Alphaville

All the old heroes are dead. The only one left to save the galaxies from becoming weird Brave New Worlds like Alphaville is Secret Agent .003 from the Outerlands -- Lemmy Caution. Caution is a big, cool, scar-faced tough guy, who goes around telling Division Three Seductresses, "Listen, baby, I'm old enough to find my own broads. So get lost." He is the character American actor Eddie Constantine created on French television after Constantine flopped in the U.S. Now he's Jean-Luc Godard's hero in the French auteur's latest flick to hit the Brattle's screen, "Alphaville."

But the Brattle fans' real hero is Godard himself. Champion of love and poetry, foe of technology and sterility, Godard fights a never-ending battle for all sorts of aesthetic things that the computer which rules Alphaville, Alpha 60, just doesn't appreciate.

And it's all so very blatant. There are flashing lights, Zippo lighters, Agfa cameras, labyrinthine corridors. All the Alphavillagers walk around deadpan. If you weep when your wife dies or say words like "Why" or "Conscience," you get shot. There is this Big Brother named Professor Von Braun (can't miss that) who runs the computer. And Von Braun's picture is everywhere. The Von Braun's daughter Natasha (Anna Karina), will say to Caution, "Love? What is love?"

We get it, Jean-Luc, What happens now is that Caution is supposed to kill Von Braun. Which he does. And then he takes the girl away with him to the Outerlands. Which he does. And the whole thing will end with the two of them -- Lemmy and Natasha -- tooling down the highway out of Alphaville with the strings coming up in a crashing crescendo, Which it does.

But the movie is fun. Godard had fun making it. It probably took him about a month. And everyone at the Brattle had fun watching it, except the people in front of me, who left around two-thirds of the way through. They probably got a little bored of all the glaring Sensitivity versus Cybernetics. And that is a drawback of course. You can easily get bored about that time. But Godard pulls it out at the end.

Mad Scientist Von Braun is about to blow up the Outerlands, Alphaville's enemy, when Caution, who has just escaped from the clutches of Alpha 60, bursts in and shoots him. Then there is a great chase scene with Caution's car chased around by two police cars -- all shot from directly overhead. Godard tosses in a few negative shots and Caution gets away, gets the girl and gets out of the place.

Look for symbols and esoteric meanings if you want. But if you do, you will be making "Alphaville" far deeper than Godard does. Godard is concerned with a contemporary world that is young, that lives, that is full of sex and violence and triteness that produces Batmen and Lone Rangers and Lemmy Cautions. Take what's there and enjoy it. Godard does. As Caution says, "Everything is screwy in this damn town."