Alphaville

A brilliant mashup of dystopian sci-fi, French New Wave, and 1950s American pulp noir. Jean-Luc Godard’s idiosyncratic feature follows hard-boiled private eye Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine, who had already played the character for a decade in less avant-garde fare) in his mission to capture or kill Professor von Braun, creator of the fascist computer Alpha 60 that rules the grim city of Alphaville. With the help of Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina), the professor’s computer programmer daughter, Caution rages against the machine with the ineffably human qualities of love and poetry. Hailed for its unique take on pulp fiction and sci-fi, Alphaville won the prestigious Golden Bear at the 1965 Berlin International Film Festival.