1001 Club - Alphaville (1965)

#457. Alphaville (1965)

Why It's In The Book: "Jean-Luc Godard, powerhouse of the French nouvelle vague, set out to create a science-fiction film without expensive sets or special effects… Alphaville’s relationship with science fiction was initially parodic… considered a product of the time… Alphaville now looks a lot like proper sci-fi, to the extent of influencing a run of adaptations (from François Truffaut’s take on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 to Ridley Scott’s Dick-derived Blade Runner)…
Godard [is] almost the equal of Joseph L. Mankiewicz in the cinema of conversation. The film shows a wry humor and a poetic seriousness (sometimes, silliness), and is a rare futurist vision that simply does not date." -1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Member Ratings

Klaus Ming - 9/10
"The future never looked as bleak as in Godard’s amusing and highly influential retro film noir styled science fiction love story"
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Siochembio - 8/10
"There’s something about the mash-up of science fiction and film noir with Godard’s New Wave style that, rather inexplicably, works for me."
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Movie Guy Steve - 7/10
"Just as Orwell feared the destruction of the unique person in the service to the state, Godard fears the loss of self and emotion as being the loss of that which makes us human."
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Adolytsi - 6/10
"Frankly, I’m not too sure I like what Godard is doing with his films. If anyone were to do what Godard does, they’d immediately be called out for not knowing how to properly construct a film, or put it together; there’s just way too many things that would be labeled as mistakes, and rookie mistakes at that. So just because Godard was the first to really do these things at a professional level, that means he can get away with it and have his work called genius instead of a sloppily-made piece of crap? Sorry, but not by my standards."
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Kim Wilson - 6/10
"For someone who thinks he has so much to say about society Godard has a really poor way of conveying it.  If you, and perhaps a few others, are the only one who can decipher what you are trying to say, how useful is it really?"
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TSorensen - 6/10
"If Jim Jarmusch had made Blade Runner it probably would have looked like Alphaville. Alphaville is definitely stranger than paradise."
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Overall Rating: 7/10