Alphaville (1965)

In a futuristic society, a secret agent (Eddie Constantine) from the "Outlands" arrives in the totalitarian metropolis of Alphaville with the express intention of destroying the computer Alpha 60 which rules the country. Jean Luc Godard's free wheeling mixture of sci-fi and film noir is quite ingenious for the most part but it can't sustain its cleverness. Perhaps it would have been better if Godard had shot it as a short film like Chris Marker's LA JETEE because after awhile it becomes repetitive without going anywhere. Raoul Coutard's superb cinematography creates a chilly eerie futuristic landscape out of contemporary Paris. It's not the kind of film where the acting matters much (and the characters are underwritten) but the craggy faced Constantine and the luminous Anna Karina manage to make their rather cipher like characters engrossing enough so that we care a bit about what happens to them. One can see elements of both 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY (the Alpha 60) and BLADE RUNNER (the Constantine/Karina relationship is not unlike the Ford/Young connection) in Godard's visionary utopia. The wittily effective score is by Paul Misraki. With Akim Tamiroff and Howard Vernon.