Welcome to Godard 101, an unofficial and unaffiliated online undergraduate seminar where Ben and I take on the great man and his works, doing our best to understand how Jean-Luc got from there to here.  First up, Ben and I took a look at Breathless, the film that, along with Francois Truffault's 400 Blows, blew the roof off the joint back in 1960, kicking off the Nouvelle Vague and recreating cinema. Pretty heady shit. Then, we reviewed A Woman is a Woman, which you can find here. This was followed with an examination ofTo Live Her Life, Contempt, The Little Soldier and Band of Outsiders. Most recently, we looked at Alphaville and I did a solo turn with A Married Woman. Today, with Ben still tripping through Godard's old stomping grounds in Paris, I take on a film that just about defies you to like it. Are you locked and loaded for...


The Riflemen/Les Carabiniers (France, 1963, Godard)

The Riflemen, Jean Luc-Godard's fifth narrative feature film, is a darkly comic parable, a peculiar pastiche that blends theatre of the absurd with elements of silent film, while juxtaposing both with unsettling moments of grim realism. The film is as off-putting as it is thought-provoking, but this was almost certainly Godard's plan from the get-go. 

Two peasants, improbably named Michelangelo and Ulysses, are promised paradise on earth by a couple of the king's representatives ("In war, anything goes") if they join the armed forces and march off on behalf of their monarch. Their sweethearts, the equally improbably named Cleopatra and Venus, are smitten less with their beaus than with the notion that they will have all this and heaven too should their young men do so, so they shoo their own little Vladimirs and Estragons out the door and onto the stage of war. But first, in a blunt metaphor and goofy piece of slapstick, the newly minted King's men try to catch a lamb to slaughter for a celebratory meal. It is a moment that we will return to at the end of the film, when our heroes assume the position of scapegoats. Godard also exercises his sense of humour by contrasting the character's classical names with their live's overall squalor, a familiar juxtaposition of the comic and the tragic that will recur throughout the film, to varying degrees of success. A vivid example of such being the execution scene of a long blonde-haired rebel who gets the soldiers to delay her death by spouting Marxist slogans, while cutting to semi-comic takes of the soldiers who are momentarily given pause by her rhetoric. The key word is momentarily, as they eventually gun her down, not simply (one suspects) out of a lack of comprehension, but out of simple exhaustion. 


On the other hand, Godard underscores the desolation of the protagonists' situation with the use of grainy and overexposed black and white film stock, as well as the dull grey wash of Raoul Coutard's cinematography. 

And while Godard makes a clear statement about the tedium of war through the film's determinedly ugly appearance, where Godard really puts his imprint on the film is in the way he refuses to play the war genre game, which often contends that when war isn't a thrilling and/or terrifying adventure, it is full of camaraderie and good cheer. The Riflemen takes pains to point out the opposite. With one notable exception, to be discussed later, the film's humour is occasionally absurd, but mostly juvenile. More importantly, Godard purposefully elides action sequences in order to avoid presenting war as anything but a deadly dull affair. Indeed, the film doesn't even present the war as particularly horrifying (inserts of actual war footage notwithstanding). Instead, we witness much aimless wandering, punctuated by moments of near-action and not-quite-adventure that don't really seem to go anywhere. To be sure, The Riflemen is one war film that will not be used by troops going into battle looking for a quick adrenaline kick.  This is a rather unique sort of anti-war film, in that its main concern to  to show war at its most uninteresting, to depict what Godard called its "ordinary everyday-ness." This is an Arendtian study of the banality of warfare, not from the remove of the officers and their bureaucratic administration, but from the perspective of the soldier, looking from bottom up. Also, instead of depicting scenes of savagery, Godard has the soldiers write postcards home to their sweethearts, as if they were on a long vacation, describing the action through inter-titles, in one of many homages to silent film, while occasionally contrasting the terrible with the ridiculous ("Even so, it is a nice summer".) Again, it looks like we are back in Brecht's playing field of alienation and detachment, for Godard's approach is certainly potentially off-putting, as he risks losing the audience in order to drill home his central thesis: War is not Hell. War is Humdrum. Unfortunately for the director, it appears that his film did alienate an awful lot of people, as both critics and audiences loathed it upon its initial release in 1963. 

In the tradition of the silent films that Godard clearly adores, most of the film's humour is not only black, but also deadpan, in the vein of Buster Keaton. This is highlighted in the film's most accomplished set piece, where Michelangelo attends a movie for the first time in his life. When the country bumpkin mistakes the projected image for reality, much to the chagrin of his seatmates and our great entertainment, and eventually attempts (a la Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr.) to get a little too close to the bathing beauty on the screen, the rube destroys the illusion, while also underlining one of Godard's recurrent tropes. Expropriating from Jorge Luis Borges, Godard, always examining the conventional while on the lookout for a new cinematic language, begins the film with the proclamation "I use worn metaphors," and in this passage, he transplants Keaton's premise to a war setting, giving it a twist of gallows humour to go with Keaton's post-modern self-awareness. Further, the humour that runs through the film is of the level of satirical bleakness that anticipates the works of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki, with a little bit of Bela Tarr tossed in via the rustic ruins of the central quartet's cabin. And some of Godard's other bugaboos make their (re)appearance as well, including his proclivity for examining the effects of violence being played for comic effect, as well as his fascination with the commodification of people through the deleterious effects of advertising, which shows up in an amusing shtick involving superimposition of alluring underwear advertisements over the bodies of the actors holding them.

More interestingly, the question of fantasy and reality, particularly with regards to the photographic image, is pointedly examined in the film's above-mentioned funniest scene as well as its climactic scene, wherein the soldier's return home to share the spoils of war, which turn out to be a trunk full of postcards from all the places they have seen and supposedly conquered. Godard stretches the gag to the breaking point, as if  purposefully challenging the audience's patience at every turn, daring them to find anything about this cinematic representation of war ultimately entertaining. 

The Riflemen is an easy film to dislike, and a difficult film to embrace, because Godard does not allow us an easy way into the characters or their situation. He refuses to make it easy on the audience, avoiding genre conventions at all costs, and daring us to consider that the real horror of war is the idea that anyone could find it rewarding, never mind exciting or adventurous.  Finally, Godard also continues to pursue several tropes that will become even more important to him as the 1960s unfold, which makes The Riflemen an interesting transitional work in his filmography.


Then Ben:

Outstandingly good review!  You touched on (just about) every point that dawned on me while watching the film and many more besides.  I am especially gratified that you mentioned Bela Tarr because Satantango certainly came to my mind during The Rifleman. In fact, I even flashed on Even Dwarves Started Small, which you didn't mention and I can understand why; yet, something about the absurd tone and perverse humour of The Riflemen reminded me of the misfitted world in Herzog's film.  I also thought of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, by the way.  Clearly, this anti-war/non-movie war movie worked it's way into the filing cabinet of my head and started opening drawers. 

 

I am especially appreciative of your discussion of the two scenes about "the question of fantasy and reality, particularly with regard to the photographic image," although I believe your approach to this requires theoretical revision.  While it is correct that more than once a character mistakenly takes photographic images to be reality, the character does not in so doing confuse reality and fantasy.  No doubt, the flat-out stupid character has all sorts of fantastic misconceptions about reality in the first place, but the photographic images are not the source of his misconception, at least not the photographic images we see him encounter during the course of the film.  So, the issue is not about the subjective mental blurring of fantasy and reality but rather the objective epistemological status of the photographic image as the representation of reality.

 

I happen to be very tuned to this topic since watching The Little Soldier with it's famous dialogue: "Photography is truth.  Cinema is truth 24 frames per second."  The second sentence is, of course, the famous line, often presented without the first line.  But the second line truly is second; i.e., conceptually derivative.  Every since seeing Tarkovsky and then even more after seeing Marker's La Jette, I have been thinking about the relationship between motion pictures, movies, and still photography with respect to the post-painting visual image as representative of reality.  Hence, I draw attention to The Little Soldier statement as a whole.  And now The Riflemen stirs the pot for me even more because in it, not just the movie but also still photographs fool the fool.  I won't attempt to pursue this further here.  Suffice to highlight what is probably already obvious, the epistemological status of the photographic image in The Riflemen is negative, false, illusory (not to be confused with fantastic), contra the positive status verbally ascribed to it in The Little Soldier.

 

You are darn tootin' that The Riflemen is "an easy film to dislike" but personally I cannot agree that it is "a difficult film to embrace."  It bugged the hell outa me a number of times but just when I figured I was getting fed up with it, I found it funny or profound or both.  I mean, your name-dropping of Becket's two great clowns is apt.  Let's call The Riflemen "Waiting for Godard."  Call me an artsy nerd but I embrace this film wholeheartedly.  I really like it.  And I think it is quite unique in the film-maker's New Wave catalogue.  The film is probably his slowest moving.  I mean this literally in terms of the real time that passes in certain scenes.  But I mean it even more in terms of the overall heel-dragging pace of the thing, the lazy rhythm of the dialog and the attitude of almost ennui.  My observation is of comedy not only black but also decidedly dry and droll, giving the critique in the film the edge it needs.

Here is the funniest scene in this movie:

--

Welcome to Godard 101, an unofficial and unaffiliated online undergraduate seminar where Ben and I take on the great man and his works, doing our best to understand how Jean-Luc got from there to here.  First up, Ben and I took a look at Breathless, the film that, along with Francois Truffault's 400 Blows, blew the roof off the joint back in 1960, kicking off the Nouvelle Vague and recreating cinema. Pretty heady shit. Then, we reviewed A Woman is a Woman, which you can find here. This was followed with an examination ofTo Live Her Life, Contempt, The Little Soldier and Band of Outsiders. Most recently, we looked at Alphaville. 

A Married Woman (France, 1964, Godard)


And, for a change of pace,  Dan begins:

A Married Woman continues the early career trend of Jean-Luc Godard to alternate between"playful" and "serious" movies. Over the course of the first five years of his directorial career, Godard's odd numbered films (numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7), which are Breathless, A Woman is a Woman, The Riflemen and Band of Outsiders are the more light-hearted, while his even numbered films, (numbers 2, 4, 6, and 8), which are The Little Soldier, To Live Her Life, Contempt and now A Married Woman are considerably more serious in tone and subject matter. This is not to say that his comedies did not have serious moments and dark undertones, or that his dramas lacked humour, for that would be to miss the subtlety and genre-blending nature of these mostly excellent films. Rather, my point is to acknowledge that this pattern provides a glimpse into Godard's preferences and inclinations. I don't know if Godard chose this alternating pattern consciously, and if he did, A Married Woman would mark the end of the trend, for Godard's ninth film is the distinctly humourless and intense Alphaville. But even if it was accidental or a subconscious inclination, it speaks to something of both the singular AND dual natures of the filmmaker, particularly in the early years of his career.

 Godard is widely acknowledged to be a cerebral filmmaker, a man most comfortable working in the intellectual realm, which means that he is, generally speaking, going to steer clear of films that are predominately engage the affective domain, such as romances and musicals (no, despite Godard's claims to the contrary, I do not consider a Woman is a Woman a musical), and instead focus his energies on those that require and encourage the use of intelligence and reason, which would include (smart) comedies (see films 1, 3, 5 and 7 above) and, for lack of a better term, art house dramas that centre on what he sees as important social and/or artistic issues (see films 2, 4, 6 and 8.)   Working its way through all his films is a fascination with the language of the cinema, and specifically an interest in the examining the way that he can use that language to shape the future of movies as agents of social change.

In A Married Woman, Godard's social and artistic concerns congeal around the life of a young middle class married French woman named Charlotta (Macha Meril) who is torn between her marriage to Pierre (Philippe Leroy), a successful but often absent husband and her affair with Robert (Bernard Noel) , a handsome and passionate actor.  However, while the presentation of these relationships does have a fascinating and unusual (for Godard) sensuality, such questions of (in) fidelity are among the least interesting themes explored in this film.

Instead, Godard uses the familiar domestic dynamic as a jumping off point for a much more intriguing exploration of the effects of modern advertising on the mind and heart of the film's central character. As we get to know Charlotta, we see a beautiful but superficial young woman who is fascinated by fashion and advertising, a woman who knows little of what has been happening in the world, but who buries her nose in fashion magazines in order to gain the latest bit of knowledge to help her to become even more beautiful, and who has no interest in learning about the past, which is dull. Indeed, she needs to be schooled on Aushwitz, while her date movie with Robert, Resnais' Holocaust documentary Night and Fog, acts as a satirical counterpoint to her romantic interests. Instead of looking backwards, Charlotte prefers to focus on the present, for here there is music, flowers and love. So, she pours over lingerie ads, buys a contraption to help her stand straighter and listens raptly to her maid's bawdy story about how a bust-enhancing cream increased her obese husband's sexual appetite. Unfortunately, Meril's limitations as an actress, particularly when placed next to the fine work that Anna Karina has done for Godard, don't let us into Charlotta's world in the way that we and Godard might have hoped, or in the way Karina would have almost certainly delivered. Despite Meril's undeniable beauty, the deck is stacked against Charlotta, who remains a rather unsympathetic lead, and the actress's limited palette of facial expressions further distances her from the audience. 

Further pushing our sympathies to the side is the audience recognition of the very petit bourgeois concerns of our central trio. None of the issues they are facing appear to be particularly devastating or even terribly affecting. Charlotta, Robert and Pierre are young, attractive and apparently successful people, with few of the encumbrances or challenges that help to make some of Godard's more interesting leads--such as Michel in Breathless or Nana in Vivre Sa Vie--so captivating and memorable. 

Still, there is much in A Married Woman worth examining. Utilizing cinematic choices to underscore his ideas, Godard films all of the lovemaking scenes in A Married Woman in a highly stylized manner. Focusing on body parts--a disembodied arm,  hand,  leg, small of the back, lips, eye--Godard recreates the images and tendency towards objectification found in so many of the fashion magazines and advertisements in Charlotta's (and our) world. By presenting only pieces and parts of the lovers, Godard commodifies his actors in the same way that the world of advertising does. So, because Charlotta is immersed in this world, she experiences life the same way, in fragments, snippets and whispered sound bites.  

And while the men are treated more kindly by Godard (as if we need more evidence that Jean-Luc has a misogynist streak), as they are able to put forth coherent arguments and seem to understand aspects of this world with a little more depth than Charlotta, there remains the unspoken truth that it is men who have created most of the advertising that feed the obsessions and neuroses, and which objectify and commodify women for our consumption.

Throughout the film, Godard studies the way that popular culture in general and advertising in particular influence the way we see, act and interact with the world. Typical of most Godard films, there are long stretches of philosophical discussion and pseudo-philosophical dialogue that point us in the direction he wants us to incline thematically, such as when writer/director/film critic Roger Leenhardt opines that it is a sign of intelligenceto understand something before affirming it, perhaps warning us not to wholly endorse this or any film's themes until sorting through them thoroughly. And as the film nears its climax, Godard's interest in the dividing line between theatre/cinema and real life is captured in Charlotta's interrogation of Robert, as she attempts to determine which of the two men in her life to choose. 

A Married Woman may be a lesser Godard, but that does not mean it is without merit. Indeed, many lesser directors would have a film of this quality exclaimed their masterpiece. 

Then Ben:

I had a technical problem that rendered the subtitles for this film in broken fragments on both the top and the bottom of the screen as well as to the left and right of the picture.  While this may sound appropriate for a film subtitled, Fragments of a Film Shot in 1964 in Black and White, it was sometimes not possible for me to catch all of the dialogue, the black and white working just fine in 2011 notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, I caught enough.  And perhaps it says something about the film that I was able to "get it" in spite of my technical problem.  The dialogue comes in, well, fragments, with other passages in the film having none or little.  Point being,  A Married Woman is a very tight study that is, compared to most other Godard, perfectly straight-forward.

I don't particularly like the film even though I reckon for it favourably in retrospect that it is a crucial link between To Live Her Life and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her.  That there is a problematic male chauvinist tendency in Godard's New Wave we have been acknowleding for some time now in GODARD 101.  I like the two films I just mentioned for many reasons but certainly among them is my ability to see in them a feminist critique of the degrading objectification of women under male dominated cultural codes and commercial relations.  In your review, you suggest that this critique is also at work in A Married Woman and I agree with you.

You also indicate that it is hard to sympathize with the hollow middle class (un)consciousness of the protagonist and I agree with this too.  But whereas you sound somewhat frustrated about this and explore factors contributing to it as a problem for you, I interpret the unsympathetic (non)substance of the woman to be indicative of the depth of her social alienation, which Godard extends to the audience in turn.  With regard to this, you provide very insightful analysis in your discussion of the truncated nature of everything in the film, from body parts to advertising sections, all of which correspond to what I like to call the mechanically de-boned chicken of the commodity form.  Simply put, we don't have to like the protagonist to get the point.  Actually, Godard may be indicating that we have to not like her to get the point.

Which brings me to the unusual (for Godard) sensuality of the film.  Many reviews ago of film (which?) Godard made after A Married Woman but which I saw before it, I basically accused him of asexuality, of being a cold fish who never wants to get into hot water.  Now, here I am confronted by the sensuality of A Married Woman and - the fish is still swimming in the Arctic Ocean!  Yes, this film shows the most skin, the most kissing, the most caressing and all the dynamics between the protagonist and her two men are plainly erotic.  But did I say the fish is still swimming in the Arctic Ocean?  Forget that.  The flounder is on ice.  There is not one wave of heat, not one scent of sweat coming off all that skin, kissing caressing.  And that's the point.  It's all alienated, truncated, mechanically de-boned chicken.

In short, no love.  I've drawn attention this this already in GODARD 101. "[I]ntimate personal relationships that purport to be loving are revealed to be dubious bonds that collapse under the weight of estrangement, deceit and betrayal.  Sometimes this is given a comedic spin but even more is a sinister undertow, a sense of dread, perpetual pessimissim.  The characters continually doubt themselves and each other," (7/29/2011).  You note that the question of (in)fidelity is among the least interesting themes explored in A Married Woman.  I reckon you are right and not just because Godard is refrains from passionate moralizing.  The mechanically de-boned characters are themselves going through the motions dictated to them by their class positions and advertising cues.

So it is that her husband can threaten to rape her just when it looks like they were going to share a genuinely human moment as a petty scrap between them takes on a playful aspect.  In the subsequent scene it is confirmed in the dialogue that he did rape her, but the fact of this is served up to the audience like, well, so much cool cod on a chilled plate.  And there is no more love with her lover.  In the end, she essentially accuses him of the male version of faking his orgasm, merely playing the part of a man in love.  It's a nice change from Godard's continual interrogation of the cinematic image.  The theatrics of the actor are questioned.  But the profundity of this reflexivity is cold comfort about a character who was supposedly a lover and turns out to be another undercover hollow man.

Even though I respect it for doing sucessfully what it sets out to do, as I said, I don't particularly like A Married Woman.  The thing is just too footnote-to-Bergman for me.  The interiors, the tight shots on human bodies in angular still-life compositions, the emotional repression running through everything; you know, if you close one ear while hearing America sing "Horse With No Name" you might think you were listening to Neil Young.  And I suppose I sorta did watch A Married Woman with only one eye, what with those screwed up subtitles.

And Dan:

I feel a tad sheepish when I read, "[b]ut whereas you sound somewhat frustrated about this and explore factors contributing to it as a problem for you, I interpret the unsympathetic (non)substance of the woman to be indicative of the depth of her social alienation, which Godard extends to the audience in turn." I mean, DUH!  Of course he wants me to see her as alienated. Of course he wants me to lack sympathy for her. Had I not just seen The Riflemen, for god(ard)'s sake, the day before watching A Married Woman?

What a maroon! Thanks for righting that ship.

Bergman-lite indeed. I really enjoyed looking AT the film, but I didn't get INTO it very much at all (of course, that was intentional). But we are still looking at a director who is only completely comfortable when he is dealing with ideas. At this point, the flesh and blood stuff doesn't seem to register for him.

A Married Woman can be viewed online. Here is part one:




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Welcome to Godard 101, an unofficial and unaffiliated online undergraduate seminar where Ben and I take on the great man and his works, doing our best to understand how Jean-Luc got from there to here.  First up, Ben and I took a look at Breathless, the film that, along with Francois Truffault's 400 Blows, blew the roof off the joint back in 1960, kicking off the Nouvelle Vague and recreating cinema. Pretty heady shit. Then, we reviewed A Woman is a Woman, which you can find here. This was followed with an examination ofTo Live Her Life, Contempt, The Little Soldier and Band of Outsiders.

Up today: Lemmy Caution you, it is our future. Turns out, it's murder, baby.

Alphaville (France, 1965, Jean-Luc Godard)

Ben Begins:

Caw!  Caw!  That's the sound of the crow I'm eating.  How nice to have it feed to me by this film in particular.  Now I can sleep at night knowing that I personally have not dreamt any of the scenes of Alphaville.  Of course, I understood nothing of the film when I was much too young to even be watching it and all these years I've rememberd nothing about the film... except the vibe, which is everything - so all these years I've remembered everything about the film perfectly.  Ha!  But let me get back to ingesting that jackdaw.

 

The violence in Alphaville works.  It is conducted in the typical Godard manner of cardboard cut-out reflexive assertions and limp rag-doll repercussions.  But this time the hostility is genuine and the stakes high.  Interestingly enough, a number of persons are dispatched without individual agony and this absence of visceral effect would have sounded a false note if these persons were not anonymous agents of the state, surveillance drones of the machine.  The passionlessness of the protagonist assassin is just as legitimate given his Noir gum shoe as spy status.  It's all cold as ice.  But there is violence in the violence, if you know what I mean.

 

For the entire atmosphere is absolute dystopia, totalitarian technocracy, a black box of Kafka on a tight budget.  This is conditioning all of the action and giving it the requisite gravitas.  Alphaville is a staggeringly good work for the way it achieves a science fiction premise and setting without any special affects or futuristic neologisms.  All of the setting for the film is prosaically contemporary, regular stuff at the time.  If anything, some of the Sam Spade stylings are a throwback.  George Orwell meant 1948 when he titled his book 1984.  Godard paints a terrifying picture of the future entirely with 1965 paint.  So, yeah, we get the point.  The future is now.  So be afraid today, folks.  Be goddamn scared you "One Dimensional Man" (Marcuse) sitting in the audience; capitalist, communist, robotic slave to the system either way.

 

But wait ladies and gentlemen.  The finish is so upbeat, it's positively corny.  Like Logan's Run and Blade Runner years later, the guy gets the girl in Alphaville and they do get the hell out of Dodge.  The assassin completes the various jobs making up his mission, the outlander civilization from whence he came and now returns holds the promise of truly human existence.  The social unit from Alphaville, Number 508, is rescued, instructed as was Lot's Wife to not look back and unlike that stupid citizen escaping Sodemm she doesn't.  Instead, she begins to become an individual person.  Slowly shedding the mind-control, she is like a baby finding her own words for the first time.  To the man who is saving her she says: "I love you."

 

For all of this does Godard have his tongue firmly planted in his cheek?  I think not.  At least I hope not.  I want to give the guy credit for holding out some hope.  Not because it's hope he's holding out.  Because he's holding out something.  Like I said in my last GODARD 101 journal entry, it's not that I can't abide the pessimism or even cynicism in his art.  It has been his refusal so far to respond to this in any sort of substantive way that I objected to before.  I have felt that he hides behind the superficiality of cinematic manipulations that enable him to escape the responsibility of taking a stand of any kind.  For all of his overt presence in the rhetoric of his films, he is semantically absent.

 

Not in Alphaville, however.  The thing is in-the-trenches romantic.  Shucks, the computer-king running the show with ultra-logic is defeated by... poetry; that's right, a verse riddle that effectively causes the electronic brain to fry it's own circuits and in the process exterminate all the hollow men trapped in town.  Hot blood beats cold reason - so there!  Godard wanted to call the film "Tarzan vs. IBM" (Wiki), can you dig it?

 

Listen, the faceless evil coming off the machine in the film is outa sight.  Honestly, Alphaville deserves to be put in the company of Lang's Metropolis for this alone.  Godard cobbles together a Matrix bad buy out of a shoe string and scotch tape - some lights and rotar blades, actually - and gets a seriously sinister "Wizard of Oz" up and running in a big way.  The real stroke of genius is to have the machine's dialogue performed by some fellow with an artificial voice box installed to replace his cancer-ruined larynx.  Downright disturbing.

 

The Dr. Frankenstein who built the monter computer is called "Nosferatu."  Go for it Jean-Luc.  Alphaville is a sci-fi horror film with a happy ending.   The horror, 20th Century systematic, so drips off the screen, the implausibility of the kind-hearted conclusion we can forgive.  No worries that the police apparatus in Alphaville is lethargic and impotent.  It's for a good cause.

And Dan:

I've taken a little closer look at this review than I have past reviews, mainly because I don't want spend half of my review covering the same material that you do. I like your analysis very much, and we agree that this is a highly effective Orwellian/Kafka-esque nightmare. We also agree that the film's ending is not ironic. Like you, I believe that Godard is giving a tip of his romantic hat to the audience. There may be a small irreverent wink there, but he is not taking refuge behind irony. To do so would be to threaten the entire film with collapse, and such a move would be a betrayal of the healing powers of poesy and love, which he has been trumpeting throughout the film. I do have a few complaints about narrative pacing and poorly staged action sequences, but these are minor compared to the film's many examples of greatness.

Alphaville works because Godard marries form and content in a way that signals significant growth as a filmmaker. He blends the conventions of the sci fi and film noir genres (leaning far more heavily on the latter than the former) to the purposes of this dystopian tale, and in the process creates an Orwellian cautionary tale that, while a little creaky around the edges, has some real power. 

The following laundry list of the noir conventions that Godard employs in Alphaville is representative and not exhaustive: 

*gravelly voice over narration (both Lemmy and more distinctly Alpha 60)

*men in trench coats and fedoras, carrying guns

*violence aplenty

*shot in grainy black and white

*shot mostly at night, or in shadowy locales (his incredibly effective use of a naked light bulb, swinging pendulum-like in one memorable stairway scene is positively Wellesian in its brilliance)

*shot in an urban environment

*a "moody" score (Paul Misraki's emphatically noir-ian score is alternatively effective and amusing, sometimes supporting the narrative, and other times acting as a comic counterpoint)

*femme fatales abound (all those seductresses, third class, but also Natasha--a great name for a femme fatale in the Cold War era)

*an isolated, hard bitten hero (played very convincingly by Eddie Constantine. Now THAT'S the name of a noir hero. Movie trivia moment: Constantine played Lemmy Caution in over a dozen films, including a reprise with Godard inGermany Year Ninety Nine Zero.)

*an antagonist who not only represents "The Man" he IS "The Man" while not actually being A man. 

*an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, entropy and decay (which Godard turns on its head with his unexpectedly happy ending.)

When Godard does move away from the conventions of the noir genre, he does so usually to pay the fleeting homage to the futuristic sci fi roots of the story, with the most obvious of these concessions being the film's antagonist, the all seeing, all controlling super computer named Alpha 60. Generally speaking, however, it is clear that Godard is not that interested in the sci fi aspect of the story, choosing as he does to ignore the story's futuristic elements.  Lemmy rides in a 60s Ford Galaxy (indeed, everyone drives mid-60s model cars) the guns are clearly weapons are contemporary, while the few glimpses we get of the mighty computer technology is of this era as well. Certainly, this could signal the fiscal restrictions Godard was under as he shot the film. However, I think it also plays into the director's hands thematically, for--as you put it in your review--in Godard view, the future is now. By utilizing contemporary Parisian architecture and referencing modern art (particularly poetry), Godard is letting us know that he's not going to dress this up in futuristic garb; we cannot be complacent, and drift away on some (filmsy) cloud of cinematic illusion, because  this shit is doing down NOW. What appears futuristic (the tranquilized citizenry, the byzantine bureaucracy, the intrusive technology) is kept relevant at least in part by this refusal to be, well,  filmsy. 

And for every flash forward to the present, there is a glimpse at the not so distant past. In one of many Orwellian manuevres (others include mind/emotion control through the alteration and obliteration of language), Godard consistently refers to ideas and images that characterize the Third Reich.  The numbered tattoos of the citizens, the clinically cold poolside executions, as well as Lemmy and Alpha 60s conversations about eugenics are examples of such glimpses into the recent past. Indeed, the film's philosophical musings about love, poetry, logic and eugenics are  reminders that we are in a Godard's world, which is a place that is more interested in Orwell than Asimov. Further, the creator of Alpha 60 is Professor von Braun (probably a reference to Wernher Von Braun was a scientist and significant player in the development of rocket technology for the Nazis who ended up going to work for NASA), who later we learn changed his name from Nosferatu, a (German) blood sucking monster of considerable cinematic fame.  

Clearly, Godard knows and loves his noir, as Alphaville has atmosphere oozing out of every pore. Godard also keeps us off balance, tossing in the unexpected (seemingly random acts of violence) and the horrific (executions are held in a large indoor pool with synchronized swimming female assassins), while filming most of the picture in the murky grayness of the urban night. However, the narrative does occasionally clomp along in lead boots as Godard moves us from location to location. And while I concur that the depiction of violence is more convincing in Alphaville than it has been in most of Godard's films, there is still a clunkiness in his execution (heh) of the action sequences that I find at times a little distracting. 

Still and all, despite these minor quibbles, Alphaville is a dark and disturbing dystopic vision. And while their careers both started strongly, when you consider how much better this film is that Francois Truffault's awkward and unconvincing attempt to cover similar territory at the same time in his adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451,it is easy to see why Godard became the more significant filmmaker.  

Then Ben:

Here I come with ho hum. 

 

I like everything you say.  And I do think that between the two of us, we've got a darn good review.

 

All I can think to address is what I am proud for having recognized way back with Breathless.  The problem of violence remains.  I came up with a rationalization for it this time - the clunkiness works with the dystopian theme - but your reservations are reasonable.

 

In general, how Godard presents violence (and that he does not present sex, for the most part) is problematic.  Not necessarily "wrong," by the way, but in need of interpretation and explanation.  We tend to feel that it is a weakness in his art, but it is open to debate.  Hence, this time out, I was able to spin it in a direction that worked for me.  Alphaville very much worked for me.

 

As for your minor complaint about the flat-footed story-telling, this I am less oriented to allow.  I am convinced that Godard just refuses to buy into conventional narrative because of an intellectual predisposition not to need all the dots joined, all the blanks filled.  This abstraction is not a weakness on his part.  It is rather essential to his art.

 

And Dan:

I agree that it is part of his art, it is just that there are times when he is better at marrying it to the imagery/action/characters around them than others. For instance, I really dug most of the abstract conversations in Alphaville a lot, particularly the battle of wits between Lemmy and Alpha 60. Which reminds me  (parenthetically)  how cool was the scene of Lemmy's first interrogation, where the microphones kept swirling around him like ravenous birds of prey? Can you think of a bitter image for the totalitarianism of the state and the creeping paranoia of the citizen? This is one of many such outstanding images in this film. Another example: the chat that Lemmy has with Natasha while they are dining in front of the blank TV screen, where we are mostly limited to seeing their hand gestures; that was well crafted as well. 

But there were just some scenes--like Lemmy's arrival at a meeting at Programming and Memory--that fell kind of flat for me because the abstract nature of the discussion was not married to any other aspect of the film that I could find interest in, so I felt that it ground matters to a halt. This is not a major concern overall, just a relatively minor nit that I felt like picking at. I didn't want us to be so completely in agreement that I put you to sleep, after all. 

Then Ben:

I said in my review that I think Alphaville deserves to be compared to Metropolis and I meant it.  All these specifics you identify are definitely crazy effective film-making.  Something you said, not sure what, must have triggerd in me the desire to pursue this idea:

 

What I wish to expand upon is the importance for the film of the poverty of the future world depicted.  We've already addressed how the film is intentionally here-and-now - Jesus, New Wave Godard is always here-and-now, this is an absolutely vital feature of what he is all about - and this makes the dystopia that much more chilling for its suggestion of the contemporary.

 

But the dystopia is that much more chilling still for the here-and-now being so mundane and poor.  Sure, there are a couple interiors set in what are obviously the most space-age, neato-keano corporate lobbies of the day, a weak effort to keep the sci-fi geeks in the audience happy.  But there are basically no fancy digs, there is no trippy gear.  Point being, the poverty of the film's budget is translated to the environment of the fictional world in an aesthetically and thematically powerful way.

 

Is the film just screaming out that it was made for 50 cents?  Of course it is!  But here's the thing - this sends the dystopian message that in the future, life will be impoverished.  Not in the ultimately metaphoric way of just about every other sci-fi dystopia.  Not morally bankrupt or emotionally broke or psychologically without value.  No, literally impoverished.  Poor, plain and simple.  The absence of advanced, ostentatious technology and cultural trappings signals in no uncertain terms that the future society is not capital intensive, not wealthy.

 

Godard may have wanted to call the film "Tarzan vs.IBM" but I have to highlight something I just brushed over in my review.  The negative object in the film is not just American-centered capitalism.  It is also Soviet-centered socialism.  Verily, I suppose the film is even more directed against the latter.  Not the rich matrix but rather the poor maze is "Alphaville" in Alphaville.

 

To finish here, I hear you about things sometimes falling flat, grinding to a halt.  And I adhere to your feeling about this.  As I note in my term paper... sigh... there are always moments in a Godard film where the film threatens to stop in its tracks, stall, and this can be boring and/or irritating.  However, just as I held that he does not join all the dots and fill in every blank on purpose, a technical/formal observation, I now make this same point on the conceptual/thematic level.  Yes, he is sloppy, lazy even, can't be bothered, has a that'll-do streak fitting for a shallow pocketbook.  But his pocketbook is shallow on purpose.  Not just because he wants complete control over his artistic production.  Not just because he is drawn to a frugal aesthetic (in some of his films).  There is something deeper going on.  He's a crappy story-teller on purpose.  What is that purpose?

 

And Dan:

I really dig what you're saying about the poverty of the future as presented in Alphaville. The city may have a shiny veneer--those snazzy corporate lobbies you reference--but people's personal spaces are like those you'd find in a Raymond Chandler novel: Small spaces, starkly appointed and in a general state of disrepair.  Also, Godard doesn't deny that there will be huge technological advances made, only that they will not be democratically distributed. Instead, in a nod to Orwell, they will be controlled by the faceless state. As you say, the film is even more of an attack on Soviet style communism than it is American style capitalism. Again, as with Orwell, often the most effective critiques of communism in practice come from those who are practitioners in theory. 

As for your query, I could do some online research and give you an erudite answer, but I will simply wing it instead. Based on what I have seen, Godard's clumsiness in action scenes and his reluctance to compose a smoothly flowing story is borne out of his discomfort with conventional narrative cinema. On one level,  Godard loves a conventionally well-made (like Truffault, he's a big fan of mainstream filmmakers like Hitchcock and John Ford), but at the same time, on another level, he sees the problems inherent in such an approach. These filmmakers do not challenge their audiences so much as entertain them, which explains their success at the box office, but also their limitations as artists. They are, to a certain extent, trapped by their success, in that in order to continue to make films in the style to which they have grown accustomed, with the budgets they need, these filmmakers must continue to be successes at the box office. Therefore, they have to continue to make the sort of cinematic comfort food for the masses that will be easily consumed and quickly digested. If they choose to make more difficult films, ones that for the audience to think a little more deeply about things, to confront aspects of life that might make them uncomfortable and challenge their assumptions about life, they would risk failure, and the loss of access to the elements of studio film making that they've grown accustomed to. Plus, they'd have the stigma of having lost favour with the public, of having become elitists, snobs, who talk down to or preach at their audience, and so on. 

Godard therefore chooses to make films on the cheap, so he can retain  control over their content, which helps explain why the films clearly look like they were made for a dime. They clearly WERE made for a dime. Thus, the argument goes, the action sequences look awkward because Godard lacks the funding to stage more satisfying or convincing ones. But I think this is a partial answer at best. There is an aesthetic here at work as well. He WANTS the audience to notice how "bad" these scenes look. Similarly, he makes strange leaps in his narrative, or inserts long rambling philosophical discourses at key points in the film in order to stir us out of our comfortable consumption of the film. These things are clearly purposeful. He wants us to be aware of the fact that we are watching a film, and to think about the things that we have been taking for granted in our film going up to now. He does not want movie watching to be passive and idle. He wants to stir us up, to awaken us. To get us thinking and talking, arguing and yes, even complaining, about the aspects of his films that bother us. If we want to have our dessert, Godard says, we had better be ready to eat our veggies. His movies are not merely a (bout de) souffle, not a mere trifle; they are a three course meal, and if we want to fully appreciate them, we had better train our palettes to dig his eccentric and elliptical recipes.

Natasha and Lemmy discuss the meaning of love in Alphaville: