Let me insist from the outset that Alphaville is a film about flickering lights, circular staircases, labyrinthine hallways, and Zippo lighters. That it's also a film about alienation, the dehumanization of man and all that other stuff serious movies are required to be about is undeniable; but in Godard's world this second set of themes carries no greater weight than the first, and neither can be said to constitute the "meaning" of the film….

It's necessary to say all this because Alphaville is so clearly the ultimate Message Movie that one may fail to see that it is, equally, the ultimate Meaningless Movie. Godard creates his future society with its rigid logic out of a series of images joined with carefree illogic, sketches his computer with the technique of a [Jackson] Pollock. (p. 48)

Important as its intellectual content may be, I think the film's message is not its Message but the structure of its images. For the Message of Alphaville is negative, an attack on the over-organized, hyper-intellectual world of modern man. But the structure of its images—the seemingly erratic development of a number of gratuitous visual themes—is the very poetry that Godard, speaking through Lemmy Caution, offers as Alphaville's salvation….

Chief among the images that create the texture of this film is a flashing light…. To try to establish any "meaning" for this symbol would, I think, be pointless. The flashing light is as characteristic of modern civilization as anything else you might name, and particularly appropriate to Alphaville, where direct sunlight is rarely seen. I cannot stress too much that what is important is that the image is there, and is its own justification.

This light is in fact the central visual theme of Alphaville. In the opening five minutes there is little else….

These first few minutes are among the most gripping in the film, not because anything happens, but because these particular images have been arranged in this particular way. In this sequence the whole substance and strategy of Alphaville stand revealed. These patterns of flickering light are the movie; what else in it is of greater importance? (p. 49)

The film is basically psychological rather than political; it attacks not the superstate but the modern habit of judging experience through the intellect and at the expense of feeling. But what's interesting is the way Godard handles this material—putting it in comic-book or fairy-story form and eliminating the psychological subtleties that another director might have thought important. In a sense he is admitting that his story cannot be taken seriously because it's been done all too often. Inundated as we are with this sort of thing in serious movies and novels, it's almost impossible for an artist to deal with such themes without sliding into parody. Godard's strategy is to admit this, dip consciously into parody, and thereby disarm the viewer. This approach also seems necessary because Godard wants his protagonist to be a genuine Hero, but can find no Heroes in today's world…. Lemmy Caution occupies in France a role analogous to that of Batman here. He is as completely a man of the past as Alphaville is a city of the future, and he cannot exist in our world except as pasteboard…. As a man committed to the importance of memory and history he records with his camera each significant event in the present, preserving it so that it becomes an integral part of the continuity of life. This is exactly what the people of Alphaville cannot do. They see themselves as unique, alone in the universe, devoid both of history and potentiality. Because he is rooted firmly in the values of the past, Caution has the inner confidence that it takes to be a Hero, and Alphaville must fall inevitably before his attack.

Here is the weak spot in Godard's Message. He can offer as an alternative to Alphaville nothing more than a return to the values of the past. But Alpha 60 has its point to make, too. We do live today between Past and Future, cut off from our historical roots but as yet unable to formulate the new values that we need to sustain ourselves. (pp. 50-1)

It is the irony of Alphaville that, despite his worship of the past, Godard has created out of his imagery this poetry of the future. In a sense the film Alphaville offers us a surer way out of the city….

This tension between two points of view—between, in essence, two Godards—is the most interesting aspect of the film. Godard's movies have always been interesting because Godard himself is interesting….

Alphaville is both portrait and prescription. What Godard has given cannot yet be analyzed because we still have to find words that offer some emotional equivalent to his images. (p. 51)