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Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

Jul

16

petit déjeuner

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

In one of the very few daytime scenes, Natacha (Anna Karina) and Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) share breakfast at a small table while awkwardly sitting on the armrests of two upholstered chairs. A large television is set up directly behind the table. DP: Raoul Coutard.

“Yes, I'm afraid of death… but for a humble secret agent that's a fact of life, like whisky. And I've drunk that all my life.”

– Lemmy Caution

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

Jul

16

AI Appreciation Day

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina) and Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine). Lights reflected in the windowpane that shields the two characters suggest “the existence of an obscure reality” (after Baudrillard). DP: Raoul Coutard..

Science fiction, of course, doesn't have to be driven by grandes effects, by superstar names and monumental backdrops. It can be cool, dry, colourless even. The hero, in trenchcoat and fedora, traverses a lightless city. There are few others at this time of night. The familiar landmarks of the City of Light become the voice of 𝛼-60, an artificial intelligence that presides over Alphaville.

𝛼-60: “Do you know what illuminates the night?”

Lemmy Caution: “Poetry.”

– 𝛼-60 playing the imitation game with Lemmy Caution

Based on a poem by Paul Éluard, #Godard's Alphaville bears similarities with Jean #Cocteau's Orphée (1950), transported to a mirror world of sorts. It also foreshadows not only our time, but also M. Hulot's, whose #Tativille could be the simulacra of 𝛼-60's simulated, dehumanised world.

Grands soirs & petits matins [May Days] (William Klein, 1978)

Jun

6

National Higher Education Day

Grands soirs & petits matins (1978)

Students discussing at the Sorbonne. DPs: William Klein & Bernard Lutic.

A ripple went through France in the early months of 1968. It started when the Communist and socialist party joined forces in an attempt to remove President De Gaulle from office. A month later, students at Nanterre (a Parisian university) teamed up with poets, musicians and small leftist groups to discuss class discrimination and political bureaucracy on campus. The meeting was peacefully disassembled but tensions remained. In May, Sorbonne students stood up for Nanterre, by then shut down. Then, police invaded the university and 20 000 stood up against the police.

“Convert all Parisian universities into reception centres for the revolutionary youth of the whole world.”

– student proposal

Somewhere in that crowd were those whose interest went beyond the main spectacle: the toppling of the new ancien regime. A #JeanRouch​ian anthropologist of sorts, artist, photographer and filmmaker William Klein pushes the eye through the masses. But it's also his eye; each frame is a Klein. However, we see not a documentary. Sound is asynchronous. Suddenly, it's night and flames lick the black sky. When bricks fly, frames follow. And then… the end.

Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)

Mar

31

Eiffel Tower Day

Playtime (1967)

A woman in a long grey overcoat holds a glass door of one of the many impersonal, grey modernist buildings. For a brief moment the Eiffel Tower can be seen reflected in the glass, providing a much needed flash of colour. DPs: Jean Badal & Andréas Winding.

Never was or will I be a fan of Jacques #Tati, the loveable Luddite who wouldn't be as big as he became if it wasn't for the technological wonders of the 20th century. Having said that, his Playtime (1967) holds a special place in my heart.

 

Tati's alter ego Monsieur #Hulot roams a hyper-modern #Paris, actually an enormous soundstage dubbed Tativille. People, buildings and gadgets interact with and against each other, each and everyone as plotless as a prop. In unison, it becomes a perfectly orchestrated symphony of maddening modernism.

 

But Tati wouldn't be Tati if it wasn't for a glimpse of quiet nostalgia. A woman holding the glass-and-steel entrance door of yet another concrete office building. In the glass, a burst of warm light and colour and movement. And then it's gone, and we remember how that tower once was the thorn in the Luddite's eye, that “baroque and mercantile fancy of a builder of machines”.

 

I'm going to take Mr Ebert's words to heart for my long overdue revisit to #Tativille:

”'Playtime' is a peculiar, mysterious, magical film. Perhaps you should see it as a preparation for seeing it; the first time won't quite work.”

– Roger Ebert

Paris qui dort [Paris Asleep / The Invisible Ray / At 3:25] (René Clair, 1925)

Mar

30

freebie: Eiffel Tower Day

Paris qui dort (1925)

Two bright young things in their fashionable suits cease their scuffle mid fight, high up on the Eiffel Tower. DPs: Maurice Desfassiaux & Alfred Guichard.

Science fiction may be one of those genres that's forever linked to the future and, depending on which side of 2000 you are at, either in a dystopian of utopian fashion.

 

An #Eiffel Tower watchman wakes up to find the world around him asleep. The few ones still awake – the bright, pretty, carefree things – explore, live and loot.

Sur un air de Charleston [Charleston Parade] (Jean Renoir, 1927)

Feb

14

Extraterrestrial Culture Day

Sur un air de Charleston (1927)

Parisian savage Catherine Hessling and African explorer Johnny Hudgins exploring each other's alien ways. DP: Jean Bachelet.

Legendary African-American #vaudeville performer Johnny Hudgins – in historically correct Blackface – plays an African explorer who descends onto 2028 Paris to learn about the primitive ways of the white natives. Soon, he discovers the Charleston.

“I have finally discovered my ancestors' traditional dance.”

– Johnny Hudgins

A fantastic Afrofuturist short, made a decade before Sun Ra's trip to Saturn.