Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution is a 1965 French New Wave film by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina. A Genre-Busting work that mixes dystopian Science Fiction and Film Noir, the film is considered one of the Ur-Examples of Cyberpunk. The film uses no special props or futuristic sets, instead having been shot on in location in Paris, the night-time streets of the capital becoming the streets of Alphaville, while modernist glass and concrete buildings — things that to a French audience of The '60s were still rather novel and strange architectural designs — represent the city's interiors.
The story follows secret agent Lemmy Caution (Constantine) as he infiltrates and investigates the futuristic city of Alphaville, under the guise of a journalist. Alphaville is a dystopian, alienated society, where free thought and individualist concepts like love, poetry, and emotion are forbidden, and logic and order is strictly enforced under the threat of execution. The city is ruled by the mysterious Professor von Braun and under constant Sinister Surveillance by his creation, the sentient and dictatorial Alpha 60 computer.
This films contains examples of:
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Brainwashed agitators are sent to other galaxies to create strikes, riots, revolutions, and...family quarrels?
- Big Bad: Master Computer Alpha 60, who is determined to create a Master Race out of humanity even if it kills most of them in the process."The acts of Man through the centuries will gradually, logically destroy them. I, Alpha 60, am merely the logical means of this destruction."
- Black Comedy: Caution hijacks a police car at gunpoint, then tells the driver to wait after arriving at his destination. He then shoots the driver, saying, "That way I'm sure you'll keep your word."
- Bloodless Carnage: A number of people are machine-gunned one at a time, falling into a pool where they're repeatedly stabbed as a Coup de Grâce. Despite this the water remains clear.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Caution is captured and interrogated, but despite clearly hiding something, Alpha 60 allows him to go free...because it doesn't know what Caution is hiding. Scratch that; Bond villains are much smarter than this thing.
- Bread and Circuses: Despite illogical behavior and emotions being forbidden, prostitutes are abundant in Alphaville. One of them puts tranquilizers in the hotel bathroom like you would complimentary soap and toothpaste.
- Broken Record: "I'm fine, thanks. Don't mention it" seems to be the automatic response of most women in the film, even though no-one actually enquires after their health, least of all Caution.
- Camera Fiend: Posing as a journalist, Caution goes around photographing everything he sees (especially Natacha). It's an eccentricity in a city where there is no past, hence no need to record it.
- Commie Nazis: Caution claims to be Ivan Johnson, a journalist for Figaro-Pravda. Le Figaro is a conservative French newspaper while Pravda was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Somehow the political situation has changed enough to make a merger of the two newspapers possible.
- Computer Voice: Alpha 60 was voiced using an electrolarynx, resulting a Machine Monotone version of a harsh throaty voice.
- Cool Starship: Completely averted. Caution's "spaceship" is a Ford Galaxie and hyperspace is a road.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Those who refuse to assimilate or kill themselves are placed on a diving board, shot in the back with a machine gun so they fall into the water, then a group of synchronized swimmers with knives dive in to finish them off. Caution talks of others being electrocuted en masse in theatre chairs.
- Disproportionate Retribution: People are executed in Alphaville for "behaving illogically". One man was executed for crying after the death of his wife.
- Driven to Suicide: Most of those who can't adapt to Alphaville end up killing themselves.
- Emotions vs. Stoicism: A main theme of the film. As a very archetypical Hardboiled Detective oozing with old-fashioned machismo, Lemmy Caution finds himself in sharp conflict with the puritanical society order Alpha 60 enforces in Alphaville.
- E = MC Hammer: E = mc2 and E = hf are displayed to show the scientism underpinning Alphaville.
- Everything in Space Is a Galaxy: The minions of Alpha 60 talk of conquering other galaxies, but the Outlands they refer to appear to be Earth cities (New York and Tokyo are mentioned) while Caution arrives and leaves Alphaville in an ordinary car despite talk of traveling through space, so it's unclear whether this is meant to be symbolic; a sign of the self-imposed isolation of Alphaville.
- Free-Love Future: The hotel where Caution stays at has a Level Three Seductress on the staff who shows him his room, though the Rated M for Manly Caution declines her services as he can get his own women.
- Genre Shift: The previous Lemmy Caution films were fairly straightforward Film Noir episodes. This movie marked a sudden shift to Science Fiction.
- Good Is Not Nice: Caution ruthlessly kills mooks in the final act, some of them lying helpless on the ground. Early in the movie he uses the woman in his hotel room for some William Telling involving his pistol and a centerfold she's holding above her head.
- Hardboiled Detective: Caution is technically a secret agent, but with his hat, trenchcoat, and weathered visage he pulls off this look.
- I Am the NounAlpha 60: Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along. But I am time. It's a tiger, tearing me apart; but I am the tiger.
- Language Equals Thought:
- The bedside 'bible' kept in each hotel room isn't a Gideon's—it's a dictionary that's constantly updated because Alpha 60 keeps forbidding or replacing words.
- Caution demands to know why Dickson hasn't assassinated Professor Von Braun himself. The question only confuses Dickson as he's forgotten the meaning of "why". People in Alphaville are discouraged from using the word "why"—only "because" is acceptable.
- Logic Bomb: Alpha 60 has forbidden poetry but still studies it in case it proves useful in future. Caution is able to present a riddle it can't understand; it dedicates several circuits to the problem and eventually breaks down, causing everyone under its influence to have a mental breakdown as well.
- Love Is a Crime: As Love is a highly potent emotion, Alpha 60 is especially zealous in cracking down on it.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Natacha Von Braun.
- May–December Romance: Natacha is half Caution's age, but winds up falling for him.
- Not Afraid to Die: Natacha has no fear of death as that would be an emotion. Later Caution says he is afraid of dying, but as a secret agent he's used to this fear as he lives with it all the time.
- Out with a Bang: Caution tracks down Henri Dickson, a secret agent who had gone missing, only to have him drop dead while making out with a Seductress.
- Secret Test of Character: The man who attacked Caution in his hotel room was a "psychological test", according to Professor Jeckel. One would hate to see what a maths test is like!
- Shout-Out:
- Many of Alpha 60's lines are direct quotes from the poems of Jorge Luis Borges (the irony being that poetry is one of the things the computer has outlawed in Alphaville).
- Names of the engineers working on Alpha 60 include Nosferatu, Heckle and Jeckle.
- Caution asks another agent, "Is Dick Tracy dead? What about Flash Gordon?"
- Single Tear: When Caution is beaten up by police, they demand to know if Natacha is crying for him. She replies that crying is forbidden, but when the light changes we see a single tear gleaming on her face.
- Smoking Is Cool: Caution somehow lights his cigarette lighter by firing a bullet at it. When lighting one up for Natacha, he claims he travelled 9,000 kilometers to do so.
- Straw Vulcan: An entire city populated with them.
- That Man Is Dead: Professor Von Braun's response to his previous name of Leonard Nosferatu is that he no longer exists.
- Transplanted Character Fic: Lemmy Caution was originally a detective in a series of B-movies.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Caution guns down an intruder in his hotel room the Seductress in his bathtub barely reacts.Caution: What is this? Are you on drugs?Beatrice: No, this is normal, sir.Caution: Everything weird is "normal" in this damn town!
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Natacha, finally free of Alpha 60's influence, ends the movie by telling Caution, "I love you", having spent most of the movie unaware of what love and other emotions are.
- We Can Rule Together: Caution is offered a galaxy to rule by Professor Von Braun. He responds with an offer to take Von Braun back home. Neither man is willing to compromise their ideals, so Caution kills Von Braun.
- We Need a Distraction: When the police burst in on Caution, he pulls a gun on them. Their leader says to grab Caution when he doubles over, then asks Natacha to tell Joke 842. When Caution doubles over laughing in response to the joke, the police jump him.
- You Are Number 6: The women in Alphaville have numerals tattooed on their bodies (presumably the men as well but women are the ones who expose more skin). One woman has the tattoo on her face.
