There’s an apocryphal story that Jean-Luc Godard contracted under false pretenses to do one in a series of low-budget spy pictures featuring Eddie Constantine, a craggy-faced American actor of no great accomplishment, as the secret agent Lemmy Caution, and that he, Godard, essentially hijacked the movie, rewrote the script, changed the entire concept – and the result was the science fiction noir-satire, Alphaville.
I have been unable to determine if the story is true, but have chosen to believe it because it seems true in a Godard-ian sense, the kind of truth Godard would wish associated with one of his movies. And there is some logic to support the story. By the mid-sixties Godard had already made Breathless, a masterpiece – if not the masterpiece – of the French New Wave, and was receiving acclaim from every quarter as a revolutionary director. Why else would he have taken on such a project, if not to hijack it? Of course there is the distinct possibility that the producers and the studio conspired with Godard – it’s difficult to envision a circumstance in which they would not have wanted him to hijack their B-picture.
Its origins aside, Alphaville is one of the seminal films of modern commercial science fiction cinema. This is no small irony, since with its uneven pacing, its disregard for story and character (people are drawn so unrealistically, we rarely relate to them), the alternation of humour with violence, a reliance on symbols such as repeated shots of a neon E=MC2 sign, and various curious juxtapositions and techniques, it’s evident Godard intended his picture to uphold the New Wave banner and be as un-commercial as possible. Nevertheless, the picture’s influence on landmark films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, THX1138, the Terminator movies, The Matrix, and Blade Runner, as well as a host of lesser movies ranging from Logan’s Run to Equilibrium, is undeniable. Indeed, Ridley Scott’s picture, though its production values are vastly superior to Godard’s black-and-white film, quotes from Alphaville extensively and mimics it in plot and to a degree in tone, especially as regards its monotone voiceover. Both films involve a government operative, a hardboiled detective-type, who negotiates the perils of a dystopian city and falls in love with, and then attempts to save, a sloe-eyed beauty with a distinct lack of personality – in Godard’s film, this lack is due to the fact that all the citizens of the city are subject to zombie-fying mind control courtesy of the Alpha-60 supercomputer, the AI that rules the city (voiced by an actor whose cancerous larynx had been replaced by a mechanical voicebox). While Alphaville is more explicitly a riff on Orpheus and Eurydice, the most salient difference between the films is that Blade Runner plays it straight, whereas Alphaville is a send-up of noir, romance, science fiction… in fact, the movie satirises every subject it touches save, perhaps, Godard’s Marxist sensibility, which shines through on occasion.
In the film, Lemmy Caution is an agent from the Outlands who poses as a reporter and has traveled across space and time to Alphaville, wearing a trenchcoat, a deadpan countenance, and traveling in what appears to be a white Ford Galaxie. His mission is to find a missing agent who has been corrupted by the city, yet manages to retain his humanity by means of a forbidden book of poetry, and to capture or kill Professor Von Braun, who built the Alpha-60. He has also been charged with destroying the soul-less society Von Braun helped to create, a society in which all context is breaking down, in which words have lost or changed their meaning, in which creativity and individual thought are going the way of the dodo, and in which the state’s true purpose (as announced by Alpha-60) is the destruction of its citizens. Sound familiar? But Godard is less concerned here with a resolution of this mission than he is in thumbing his nose at the critics and demonstrating his affection for a multitude of post-modern conceits.
I imagine Alphaville would be a maddening experience for a typical audience viewing it for the first time in 2010. No special effects; very little action (the action it does have is bizarre and disturbing, not pulse-pounding); wads of philosophy, much of it embedded in passages from Borges spouted by Alpha-60; tough-guy dialogue salted with existentialist observations; scenes shown in the negative or inserted out of sequence; corny jokes and ridiculous names (two scientists are called Heckle and Jeckyl); outmoded science fiction ideas, some of them clichés (for instance, the emotionless Orwellian society with its ever-changing dictionary and no conception of love or poetry) even back in 1965, the year of Alphaville’s release. And all of this is held together by a plot in which love, improbably and somewhat tongue-in-cheekily, conquers all. When I first saw the movie many years ago, I must admit my eyes glazed over a time or two, yet I was pulled along by Godard’s fantastic technique (noteworthy are several remarkable tracking shots, one involving Caution being beaten by thugs in an elevator, a scene that manages both to unsettle and amuse), and by the power of the movie’s set pieces. Particularly compelling is the scene in which Lemmy and Natacha (Anna Karina), a state-sponsored ‘seductress,’ come to an indoor swimming pool at the bottom of a office building and find the pool surrounded by men and women in evening dress, sipping cocktails on a balcony and chatting. Every so often a similarly dressed man, sans dinner jacket, is led out onto the diving board and shot for crimes of illogic (one for crying over his wife’s death), whereupon several beautiful girls in bathing suits dive in and retrieve the body (or drown him if still alive) while performing synchronized swimming stunts.
Alphaville was shot in Paris (to be precise, amid the modern concrete structures of the business district, La Defense) during the sixties and Caution is clearly a relic of the forties, less James Bond than Dick Tracy. There has been no attempt to update fashion or any physical attribute of the place, yet the illusion of a futuristic dehumanised city is miraculously sustained. Whenever the movie threatens to cast you out, to collapse into a rubble of absurdities and banalities, something happens to draw you back in. Sometimes it’s a bit of humour, as when Caution puts a coin into a machine, unsure what he’ll get in return, and receives a card that reads ‘Thank You,’ or when the fluorescent lights inside a building wink on and a technician proclaims that dawn has arrived. It may be a fragment of the ongoing quasi-philosophical debate between Alpha-60 and Caution, or shadows gathered by the camera into a grotesque accumulation of form, but somehow a spark struck between Godard’s direction and Raoul Coutard’s cinematography pulls off the trick. When Lemmy Caution announces that he is whizzing through the galaxies as he drives on a bridge across the Seine in a white Ford, while behind him the dying citizens of the city reel and slump against walls, unable to cope with the death of the Alpha-60, we are persuaded to see things that are not there, stars instead of city lights, and induced to empathize with characters that are merely caricatures. That is the unique magic of Alphaville, one as yet unduplicated – that it manages to skewer the genre while at the same time achieving the eidolon of every science fiction film, providing a sense of wonder that, however transient and mutant in form, transports us from the here and now to another world, even if, in this instance, it’s one that comes increasingly with each passing year to resemble our own.
DR WHO AND THE DALEKS
( Director: Gordon Flemyng; starring: Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jennie Linden, Roberta Tovey - 1965)
Simon Guerrier
Even casual observers of Doctor Who know that Peter Cushing doesn’t count. He’s not one of the proper, eleven telly Doctors and he’s got a moustache.
And yet, I suspect far more people have seen his twinkly, kindly Doctor than the original one played on telly by William Hartnell. The bright, exciting Dr Who and the Daleks is still repeated all the time, while the bleak, black-and-white television episodes from which it was adapted are only on DVD for scholars. (A repeat of a single episode in 1999 was re-edited in an effort not to scare off general viewers.) I certainly saw the Cushing version first, and have seen his version of the story far more often.
Don’t get me wrong; I love both versions of the story. The Doctor’s spaceship, TARDIS, arrives by mistake on the planet Skaro, which was long ago ravaged by an atomic war. Exploring th
is dead world, the Doctor and his friends are captured by things called Daleks – blobs of mutated creature inside metal machines. With some clever thinking and some nice, blond mutations called Thals, the Doctor and his friends escape. Soon the Doctor is convincing the Thals to end their ancient war – and kill off the Daleks for good.
The TV version, by Terry Nation, played out over seven weeks from the end of 1963. It hooked viewers to the just-beginning series, transforming it into a hit and dictating a new path for its future. The Doctor would soon ditch educational trips into history in favour of weekly battles with monsters, all trying to cash in on the success of the Daleks.
The 1965 movie was just part of a whole industry – there were also Dalek toys and books and slippers. The film offered big-budget, big-screen Daleks, and in colour for the first time. They even created different coloured ranks just to make the point. But the movie is also part of a different cash-in, as cinema struggled to compete with the competition from telly.
First cinema had tried to beat the upstart format, with widescreen and 3D and other technical innovations. Then it nicked TV’s ideas: Hammer produced a big-screen adaptation of The Quatermass Experiment in 1955, and through the 1960s and 70s it seemed there was a movie version of every BBC sitcom.
But Dr Who and the Daleks is not a cynical production. It’s a lavish affair, with a bona fide movie star in the title role and an engaging supporting cast. David Whitaker’s film script quickly rewrites the set-up of the TV show for a stand-alone adventure, aiming for a friendlier, more comedic tone. Dr Who is not the Doctor: the alien exile is here a human being, living in a nice house with his family. Granddaughter Susan is not the unearthly teenager as seen on TV but a plucky girl of 11, and Barbara is not her teacher but her sister.
The film sets out its stall in its very first line. ‘Most exciting!’ declares Dr Who as he leafs through a comic, his granddaughters more caught up in books on science. As we might expect, the twinkly, doddery old inventor will land them all in trouble, and it’s up to the youngsters to save him. Barbara’s new boyfriend Ian (Roy Castle) is cowardly, clumsy comic relief but will also save the day.
While the film is funnier and lighter than the TV version, director Gordon Flemyng deftly balances the comedy with the scary bits and it remains a gripping story. Susan’s race back to the TARDIS while pursued by an unseen Thal, and Barbara and Ian’s epic quest over the mountain are particularly thrilling highlights.
Bill Constable’s sets make the most of the colour and big budget, bringing the dead planet Skaro to sumptuous, Technicolor life. The Dalek props and sets are better made than the ones that appeared on TV; indeed, the film is sumptuously realised while the TV show looks austere. The film TARDIS has the weight and size of a real police box, while on TV it was clearly a prop (it had to be scaled down to fit in the studio lift).
The TARDIS perhaps also marks the most telling difference between the two versions of the story. On TV, the Doctor explains how his ship is bigger on the inside by saying that it’s like television, where by showing a large building on TV you can fit one into your living room. In the film, he ditches this neat analogy for some gobbledygook, a magic spell. William Hartnell’s TV Doctor was a pioneer of his alien people, fleeing for his life. Peter Cushing plays the Doctor as a friendly wizard, exploring the universe for fun.
This has since become the driving characteristic of the television Doctor, and it’s important how much the film – and its sequel, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966) – has influenced the TV show. There are the interior doors of the TARDIS as they appeared in ninth and tenth Doctor’s adventures (2005-10), which head writer Russell T Davies admitted came straight from the movies. The look of the police box prop – and its St John’s Ambulance badge – for the eleventh Doctor’s adventures (2010- ) is another clear and admitted-to steal.
But there’s also the rich colour in every shot of the TV show, the bold spectacle, the mix of adventure and slapstick. There’s the ‘modern’ innovation of the Doctor’s domestic life, and companions with homes to get back to. There’s the casting of Bernard Cribbins, and the orchestral scores built around repeated melodies.
In fact, modern Doctor Who owes as much to the films as the bleak and serious TV version. Of course Peter Cushing counts! Doctors David Tennant and Matt Smith, travelling through space and time simply because it’s fun, are as much the same person as him as they are William Hartnell. And I’m delighted we get both.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
(Director: Stanley Kubrick; starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter - 1968)
James Moran
I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was 14. I’d been looking forward to it for ages, had heard it was the ultimate science fiction film, that it would blow my mind. I found a screening in the TV listings, and settled down to have my mind blown.
I didn’t understand any of it.
My mind was blown, yes. But I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I loved the images, the use of music, the slow, gentle pace of space travel, everything about it. Just didn’t get it. A few years later, I watched it again, a bit older, a bit wiser. Aha, I realised. They’ve found this signal, and they’re following it, and that’s why they’re going on the journey, and… then some stuff happens. I still didn’t get all of it, but this was progress. I watched it again, a few years later, still using the original copy I’d recorded off the TV. I watched it several times, because it’s such a beautiful film, it’s a joy to watch even if you don’t understand it. This time I got most of it. But I still didn’t know why. If these aliens were so clever, why go to all that trouble? What was the point?
None of that really mattered though. It was the first movie I’d seen that had more to it than mere story and dialogue. It was brimming with ideas, possibilities, showing us what was possible if the human race didn’t destroy itself. It made me think about the universe in a different way, about our place in it and what that meant. As a teenager weaned on horror, action and sci fi movies, this was a different beast altogether. No sound in space? No pulse cannons on the spaceship? No exploding battle stations? Classical music?? I should have hated it, or at the very least dismissed it as nothing special. But it held me spellbound, as did everything else Kubrick directed (although I wouldn’t realise that until later). Moments that I didn’t understand still made me feel awe and wonder. Scenes where hardly anything happened were fascinating. A long sequence where a spaceship lands? I could have watched it all day. I still can. It was a valuable lesson. You can let the story relax for a moment, and take people on a journey, make them experience what space travel is like without having to rely on clumsy tools like dialogue and exposition. Make the audience feel it, rather than tell them what it feels like. Don’t tell them how the human race learned how to use tools and evolve, show an ape figuring out how to smash something with a bone, and then skip straight to an orbital satellite. After such a long, slow opening section, it’s quite jarring to suddenly be thrown forwards so far in time. Though in the great scheme of things, humans have only really been around for the blink of an eye, so it’s fitting. Did Kubrick and Clarke intend that interpretation of the cut? Who knows? Who cares? It was probably just meant to be a simple cut to the next part of the story, with no great significance. But like every aspect of the movie, it works on so many levels, there’s so much to get out of it, thanks to the script and Kubrick’s usual method of cramming as much subtext as possible into every shot, every line, every cut, every single moment. No wonder I didn’t understand it all, it was simply too much for me to handle at the time.
My movie brain was being rewired, new instructions were arriving. This wasn’t sci fi, this was science fiction. I still loved both equally, but it had given me something new to appreciate. It told me things without actually telling me. In the scene where Bowman and Poole conspire in the pod, the camera movements and editing tell you that HAL is lip-reading what they’re saying. Clean and elegant, no expla
nation required. Basic stuff, sure, but to a 14 year old brought up on the ‘Oh my God, the computer is lip-reading us right now! Set off the bombs!’ school of movies, it was as if I’d learned a Jedi mind trick. In typical emerging-writer fashion, I absorbed all these tricks and more into my short stories, clumsily at first of course, but it was a crucial learning process. Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey – and then, because of that, the rest of Kubrick’s work – made me a better writer. It made me want to write something that would give others a similar emotional reaction. It made me want to show off. Not bad for a movie I barely understood.
I didn’t realise until years later that the original TV screening I had recorded was missing the very end. For some unknown, insane reason, the TV channel had just cut to black before the final scene. Yes, the final scene above Earth that pretty much throws everything you’ve seen into a brand new context and explains the story. I was gobsmacked. Partly at the stupidity of whoever cut the movie off too early all those years ago, mainly at my realisation of what it all meant. So that’s why the aliens went to all that trouble. Blimey. My mind was blown all over again, and I wanted to re-watch it immediately, armed with this new information. I still get something new out of it now, something surprising, every time I see it. I’ll never fully understand all of it, and I don’t want to – it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
So I’m glad it happened that way. The first few times I watched it, I wasn’t ready. By the time I got to see the final scene, I had been re-watching the thing obsessively, desperately trying to work it out. When I eventually saw the ending, the actual, proper ending, the last piece of the plot puzzle clicked into place. There was still so much more to figure out, but at least now I thought I knew what the story meant, or one good interpretation anyway. It was almost as if the monolith itself had done it deliberately, so that my puny human brain would learn properly.
Cinema Futura (edited by Mark Morris) Page 7