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 "Click for larger image")
Alphaville
Chris Darke
Cloth978-0-252-03088-8
$40.00
Paper978-0-252-07329-8
$15.00
| Pub Date: | 2005 |
| Pages: | 128 pages |
An engrossing, original book on a masterful director's romantic hymn to the poetic imagination
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, as well as explores Alphaville's "afterlife" in the work of other filmmakers and artists.
Chris Darke is a screenwriter and cinema programmer, and produces arts reportage for television. He is the author of Light Readings: Film Criticism and Screen Arts and is a regular contributor to Sight and Sound, Mute, and the Independent.
Subjects:
Film / French Studies / French Film Guides
Copublished with I. B. Tauris and Co., Ltd.
