Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

A striking black-and-white hybrid of film noir and science fiction, Alphaville (1965) has proved to be one of the most enduringly popular of Jean-Luc Godard's films of the 1960s. Working without sets, special effects, or even a script, Godard created a dystopian vision of a technocratic city of the future that continues to resonate with filmmakers today. Alphaville pits secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) against Alpha 60, the supercomputer that presides over a city where weeping is outlawed, poetry goes unrecognized, and the words conscience and love have ceased to exist. Lemmy's mission is to capture the renegade scientist Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), but it is complicated when he falls in love with the professor's ravishing daughter Natasha (Anna Karina). In this exploration a Godard masterpiece, published on the fortieth anniversary of its release, Chris Darke uncovers the film's unique combination of genres and styles and draws on new interviews with the director's collaborators to chronicle the film's production. Analyzing Alphaville in its historical context, he also examines how the film influenced Godard's later work, and explores Alphaville's "afterlife" in the work of other filmmakers and artists.