Alphaville
A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution
From my bookshelf, the screenplay for the 1965 film Alphaville, which is also full of really nice stills from Jean-Luc Goddard's classic film, described as one of the least conventional films of all time. It’s pretty surreal, it has to be said!
I’ve always loved the Alphaville poster, by French artist, Jean Mascii (1926-2003) who purposely designed it in black & white to capture the film's atmosphere and film noir style. Thankfully, they used this as the cover to the latest Blu ray release from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, that I watched a couple of days ago. It’s now restored in hi-def 4K, beautifully shot by Raoul Coutard, also responsible for the cinematography of another Jean-Luc Goddard film, Jules et Jim.
There’s an interesting experiment by David Dean Burkhart on both, Vimeo and YouTube, who utilized the Grimes track ‘Vanessa’ as the soundtrack for footage from Alphaville, featuring Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution with Anna Karina as Natacha von Braun.
Now for some vivid colour/color, and a truly great combination of contemporary music and vintage movie footage, featuring swinging 1960s London, by David Dean Burkhart, who’s editing skills are majorly impressive. It’s well worth a look!
‘We've Got it’ by Cults. From the 2013 album release, ‘Static.’ Footage is from the 1967 ‘art pop noir’ film, Col Cuore in Gola (I Am What I Am).
Have a weekend!