cell phones really started becoming a thing.
This is one of the earliest “computers running the show,” movies that I have seen and it felt very Orwellian to me. The idea of Big Brother has been replaced with Alpha 60, a computer manifested by the great Professor von Braun. Another parallel between these two stories is the constant modification of the language. This idea always crept me out and makes total sense in a perpetual dictatorship. Cutting words that evoke a feeling of love, sadness, or happiness really dehumanizes the people of Alphaville turning them into drones of the computer.
I also really like the fusion of the private-eye ant-hero story colliding with sci-fi. You don’t see this kind of fusion very often and I would actually love to see someone remake this film with a huge box-office budget. I would go see it in a heartbeat.
Alphaville was all right. As an enthusiast I’m glad I watched it. It has a good story and many interesting elements. Some movies, some books, some games age like wine. This aged like milk (Not the story, just the cinematography was hard for me to watch.) It deserves a Peter Jackson remake. I’d like that.
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