Alphaville

Surely an influence upon everything from Bladerunner to 2001, A Space Odyssey, Friendship’s Death, THX1138, Neuromancer and Auster’s New York Trilogy. Oh and what did Ralf and Florian make of Alpha 60’s voice? Traces too, in it, of Cocteau’s Orphee.

“The Central Memory is thus named because of the primordial role that it plays in the logic-organisation within Alpha 60. But no one has lived in the past and no one will live in the future. The present is the form of all life. This quality cannot be changed by any means. Time is like a circle which is endlessly described. The declining arc is the past. The inclining arc is the future. Everything has been said provided words do not change their meanings and meanings their words. Is it not obvious that someone who customarily lives in a state of suffering requires a different sort of religion from a person habitually in a state of well-being? Before us, nothing existed here. No one. We are totally alone here. We are unique, dreadfully unique. The meaning of words and of expressions is no longer grasped. An isolated word, or a detail of a design can be understood but the meaning of the whole escapes. Once we know the number one we believe that we know the number two because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus. I’m going. The acts of men carried over from past centuries will gradually destroy them logically. I Alpha 60, am merely the logical means of this destruction.”

“It was 23.15, Oceanic Time when Natasha and I left Alphaville by the ring road..”

Pure, brilliant, silly, marvellous moviemaking.