Mysterium Pictorum 16 - ALPHAVILLE

Listen to our full discussion of this insufferable 99 minutes inside a boomer's head on our new podcast series Mysterium Pictorum! Available on any podcasting app you like!

I truly hate being a hater. I consciously seek out films I expect to love in my movie watching habits. I don't understand why people would do otherwise. I get no joy out of laughing at art, tearing it down, belittling it, and I don't like those who do.

But boy oh boy, this film is garbage.

There's not a woman in "Alphaville" who isn't either a hooker or a piece of furniture. Most are treated as both. Godard seems to think, once you take away emotion (i. e. the capacity to fall in love with poetry-reciting manly men who are older than their fathers) all women have left is giving away their vaginas.

Judging solely on the basis of this movie, I would bet that Godard has never heard of the clitoris and is convinced the best way to give women orgasms is to whisper a poem into their ear, breath smelling of coffee and cigarettes.

Nothing is less cool than people desperately trying to be cool. It's cringe-worthy.

The stilted performances of emotionless zombie citizens of Alphaville would only work, were they in contrast to a performance that differs in any way from their own. Eddie Constantine doesn't bother to give us that. He's just as bland as awkward as everyone else in this motion picture.

Pretentious, self-indulgent pseudo-poetry, visually and textually, gets thrown around in excess, with a straight face.

The soundtrack would be a bit much were it meant as a joke, but it's delivered completely earnestly.

Nothing about this film is appealing to me. It's the testament of a self-satisfied, ignorant mindset. Bergman was right when he said "Godard is a fucking bore. He’s made his films for the critics." and I was terribly disappointed when I found out.

LoFi Science Fiction! A beloved franchise hero put into a completely different context! Film noir look! A Proto-Matrix cyberpunk world before cyberpunk really was a thing! A film made with a rebellious spirit and without regard for conventions! How could something so great on paper go so horribly wrong? I don't understand!