Jordan- This was a big film for me. I saw it on late nite tv when I was a boy; my parents must have been out, and I must have been old enough to be home alone (13? 15?). It was a revelation. I'd never seen anything so beautiful, so archtypal, so mysterious, so promising. The neon sign flashing "E = M C2" was burned into my memory. I didn't understand a thing, yet I understood everything. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and so forth. I didn't discover which film it was and who made it for many years, when I bought a VCR and discovered La Nouvelle Vague. Shortly afterwards I saw Faces. This also stunned me. I remembered the film as magical mystery (since I never came across anything like it in the theatres) until I discoverd Cassavettes with my wonderful VCR. This film convinced me that, although I had not yet met them, and might never, that there were in fact intelligent and perceptive people to be found on the planet where I found myself stranded, hopefully not for long. When I finally saw Gena Rowlands perform in a play in LA, I was not disappointed. She is an angel, a creature from another, better world... but I digress. I haven't seen Alphaville in many years. I remember it is a combination of a detective story and science fiction, on an extremely low budget with an extraordinary amount of cinematic invention. The theme seems to deal with the increasing mechanization of society, and how the grittier human passions which we try to sanitize are the saving grace of humanity. But I should probably see it again. I think on my last viewing I felt there was a certain casualness and lack of continuity in the film that perhaps represented a lack of inspiration, as if rather than fill in the missing pieces of a great painting with mediocre work a painter just decided to leave them out. Could've been the atrocious print, though. _Alphaville, Une etrange Aventure de Lenny Caution_. 1965, 100m. B/W, D. Jean-Luc Godard. Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leigh Charles Goldstein [log in to unmask] voice: 303-478-5292 (USA) CIS 70304,211