Last night’s movie was Alphaville
Lawrence has said he’s not sure he wants to write a review of it, so I guess the duty of commentary falls to me. The problem is, I’m not sure what to say about it. I get the idea that Jean-Luc Godard is an important director, and Alphaville is an important film in the history of the French New Wave.
And the movie does have some things going for it:
- The women are beautiful, especially Anna Karina.
- “Hey, we don’t have a budget, so let’s use a Ford Mustang as an interstellar spacecraft, and Paris at night to represent an alien city.” Sounds good to me.
- Godard does do a lot with little money in this movie.
- It is shortish: 1:39.
- I am not sure, but I believe this may be the first pop culture example of the “destroy the computer by setting it up with a logical contradiction” trope. TVTropes is not helpful in this regard, but Alphaville does predate Star Trek.
- At least Godard had the good taste to give Lemmy Caution a 1911.
- Wow. What great staircases.
Beyond those things, though…wow, this is one hot pretentious mess. Alphaville is the kind of movie that is great to be able to say you have seen, but not all that great to actually sit through.
(I have a feeling this is going to make it much harder to talk Lawrence and everyone else into seeing Made in U.S.A.
(And no great shock here, but my guess was right: you can buy Alphaville buttons online. However:
- Lawrence isn’t a button person.
- $6.25 seems steep to me, especially given that…
- …most of the things I’ve ordered from Zazzle have been disappointing, especially t-shirts.
Maybe if there’s a button maker at Worldcon I’ll get some done. Goddard won’t mind me infringing his copyright, will he? If he does, it isn’t like he has any room to complain.)