 Starring: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Year Of Release: 1965
Plot: Private investigator Lemmy Caution is from ‘the Outlands’, and gets sent to the futuristic city of Alphaville in the guise of a journalist, to capture or kill the city’s creator, Professor Von Braun. He must also destroy the computer that is in control of the city, Alpha 60, which rules by logic and has outlawed anything seemingly irrational, such as emotion, decreeing that anyone acting outside its decisions must be executed. It may have also decided that war with the Outlands is the most logical next step. |
Everyone knows that some people own books that they put on their shelves just so they can look smart. For example millions of copies of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time have been sold, largely so they can sit on bookshelves making the owner feel clever, and so that when guests come round they can be ushered towards the correct shelf, where they can marvel at the serious, learned, and literary tomes on display, which obviously means the owner is all kinds of intelligent and cool.
However what I’ve been wondering is whether there are film fans out there who have DVDs that are basically there for the same reason? Or is it just me?
I don’t have that many DVDs that are just there for show, but there are a few where I have to admit that there is no other reason for me to own them, except for making my collection look broader and more artsy fartsy. One of these is definitely a box set of three Jean-Luc Godard movies, including Alphaville.
I have absolutely no excuse to own it, as I can’t stand Godard. I know he’s all important to film history, and smarty-pants academics love to go on about how he comments on film history, taking the ideas of classic cinema and subverting them, as well as how his left wing politics permeate his movies. Blah, blah blah. But if you ask me, many of his films seem half-finished and badly thought out, often including unintentionally funny scenes (normally when his ‘experimentation’ becomes amateurish and farcical) and most are exceedingly tedious.
He’s often considered one of the most radical of the New Wave filmmakers, but the way I see it is that’s only really true of his writing, which is exceedingly interesting and had a huge impact of cinema, but his films are generally bloody awful, and many have only become ‘classics’ because of what his writing suggests they should be, rather than what they actually are (A bout de soufflé being the exception, which is an excellent film).
They are the filmic equivalent of having a conversation with someone who you initially think sounds really smart, and then you suddenly realise they’re either talking utter bollocks or stating the blindingly obvious in a convoluted way that makes what they’re saying seem a lot cleverer than it actually is.
Anyway, I’d better shut up now, as I think you’ve got the point that I don’t like Godard’s movie.
Even so, I have a box set of his films. I didn’t pay for it (I got it free by legal means, so It’s not like I stole it) but nevertheless I decided I wanted it, took it home and it’s now been sat on my shelf for years, never watched, because having seen the films before, I know that if I put any of them in the DVD player, it’s just going to piss me off (which Alphaville certainly did when I watched it in preparation for this feature).
It’s ridiculous and farcical for me to own this box set, and yet despite the fact that I could have sold it, chucked it in the bin, given it to a friend or otherwise got rid of it, I never have.
There is a tiny bit of justification however in the fact that I do tend to view my DVDs as a collection. Other people collect stamps, coins or bookmarks, and I collect DVDs. Therefore having a selection of ‘classic’ Godard movies sorts of makes sense in that context. I do want my collection to include as broad a range of films as possible, from the trashiest to the artiest, and I have a fair few of both. However it is stupid to own arty films that I loathe.
I have a horrible feeling that my ‘collection’ reasoning is purely rationalising a far less noble motive. If I’m being totally honest, I think I own Godard movies to look poncey. It’s so that when people come to my house, they don’t just think, ‘What sort of freak owns all three High School Musical movies and I Spit On Your Grave?’. Instead they can look at the shelf with the movies by Godard, Bunuel, Truffaut, Welles, Olivier, Hitchcock, Werner Herzog, David Lean and peculiar movies that they probably haven’t heard of, but which have titles that suggest the films are all arty and learned.
While most of these films I own because I think they’re good, I can’t deny they’re also there to make me look like a proper film connoisseur. You know, so people will think I’m, like, way intellectual, and probably sleep with me (that’s why people sleep with each other, isn’t it? Because one of them owns some old French movies?).
I probably shouldn’t admit this, and I ought to just have come up with some crap about why I love Godard and appreciate his filmic art, so that arty farty people would like me more. But I don’t like his films, and I have a sneaking suspicion there are an awful lot of other people out there who own films they never watch and would never want to, but which are there just for show.
It may not be something I’m proud to admit, and I probably should get rid of my Godard films, but at least I can feel satisfied that I’m not talking out of my ass and telling you Alphaville is a good film by a great filmmaker.
That really would be just to make me sound intellectual. I’ve met people who’ve done just that and you know they don’t believe a word of what they’re saying (and often don’t know what they’re talking about anyway). I may be a ponce, but at least I haven’t disappeared quite that far up my own ass yet.
PS: We’d love to hear if you own movies that are there just for show. And if so, which ones do you owns?
TIM ISAAC
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