Hell in a Handcart

Film: Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot Goes Wild); Week End
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library (Pierrot le Fou) and streaming video from Hulu+ (Week End) on laptop.

When I watch a film like Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot Goes Wild), I seriously wonder what the hell I’m doing with these reviews. One of the main reasons I undertook the full list is because when I first encountered it, I had seen far fewer than 30% of the films listed, and had heard of only about half. I like to think I’ve come a long way as a film viewer, as someone who can watch and make sense of what he sees on the screen. And then I get Pierrot le Fou, which may well be packed with all sorts of meaning and importance, and I’m left scratching my head. I understand what happens in the story, but I don’t understand what it’s about.

Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is in a loveless marriage to his unnamed wife (Graziella Galvani). Against his wishes, they attend a party, leaving their children to be supervised by the alleged niece of a friend. This is Marianne (Anna Karina), actually the lover of the friend and a former lover of Ferdinand. The party proves to be less than banal; the people there speak literally in advertising slogans, so Ferdinand leaves. He arrives home and gives Marianne a ride home, but ends up staying with her.

I'll Do What I Want

Film: Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux (My Life to Live)
Format: Streaming video from HuluPlus on rockin’ flatscreen.

My wife Sue got a chunk o’ cash for her birthday recently and she bought herself a Roku box. It’s pretty sweet. It does the same NetFlix thing that the Wii does, and also allows us to watch HuluPlus and a few other free television and movie channels on the flatscreen just like normal people. So today I tested it out, and I have to say that HuluPlus on television trumps HuluPlus on the laptop.

Anyway, Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux (My Life to Live) reacquaints me with Jean-Luc Godard. I think it’s safe to say that two years ago, I had never watched a Godard film, and now I have more than a half-dozen under my belt. The more I watch Godard’s films, the more I appreciate what he was trying to do with film in general. This film is another experiment of his, and it’s an experiment that, in the main, works. It is just as the French title suggests, a compilation of twelve short films about the same characters that show snapshots of a woman’s life. In those snapshots, we get her whole story.

Nana (Anna Karina) is unhappily married and decides to leave her husband and small child so that she can pursue an acting career. However, money isn’t easy to come by and her job at a music store doesn’t pay very much. So she makes a career move into prostitution and deals with her various clients and her pimp, Raoul (Sady Rebbot). Throughout, Nana attempts to determine if she is actually happy and actually living rather than simply continuing to exist. That’s really all there is to it.

Godard is a smart filmmaker, and was smart when he made this film. Vivre sa Vie is early in his career (only his third full-length feature), but it shows the deft hand of someone much more seasoned behind the camera. In one sequence, for instance, we hear Nana asking Raoul about what it really means to be a prostitute—how much can she make, how often will she be working, does she get days off, can she refuse clients—while we see her with a series of men. It’s a montage that really works; we get the sense of her being with a huge number of men, but we see none of the sex. Instead, we see dressing and undressing, sheets being folded down, money exchanging hands. It becomes a sort of rhythm.

Karina is the heart and soul of the film, and it is she who must carry it. She is on screen for virtually the entirety of the film, and while we never get her thoughts or ideas unless she speaks them, we are the closest to her throughout the story. She has the perfect look for the film to inspire the sort of sympathy that Godard wants. She is unquestionably beautiful, possessed of a near-perfect head of bobbed hair and deep, soulful eyes. More importantly, she is able to project a sort of constant innocence despite her career change. In one scene, a client asks for a second girl and then rejects Nana, and her reaction to this spurning is one of real emotion.

The film is not perfect, though. One particular fault is essentially built into the narrative. Since we see only bits and pieces of her life over the course of 80 or so minutes, changes occur that we do not witness. Her life and attitudes change and we are forced to pick these up on the fly as the scene changes from one moment to the next. A young man playing pool in one scene, for instance, has suddenly become a love interest for Nana later. For us, the time between these events is measured in minutes. For them, it could well be weeks or months, and we’re given no clues to determine the actual truth.

Second, the ending is abrupt and surprising, and not specifically in a good way. The ending isn’t inappropriate in any way, but it comes completely out of nowhere and gives us as the audience almost no time to react to it before the screen turns black. Again, I’m certain this was intentional on the part of Godard, but it does make the viewing experience unsatisfying at the end, at least for me.

The title is worth some exploration as well. On the surface, it would appear that Godard is allowing Nana the ability to chose the life she wants, and if that happens to be prostitution because the money is better, so be it. However, throughout the film, Nana’s choices seem almost predetermined. As soon as she sets off on her own path, her life is decided, and her life to live is lived at the behest of others and from choices beyond her control.

Vivre sa Vie is worth watching, though, because like many of Godard’s early films, it expanded the world of cinematic language. His experiments, while not always 100% successful, worked often enough to make anything he touched at least worthy of consideration. That’s true of this film, too.

Why to watch Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux: It’s supremely fascinating.
Why not to watch: The end.

No Fourth Wall

Film: 2 ou 3 Choses que je Sais D’elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her)
Format: DVDs from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I think I’m starting to finally get a hold on Jean-Luc Godard. Two years ago, I’d heard of Godard but had never seen one of his films. Now, I’ve seen a good half dozen, and I feel like each one I see gives me a little more insight into what Godard was doing with his films. I haven’t liked them all by a long shot, but I think I respect the vision and the determination to do something really different with film. 2 ou 3 Choses que je Sais D’elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her) is one of the strangest Godard films I’ve seen (and that’s saying something), and quite surprisingly one of my favorites.

This film comes right in the heart of an incredible spate of productivity in Godard’s filmmaking. In the late 1960s, it seems like Godard was putting out 2-4 films every year. 2 ou 3 Choses que je Sais D’elle is the culmination of earlier experiments in his work. There are a lot of similarities here to films like Masculin-Feminin in the large titles that pop up at times, albeit here without the jarring soundtrack.

Like many of his films, Godard spends this one playing with the idea of film and filmmaking. Here, this comes in the form of essentially destroying the fourth wall. Frequently, characters in the film speak directly into the camera, saying pieces of apparent nonsense that have little or no relevance to anything on the screen. He prepares us for this in the opening few minutes by describing his main actress, Marina Vlady, and then reciting almost the exact same description of her character in the film, Juliette Jeanson.

The plot turns on an idea we’ve seen her before. In fact, this is the third time in the last year or so that I’ve seen this identical basic storyline. Juliette and her husband live in a modest apartment, but can’t quite afford .the payments on it. So she turns to prostitution as a way to make ends meet and allow them to stay in their ultra-modern but essentially cramped and pedestrian apartment. It’s got a lot in common in that respect with Jeanne Dielmann and the housewife-turned-prostitute idea with Belle de Jour. But for a variety of reasons, I like this one a lot better.

It would be wrong to suggest that this film isn’t very strange in a lot of ways. It feels less like there is a narrative here and more like there is simply a series of events that happen in front of us. We watch Juliette go through her day, dropping off the kids at a day care for hookers, fending off the man who wants to act as her pimp, and servicing clients before returning home to her husband and children. Anything to make ends meet, evidently.

That, though, is exactly the thrust of Godard’s film. This film is intensely anti-American and anti-consumer. Juliette does what she does not because the family needs the money to survive per se, but because they need to money to live the lifestyle they wish to emulate. For them to live in the style to which they have become accustomed, the additional income is necessary.

And that’s really the interesting thing about the film. Godard appears to be making a statement about the nature of the consumer model we’ve had for so long. We mortgage our future for a little ease or the joy of a couple of moments of perceived freedom, but what is actually happening is that we experience less and less true freedom. In many senses, Juliette is selling herself for a promised dream of a modern world and a better life, and she’s actually getting almost nothing in return, are at least nothing that means anything.

Godard’s voiceover narration is extremely strange. He whispers everything, almost as if he is afraid of being overheard. Again, this is oddly compelling in its own way. Godard has discovered a secret, and is sharing it with us, letting us in on what he has to say—about consumerism, Vietnam, the hollowness of the American cultural export, and more.

Do I know what it all means? Probably not. But this film does make me feel like I’m starting to get a handle on what Godard was trying to do not just with this film, but with film, which makes me feel like this whole crazy journey has some sort of point after all. I found this one fascinating. I’m not sure if that has resulted in my getting a better handle on Godard, or if my better understanding of his work causes me to like this film. Regardless, that’s the case here. This is an interesting watch, and its surface shallowness and aimlessness masks a surprising depth.

Why to watch 2 ou 3 Choses que je Sais D’elle: For a story you can see coming, it’s still pretty engaging.
Why not to watch: Disjointed, non-existent narrative.

Children of Marx and Coca Cola

Film: Masculin Feminin (Masculine-Feminine)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I’ve been on a minor Godard kick lately, Masculin Feminin (Masculine-Feminine) being the third (I think) in the last month or so that I’ve watched. There’s still more Godard to go on the giant countdown, but I think I’m done with him for a bit. The simple reason is that I found nothing in this film to recommend it and nothing to get worked up about. I had almost no reaction to this film at all—not even bewilderment.

The film is unquestionably some sort of statement about youth and youth culture. Our two main characters are Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) and Madeleine (Chantal Goya), who become kind of a couple. Paul is intensely political, asking people about their beliefs on things like socialism, the American dream, the birth control pill, and wars going on in the world. Madeleine is a flighty, up-and-coming pop star who doesn’t have a single thought in her head.

And really, that’s it. Paul interviews people about things. Madeleine sometimes sings. They talk more. Then the film ends. Godard also jams in some intertitles containing pithy sayings that are accompanied with blaring music. These are as precisely disconcerting and surprising as Godard no doubt wanted.

When I suggest that this is it, I’m not really exaggerating. There’s a lot of talking going on here, and nothing actually happening. Paul seems to dislike everything he comes across, hating existence for essentially being bourgeois. Madeleine seems to drift from place to place in a world that has been designed to make her feel vaguely content without really feeling anything all that strongly.

Fellow 1001 blogger Squish Lessard uses the term “Eurotrash” every now and again in some of his reviews, particularly on films like this one that seem to come with a particular sensibility. The idea of Eurotrash is almost the polar opposite of the term “white trash.” Where white trash means poor and un- or undereducated, Eurotrash is old money-wealthy, pompous, and entitled. Both of our main characters are made up of different amounts of these qualities. Paul is disaffected by everything, but carries with him a sense of entitlement and supreme arrogance, like the world should be the way he wants simply because he wants it that way. For her part, Madeleine seems to live that same idea without really knowing or caring that she does it.

When I was in college working on my Bachelor’s degree, my campus had a collection of Marxists. These campus radicals protested everything they could think of and a few more things besides. Not an event happened on campus that could happen without someone from the Marxist group(s) getting bent out of shape about it. They yelled and hollered and raised a stink whenever they could. What they didn’t seem to do was go to class or graduate. For all I know, they may still be here. The irony of this is that several of them (and I’m in no manner joking) lived off trust funds and Daddy’s gold card. I can only hope that eventually Daddy got wise and stopped paying after yet another “I’m out of money, you fascist bastard!” conversations.

This, in a nutshell, is how I see Paul. He’s entitled because he can be, and extreme because he lives in a place that allows for and even encourages such extremism. Medeleine is extreme in the opposite direction, being completely unable to care or even to think much about anything going on in the world or directly in front of her face.

At one point, Godard calls his two characters (and the entire youth movement by proxy) “children of Marx and Coca Cola.” In many wyas, this intertitle is the best and most incisive part of the film. These are characters (Paul, at least) who know Marx because Marx is a name to know, not because they learned from him. Paul is a radical because he can be, spouting Marx and creating graffiti because it’s what someone his age is supposed to do. Madeleine simply waits for pop culture to be fed to her.

This may be exactly what Godard was going for with this film. It’s almost an expose on the extreme shallowness that exists beneath that Eurotrashy veneer. If this actually is the case and not merely my own sad ramblings, I applaud Godard for creating this film in the manner he did.

But I still don’t have to like it. And I don’t. This film is completely dull. Nothing much happens in a way that affects much of anything. People talk; others listen, and enough of these are infected by the talk to become the next set of agitators. Roll credits. Bluntly, this film is about as exciting as dish water. I have not been so bored watching a movie for at least six months, and probably closer to a year. Masculin Feminin tries for something and fails miserably. So how much should it be rewarded? Does dull with a message trump shallow eye candy?

Not today. And so I think I’m done with Godard for a bit.

Why to watch Masculine Feminin: It raises some interesting questions.
Why not to watch: It does so in increasingly dull ways.

Full-On Meta-Film

Film: Le Mepris (Contempt)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Jean-Luc Godard is a director that I’m starting to come to terms with as a viewer. At least I thought that was the case until Le Mepris (Contempt) came across my desk. I’m not 100% sure how to react to this film.

But let’s start at the start here, because we start with Brigitte Bardot’s naked hinder. Brigitte hasn’t aged particularly well, but in 1963, her behind was a thing of beauty and the camera spends a lot of time inching forward and back over it. Her name, we discover, is Camille and she is married to a playwright named Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli).

While Paul is a playwright, he’s been dabbling a bit in films. He’s been contacted by an American film producer named Jeremy Prokosch (an unmistakably scenery-chewing Jack Palance) to work on the script for a film based on Homer’s Odyssey. Prokosch has brought in Fritz Lang (playing himself) to direct this vision, but he’s not happy with the film he’s getting. To put the conflict of producer and director into stark contrast, Lang is creating an art film and Prokosch wants as much nudity as possible.

Prokosch is everything you expect a smarmy film producer to be. While he certainly wants his film to make money (and contain buckets and buckets of nudity), he’s far more interested in making time with Camille, inviting her to ride with him back to his villa while her husband follows along in a cab. And this is where something happens that we don’t get to see.

Something, in the half hour it takes Paul to arrive at Prokosch’s villa, happens between Camille and Prokosch, but we never discover what it is. My thinking is that he attempted to force himself on her, which is exactly the persona that he’s shown us so far and exactly what we expect of him. I think he’s unsuccessful in this, although I have no proof of it. Honestly, I don’t have any proof that Prokosch tried to introduce Camille to Little Jeremy; it just makes sense that that’s what happened.

Whatever happened during this time causes a huge rift in the relationship between Camille and Paul, probably because it was at Paul’s insistence that Camille go off in Prokosch’s car. What she learns from this is that essentially Paul is weak. Prokosch’s intentions with Camille were evident to anyone who still had a pulse, and Paul—knowing this—sends her off with the man anyway because he wants the money to rewrite The Odyssey script. He’s weak. He’ll sell her out even if the reason is to make enough money to make her happy. And this is where we get the name of the film.

The key scene comes in the middle of the film after Paul and Camille return to their apartment. They proceed to discuss whether or not they will head to Capri with Prokosch and whether or not Paul will rewrite scenes in Lang’s film to include more T & A. This argument rambles on and covers several dozen topics, takes place in every room in their apartment, includes both of them taking baths, and lasts for a good half hour. I was dreading this scene a bit, but as it turns out, the scene is really pretty watchable.

As it turns out, they do go to Capri, and everything spins further out of control until we get the ending that comes completely out of nowhere…at least until you put a little thought into it. I’m not going to go into this here or put it under a spoiler.

Le Mepris is beautifully shot throughout in startling colors and with truly marvelous scenery. Brigitte Bardot, when not showing the full-on full moon of her backside is frequently draped in solid primary colors which work very well for her. In short, this is a gorgeous film to look at. There’s something about the film quality here that makes the film look European. It looks in many ways like a Fellini film, or at least it doesn’t look like an American film of the same era. I can’t truly describe that film quality because I don’t have the vocabulary for it.

It’s also a pleasure to see Fritz Lang playing himself. First of all, the dude is rocking a monocle, and that makes me love him more than I did going in. Second, it’s Fritz freakin’ Lang, one of the greatest directors to ever stand behind a camera. I really love it when directors show up in films, especially when they are directors I like.

For all this, Le Mepris is a film that leaves me torn. I want to like it more than I do, in part because it is so pretty to look at and in part because it does feature a lot of dialogue with Fritz Lang (who admits that M is his personal favorites of his films). There’s a part of me that really appreciates the meta-nature of this film as well. We see many of the aspects of filmmaking as the movie goes on: we watch rushes, see shots being made, look at casting decisions, and more. It is, essentially, a film about making a film, which means that Godard is commenting not only on the subject of Paul’s and Camille’s marriage, but also on the filming process itself, much like Bergman did with Persona.

And yet, there’s another part of me that finds all of this simply too much for a Monday night. Le Mepris feels like a film that requires multiple viewings to truly understand, and I can’t say that I liked it enough (aside from seeing Fritz Lang en-monocled and the loving shots of Brigitte Bardot’s hinder) to watch it again in the near future.

Why to watch Le Mepris: A truly beautiful film.
Why not to watch: A WTF ending to end all WTF endings.

Waiting for Godard

Film: A Bout de Souffle (Breathless)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Let’s get this out of the way right away: my mother knew Jean Seberg. I don’t mean that she once met her—Mom knew her. Before she was cast in Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan Jean Seberg was just an ordinary Iowa girl attending the University of Iowa. She and my mother pledged the same sorority and were evidently consecutive alphabetically (Mom’s maiden name was Skidmore). There’s quite a bit more to the story than that, but it’s enough for this blog (if you want the full story, send your browser here: Finding Jean).

Saint Joan tanked, and Seberg’s next couple of films didn’t do a lot better. It wasn’t until Jean-Luc Godard cast her in A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) that she got any respect from the critics. As it turns out, A Bout de Souffle was not just her breakthrough film, but also that of Godard and of her co-star Jean-Paul Belmondo. This film put all three on the map.

The story is a simple one, almost a film noir. Michel (Belmondo) is a car thief. He earns his living by stealing cars and driving them to Paris where he sells them off. While driving his current prize from Marseilles, he’s spotted by the police. Michel avoids the police by turning off the main road, but one motorcycle cop tails him. To avoid capture, Michel shoots the cop and flees.

Back in Paris, Michel encounters Patricia (Seberg), an American who makes her living selling the New York Herald Tribune even though she really wants to be a reporter. She and Michel know each other, and Michel decides that he likes her. Plus, he needs a place to hide out from the police, and Patricia’s hotel room seems like a good spot to stay. He’d really like to go to Rome as a way out of France and away from the manhunt, and he’d really like her to go with him.

And so he stays with her, depending on both her kindness and her relative ambivalence about committing to anything with him—even straight up sex. The sex between them has happened in the past—she claims to be pregnant with his child. He also admits to her what he does for money, or at least some of what he does for money, and tells her that running away to Rome is his chance to get away from the pressures on him. Patricia is tempted, but also is wracked by the guilt of harboring a fugitive, and must decide whether or not to run away with Michel or turn him in. And that’s really it.

A Bout de Souffle is considered one of the great films of the French New Wave. The main reason for this is Godard’s invention of the jump cut. According to the story, his original edit of the film was too long. Rather than cut entire scenes, he cut bits and pieces from scenes, giving a number of the sequences a disjointed, jumpy feel while still maintaining the overall integrity of the scene. We’re a little more used the concept of the jump cut today, of course, but this was a revelation. It gives the film, which is now more than 50 years old, a particularly modern feel.

Another modern element of the film is the frankness of the discussion about sex. It’s not treated as a taboo subject, but discussed openly. Michel at one point asks Patricia how many men she’s slept with and openly propositions her on the street and comments on her lack of bra. It’s almost overdone. Michel talks about sex incessantly to the point where it’s almost embarrassing. And yet, we see nothing—the actual sex is implied. Michel and Patricia lie in bed and both disappear under the covers, and then she gets up wearing his shirt. For a film that’s so blatantly sexual in its content, it’s remarkably prudish in some ways.

Knowing that, at least in familial legend, Jean Seberg was nearly my mother, it’s mildly uncomfortable seeing her in sexual situations. And yet I can also easily see why my father had been infatuated with her when seeing her on the University of Iowa campus. She’s hardly a stunning beauty, but there is an elfin quality to her. She’s perky and cute if not glamorous. She also speaks French with a terrible American accent. My own French is pretty bad, but I could tell that her pronunciation of many words and phrases was distinctly American.

Belmondo seems to spend the entire film smoking. I don’t know if there is a single scene in which he doesn’t have a cigarette dangling from his lips. I can’t tell if this adds to his overall cool or detracts from it. Even in the scenes in which he doesn’t appear, such as the press conference Patricia attends with a novelist named Parvulesco (Jean-Pierre Melville), I like to imagine him dragging on his constant smoke.

A Bout de Souffle does little to advance the world of cinema in terms of plot. It’s influence is felt instead on the very language of cinema, adding new weapons in the repertoire of filmmakers. For a film with such a small story with surprisingly few twists and turns, it is remarkably watchable, and holds up very well.

Why to watch A Bout de Souffle: Godard’s coming out party.
Why not to watch: All of the men wear really short neckties. It looks really strange.

Thought Crime

Film: Alphaville: Une Etrange Aventure de Lemmy Caution (Alphaville)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

A note: Typically, I refer to foreign films by their foreign language title in my write-ups. Today, however, since the first word of the English title is precisely the same as the French title, and because the French title is so long, it is easier to simply call the film by its English name.

I was recently asked by a co-1001 Movies blogger if I had watched any Godard yet. I hadn’t at the time, but assured him that I would undoubtedly dip my toes into the Godard pond this week, thus Alphaville in the spinner tonight. It’s hardly a stretch to say that in this day and age, Godard is no longer the most culturally relevant Jean-Luc for most people. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, only a true thing. I’m guilty of the same. Say “Jean-Luc” to me, and I’ll respond “Picard” long before I’ll say “Godard.”

Before we delve to heavily into this film, it’s worth getting a few things out of the way. Lemmy Caution is the creation of British pulp writer Peter Cheyney. Eddie Constantine, who plays Caution in this film, played the same role a number of times before this film was made. Caution is, therefore, the British equivalent of Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade.

Similarities to other Lemmy Caution films ends here. In true existential fashion, Alphaville takes place in a sort of no-time and no-place. Certainly with some of the events and ideas here, the film is absolutely science fiction. However, the film also quite evidently takes place in the mid-20th century (Caution refers to himself as a Guadalcanal veteran). In terms of place, all that matters is that we are in Alphaville, and that everything is run by Alpha 60.

So what is Alpha 60? It’s the computer that runs Alphaville with an iron processor. Alpha 60 has made emotion illegal within the city limits of Alphaville. It is a sentient machine that has determined that the only way to have the city run efficiently is to eliminate anything that does not make perfectly logical sense. In short, love, art, poetry, and emotion are all illegal within the city. Failure to comply means a brutal interrogation followed by execution, even for the smallest infractions, like displaying grief at the death of a spouse.

Essentially, this film falls in terms of ideal between Orwell’s 1984 and George Lucas’s THX1138. Like Orwell’s work, the society is highly dystopic and rigidly controlled by an overwhelming, implacable force. Resistance is essentially futile because it is impossible to organize any resistance. Like Big Brother, the computer is everywhere and is always looking for any slip or sign of weakness to eliminate anything that stands in the way of its complete power. Like Lucas’s film that follows this one, there is no love or emotion, and expressing either is a crime of the highest order.

Caution’s task here is to initially find an operative named Henri Dickson (Akim Tamiroff) who has not reported back for a long time. Caution finds the man, who speaks rather cryptically, dallies a bit with a local prostitute, and then dies, telling Caution that Alpha 60 must be destroyed. Coincidentally, Caution is also charged with locating and either bringing back or eliminating a man named von Braun, who created Apha 60.

Caution meets von Braun’s daughter Natasha (Anna Karina), who claims to have never met her father, nor stepped foot outside of Alphaville into the Outlands. Similarly, and predictably considering the city she was raised in, Natasha has no concept of love or morality or conscience.

Like any good noir, Caution is tempted by the devil, in this case von Braun. As Caution digs further into the city, he discovers that Alpha 60 is sending potential dissidents out to other places, other worlds, to foment revolution, hopefully bringing about more Alpha 60-style societies throughout the universe. And so, as befits many films from the mid-‘60s, there is a strong anti-communist sense to this film as well.

Ultimately, the idea here is about sense of self and individualism. Just as Orwell feared the destruction of the unique person in the service to the state, Godard fears the loss of self and emotion as being the loss of that which makes us human. It’s a nice metaphor, and it works pretty well throughout.

Eddie Constantine does look very much like a traditional noir private dick. In his fedora and trench coat, he looks the part, and his craggy, weathered face that looks chiseled out of granite fits the part as well. His complete lack of emotion throughout actually works well here, too. The anti-heroes in noirs often tend to be emotionless, even when dealing out violence, something that Caution does frequently here.

The film is disturbingly weird. Most bothersome here is the soundtrack, which seems to play nothing but the same Baaaaaahm-Bamp! Buuuuuuuuhm-Bamp! over and over. It gets oppressive quickly. Just as disturbing is the narrator-like role of Alpha 60, which speaks in a deep, throaty croak that sounds like a man with a cold trying desperately to make himself belch.

And yet, I like the ultimate conclusion. For such a strange film, it’s almost uplifting at the end, despite the sudden violence, croaking voice, and lack of expressions.

Why to watch Alphaville: Une Etrange Aventure de Lemmy Caution: Existentialism that lifts rather than depresses.
Why not to watch: Croaky, belchy French.