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To watch the picture today is to discover a multilayered and curious prophecy.
For all their futuristic gestures, these are movies about their present.
Everyday items would be transformed into eerie gizmos.
This sound is mixed into the film at deafening levels, practically overwhelming the viewer.
Alphavilles story is basically a cross between a noir and a western.
(Or maybe the two ideas, in Godards eyes, were never all that dissimilar.)
The language, were told, is constantly being updated, and words likeloveandconsciencehave been removed.
During a surreal execution sequence, one of the condemned is there because he cried at his wifes funeral.
Of course, its Godard, so such elements are treated in the most playful manner.
Fight scenes are over after a couple of weak punches and some easily broken glass.
Here, however, they add to the unsettling, nightmarish tone; nothing is as it should be.
But beyond all the sci-fi ambitions ofAlphavillelies something more personal.
The final scene features her character struggling out the words I … love … you.
Is it Godard trying to get Karina to express her love for him again?
And all throughout, those brutalist buildings, those banks of lights, those dark, otherworldly streets.
Think of how unremarkable such things are in todays world; almost everything looks like this now.
And yet the eerie beauty ofAlphavilleremains.
But for all its influence,Alphavillestill looks and feels like no other movie.
More than a prophecy, it is poetry.
