Alphaville - Criterion Collection

Starring:Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff, Jean-Louis Comolli, Michel Delahaye, ValÃ©rie Boisgel, Howard Vernon, LÃ¡szlÃ³ SzabÃ³, Christa Lang, Jean-Pierre LÃ©aud, Jean-AndrÃ© Fieschi
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

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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

Description

A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Godard's irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60. Criterion's edition of this seminal film features a new digital transfer.

Customer Reviews:

One of the most unique, moving, and poetic science fiction films ever made..........2007-04-04

This film really doesn't get as much attention as it should. I was recently watching clips of this on youtube, and was struck by a couple of comments. Someone wrote "how does Godard do it? He uses very old fashioned techniques here (dissolves, fades), yet, makes one of the most profound films ever made?". Another wrote "because he's an artist". This is so true. This is one of most challenging, complex, cerebral science fiction films ever made. Despite the fact that it was shot in current day Paris when it was made (with no futuristic sets or anything like that), it still feels like it's futuristic. People live well, but live without heart and soul, which seems to be Godard's point (or one of many...Godard's films are amongst the most complex ever made). There are too few science fiction films like Alphaville. It belongs in a very select category along with 2001, Solaris (the original), A Clockwork Orange, THX 1138, Twelve Monkeys, Stalker, Blade Runner, and A.I.. It is among the sci-fi films that appeal to the mind and soul rather than overwhelm your senses with lots of fast cuts, CGI graphics up the wazoo, and a completely soulless approach to character and ideas. This is one of Godard's classics, which is really saying something considering how brilliant the man is...

thought provoking science fiction.......2007-01-29

Hmm. . . Decisions, decisions . . . To get the full-screen French version on DVD, or the widescreen English on VHS. Much as I despise subtitles, I still recall a smattering of French and it might be nice to brush up with a movie I remember fairly well in English. Alphaville (A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution) is one of those sci-fi movies about a society where a computer runs everything. And anything that makes humanity human, in any meaningful sense of the word, is relentlessly quashed. Kind of a cross between Orwell's 1984, Clarke's 2001, and at least a half dozen Star Trek episodes, although with the advantage of being made when it was still a new idea, and before we began living in a society like it ourselves. But I digress . . . Really, this is an enjoyable movie to me still. Its being dated only increases its charm. And I still find myself driven to determine from the poetry, ideas, images, et al, depicted in it, what it really means to be human. I'm not sure how "leftist" it is to want to blast away at the heart of an anti-human society, though, but I never was very political. But wouldn't it be nice if all we had to do to be free of tyranny was to destroy the Big Computer? Pure escapist fantasy: Highly recommended.

Brainwashed Drones.......2007-01-17

Lately I have been interested in watching films that have a strong leftist political feel to them. In the realm of Japanese film I have been viewing and purchasing films from the 1960s that have connections with the leftist theatrical troupes and student and social movements. Of course directors like Oshima Nagisa, Imamura Shohei, and Susumu Hani play an important role during this movement so I have picked up a number of their films. Anyway, I am slowly, but surely, developing an interest in films from America, France, etc. that also deal with this same time period and it is quite interesting to compare both diverse and intermingling themes within these films.

In the realm of French cinema, especially that of French New Wave Cinema, the director who has some of the strongest leftist sensibilities is Jean-Luc Godard. I have been trying to watch quite a number of Godard's films and some of them have left me completely cold, but perhaps that is due to general lack of interest on my part when I attempted t view said films, while others I enjoyed quite a bit. Band of Outsiders is still my favorite Godard film. Anyway, the most recent Godard film that I watched is Alphaville (1965).

Alphaville is a Sci-Fi mystery film that honestly has very few elements that can label it a Sci-Fi film. There are no futuristic settings and one does not witness any spectacular scientific inventions. However, there is one glaring exception to this, and that is the presence of Alpha 60: a massive, sentient computer with a nearly omniscient mind about the happenings with Alphaville and with a voice that might remind one of a French Hal who has smoked way too many cigarettes. Whatever its purposes might be, Alpha 60 represents the ultimate in mind control. Basing everything on logic, Alpha 60 eliminates anyone who displays emotion, including a man who cried after his wife died. Such a lovely place to live, isn't it? Well for most of the people who live in Alphaville this is the only world that they know. A world in which words are constantly being eliminated, such as tenderness, because they call up emotions and one in which the dictionary, which is always changing because words are constantly being changed, has replaced the bible as the key "holy" book.

However, in the Outlands people still have that own thoughts and feelings and the spy Lemmy Caution, disguised as the reporter Ivan Johnson, has received orders to find his fellow spy Henri Dickson, a Dr. Von Braun, who he is either to return to the Outlands or liquidate, and destroy Alpha 60. Around forty-five, dressed in a beat up trench coat, and a chain smoker, Lemmy Caution looks more like a gumshoe than a spy from the future, but he is highly capable: At least, until he meets Natasha Von Braun, the daughter of Dr. Van Braun and an example of someone who might possibly be extricated from the power of Alpha 60.

The first fifteen minutes or so of Alphaville were hard for me to watch because I had a hard time getting into the right frame of mind for a Sci-Fi film that looked like it was filmed in the backstreets of Paris, which it was, but I was able to get drawn into the film a bit more as it continued. Godard's film is not only an attack on Communist policies, i.e. Stalinist policies, but it is also an attack on Capitalism as well. While brainwashed, most of the residents of Alphaville material desires are satiated by the system. However, can material items truly replace deeply engrained human emotion? Hopefully not, but Godard's film shows how an oppressive government attempts to mold the minds of its citizens. A must for fans of New Wave cinema and recommended for casual foreign movie fans, Alphaville might not be an enjoyable movie experience, but it will at least get the brain juices flowing.

Hollywood action and SFX it ain't...........2006-12-01

This film has inpsired several later films, like Brazil and Logan's Run. What I found so unique with this film, however, is that it did draw me in, but not in a passive way. Rather, it, in contrast to most other films, it actually helps the imagination, and forced me to be an active viewer and interpreter: it does not serve ready made experiences.This film demands attention from its viewer. What immediately struck me when I watched this film was that over half the story is told by the photography. Both the imagery and the dialogue intentionally leave gaps, which have to be filled in by the imagination of the viewer, and interpreted by each individual viewer.
The imagery tells us about a city built completely logically. No attention to artistic expression or human comfort has been paid. The humans are all given roles as servants of the order. There are obvious allusions to the police collaborators during the German occupation.
Outside of the city there is the semimythical and chaotic Outside. It is from here a hired assassin arrives to find the scientist responsible for the computer that runs the city. He is also an observer. He, being from Outside, is able to see the absurd and bizarre results of this "logical" society. He is also able to see how vulnerable the city really is...

A French Film........2006-10-01

Our hero is Lemmy Caution. He loves gold and women, yet never seems to like the women he gets. He has a gun which he uses and a lighter which is always lighting fresh cigarettes. He says he is a reporter, he does have a camera, but in fact he is an agent from the Outlands. He has come to either kidnap or kill the scientist, who invented Alpha 60, a computer that runs the city of Alphaville. A society where emotions and certain words have been removed and logic rules. The computer, like 18th Century humans who wished to dominate nature with reason and logic, wants to rule mankind with logic and rational thinking. Yet why do people who live there like to bat at light bulbs and take drugs?
HA! What is logically about women in swimsuits killing people in a pool with knives? None of the film really makes that much sense. Of course it could be that a computer's logic is not the same as mankind's. The film had French actors and is a film which was filmed in black and white, so it is a French film released in 1965 in black and white. MST3K would have had problems with this flick - it is surreal but also, I think, badly edited. It is science fiction without any special effects. It is many themes that just don't seem to mix well. Even the sound clues, which should tell us when something important is about to happen, were clueless. The music would swell up and become all dramatic when somebody was riding an elevator or lighting a cigarette. At one point the female character was blind, then seemed normal, then was blind again.
Now I still enjoyed it in a bad B-movie kind of way and some scenes really seemed to work for me. Such as when the computer is questioning Lemmy, with the blinking lights and moving microphones, it really looks like something out of a dystopian future. And how a computer's voice told you if the room was empty or not when you passed it. And the women in the film are pretty cute if underused.
But in the end all you can say about it is that Lemmy smokes too much and that love and art is important in any culture. 99 minutes of something but I'm not too sure what that something was. When it comes to the Criterion Collection I should stick to the Japanese or American films.

Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack (High & Low/Tokyo Drifter/The Honeymoon Killers/Branded to Kill/Alphaville/Man Bites Dog) - Amazon.com exclusive

Average customer rating:

Criterion Crime Wave / IFC crossover promotion
Great movies, strange price
Great movies, silly collection

Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack (High & Low/Tokyo Drifter/The Honeymoon Killers/Branded to Kill/Alphaville/Man Bites Dog) - Amazon.com exclusive
Starring: Valérie Boisgel , Jean-Louis Comolli , Eddie Constantine , Michel Delahaye , and Jean-André Fieschi
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Manufacturer: Criterion Collection
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B00015WMP0
Release Date: 2004-01-11

Amazon.com

The six films in the Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack were shown together on on the International Film Channel in January 2004.

Although best known for his samurai classics, Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa proved himself equally adept at contemporary dramas and thrillers, and 1962's High and Low offers a powerful showcase for Kurosawa's versatile skill. The great Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy industrialist who receives a phone call informing him that his son has been kidnapped, and by unfortunate coincidence the ransom demand is nearly equivalent to the amount Mifune has raised for a corporate coup. What follows is both a tense detective thriller, as the police attempt to track down the kidnapper, and a compelling illustration of class division in Japan--the "high and low" of the title. Far be it from Kurosawa to make a mere thriller, however; this loose adaptation of the Ed McBain novel King's Ransom provides the director with ample opportunity to develop a visual strategy that perfectly enhances the story's sociological themes. --Jeff Shannon

In Toyko Drifter, Seijun Suzuki transforms the yakuza genre into a pop-art James Bond cartoon as directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The twisting narrative takes hitman "Phoenix" Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari) from deliriously gaudy nightclubs, where killers hide behind every pillar, to the beautiful snowy plains of Northern Japan and back again, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. Suzuki's extreme stylization, jarring narrative leaps, and wild plot devices combine to create a pulp fiction on acid, equal parts gangster parody and post-modern deconstruction. --Sean Axmaker

There's Bonnie and Clyde--then there's Martha and Ray. One-shot writer-director Leonard Kastle set out to make a film about lover-murderers that was everything Arthur Penn's movie was not. He succeeded. Consequently, The Honeymoon Killers, based on the Lonely Hearts Killers case of 1949, may be too lurid for some. But there's a heart beating inside its (tawdry) chest and Kastle clearly cared about these two crazy, mixed-up kids who should never have met. But met Martha (Shirley Stoler) and Ray (Tony LoBianco) did and proceeded to fleece several widows before doing them in. The film isn't graphic in its violence, but each murder is increasingly disturbing. Dramatic lighting and dark passages from Mahler keep the mood close and clammy throughout. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Seijun Suzuki's absolutely mad yakuza movie Branded to Kill bends the hit-man genre so out of shape it more resembles a Luis Bunuel take on Martin Scorsese. Number three killer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired killer who loves his work, but when he misses a target, he becomes the next target of the mob. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, but the rat-a-tat violence gives way to a surreal, sadistic game of cat and mouse. The legendary Number One mercilessly taunts his target before moving in with him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple truce that ends up with them handcuffed together. Kinky? Not compared to earlier scenes. The smell of boiling rice sets Goro's libido for his mistress so aflame that Suzuki censors the gymnastic sex with animated black bars that come to life in an animated cha-cha. --Sean Axmaker

1965's Alphaville is a perfect example of Jean-Luc 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, 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. --Jeff Shannon

The Belgian satire Man Bites Dog is dark, dark, dark--but also right on the money in its sly sendup of the media's fascination with violence and its complicity therein. This mock documentary has a trio of filmmakers shooting a cinéma vérité feature about a garrulous serial killer who lets the film crew follow him around as he selects victims and then dispatches them. But at what point does filmmaking become participation? These hapless documentarians soon find out as their subject eventually pulls them into his world, including a gun battle with a rival film crew and their own criminal star. Gruesomely hilarious, with a deadpan wit that's hard to resist. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews:

Criterion Crime Wave / IFC crossover promotion.......2004-01-20

From the other persons reviewing this 6 DVD bundle there seems to come confusion as to why Amazon would group said discs. The reason is for cross promotion with The Independent Film Channel (IFC) who will show all six movies on January 30th and 31st of 2004. Of course, all are Criterion titles as well, and the budding collector may feel compulsion to buy all of these at once to achieve a discount (an extra 5% PER title above individual prices here at Amazon) and saving on S&H. Aside from the tie-in to IFC, Amazon is supporting a contest with prizes to be given away and you can register here at this site.

All that being said, there is no other reason these titles would form a cohesive box set, but then again, it is not being sold as such. Unlike other Criterion box sets (which to this point have always showcased a single director), this is working off of a theme and not someone's body of work. There is no mention of a "box" to house all these DVDs, but instead are just bundled together in a group. Each of these films though are solid titles, with Man Bites Dog being far and away my favorite and the two Suzuki films probably being the least appealing (though, still good films).

If your first introduction to the Criterion Collection is from watching these films on IFC at the end of the month, you will come to find the company to be the Rolls Royce of DVDs. From film restoration to bonuses to retrieval of obscure cellulite, Criterion is unparalleled in the retail field and is a must for any serious film students or lovers of great cinema.

Great movies, strange price.......2004-01-17

This is a great collection of classic films. I have all
but one on DVD or Laserdisc.

I am confused on the pricing. ..

Great movies, silly collection.......2003-12-16

Each and every one of these films are fantastic...from the police procedural of Kurosawa's High & Low to the cinema verite nastiness of Man Bites Dog to the goofiness of Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. That being said, they are all different one from the other and have little in common (with the exception of Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill...both by Suzuki), and other than an at times tangential relationship to the crime genre (Godard's Alphaville is "crime" film only to the extent that a private investigator is used as a plot device), it's strange why in the world these films are grouped together. Well, all of them are issued by the Criterion Collection...but even Criterion Collection boxed sets have a stronger kinship, as in the Hitchcock and Kurosawa boxes.

Truly a mystery why these are being marketed this way.

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Hammer Film Noir Double Feature, Vol. 1

Kiss

Mephisto (REGION 1) (NTSC)

DVD: Family Picture

Dinnerladies - The Complete Second Series