Alphaville - memories.
Godard s film is indeed interesting and holds up very well in the 90s.
When the film was released in Norway in 1965, very few cinemagoers had
heard about Jean Luc Godard - Eddie Constantine, on the other hand, was
a great sub-culture hero, having starred in a long row of French B-action
films as secret agent Lemmy Caution. At the local B-film venue in
Trondheim at the time, the students at the Technical Institution would
arrange an "Eddieval", dress up as gangsters and fire powder cap guns at
the screen, cheering for Eddie as he seduced femmes fatales and beat up
and shot the bad guys.
When a new Eddie-film was announced, the same ritual followed and the few
art film freaks in the theater enjoyed watching how the boisterous mood
gave way to bewilderment, confusion and, finally, rejection by the hundreds
of loyal Eddie-fans as the mysteries of "Alphaville" unravelled.
Here the cultural collision, no doubt intended by Godard, worked perfectly.
        About the later career of Eddie Constantine, he actually repaid
his loyal Norwgeians fans by appearing in a cameo role in a low budget
turkey in the 80s......
 
Bjorn Sorenssen
University of Trondheim, Norway
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