Alphaville

France/Italy 1965

Director Jean-Luc Goddard
With Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff, Howard Vernon

Alphaville is a science fiction film noir comedy. It's the story of Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), special agent, galactic traveller and reporter for Figaro-Pravda, who journeys to the city of Alphaville in search of the mysterious Professor von Braun. All this might make it sound like Blade Runner, but it's not.
The whole film was shot in black and white in Paris, without special effects. Goddard was one of the big names of the French New Wave - he also directed Breathless and Weekend - and here he creates a really strong science-fiction movie out of hotel corridors and tight angles on flashing signs and such household objects as doorknobs and lightbulb. Cameraman Raoul Coutard does an amazing job with light and dark and scenes shot through glass, consructing the frightening profile of of a modern Fascist city.
This film is not to everyone's taste, of course. If you were offended by those French movies like Hiroshima Mon Amour or Last Year at Marienbad where disembodied voices talk about philosophy, you might not like this. However, the script - also by Goddard - is extremely funny and, if you pay attention, it really makes its own kind of sense. It's interesting to compare Alphaville with The Trial, Orson Welles's Kafka film.
There does appear to be one mistake in the car department: Lemmy Caution claims he drives a Galaxy, but isn't the car he drives up in at the start a Mustang?