Alphaville

Jean-Luc Godard - 1965
This is clearly an absolute riot; the film I have always wanted to make and watch. I don't think it's Godard's best, it's off the cuff in that way, but Godard's not completely 'best' means only better than 99.9999999percent of the films I know.
Godard doesn't use alienation techniques quite so much, with the edit and the acting, as elsewhere, perhaps because of the entire idea of the film as unreality. The camera operates in a way like the 'Whirpool' and co. it is flying off; plan americains, a mixture of plans and tracks showing people around rooms. These are all of course uniformly brilliant, unexpected, with some spectauclar flourishes, a sudden very high angle, for example (and some takes can be remarkably long).
Making Paris Alphaville is at once a great achievement, and very easy, because they're the same place. Shooting at night always, Coutard using fast film and the lights of the city, abstract corridors, shots from the car, using the positive print when we might be getting complacent.
The entire piece is that air of the troupe making a legend, playing out an of course completely ludicrous enactment which, in fact, tells the truth more than pretty much any realism. That is the idea; by going into the future, this massive fantasy, we have the truth of society. The imagination is the reality of the reflection.
I was slightly uncomfortable with the complete bash at logic; though completely there on the technological rationalisation of society. Does Godard start the film having concluded 'logic= bad', 'illogic=good'? I can't believe so, perhaps I'm giving too much credence to what they say. The discussion of time is fascinating. We have to live in the present. This film is about the future, which yearns for a past. Should we not compromise, and live in this fantasy land, of ideals?
The air of paranoia means this film shares much with 'Masculin Feminin'; communication has become difficult, how are we to express what we want to, words move away, become meaningless.