Blog #4

[chiholi]

In today’s class we watched Alphaville. This movie was filmed about the time of the cold war. It was about a place where it was solely functional through a super computer. This computer was said to be “160 light years” more advance than the present IBM. This computer (alpha 60) controlled everything from law to climate control. We see that the climate was in the area was controlled by the machine because when the main character (Ivan Johnson) asked about which route was better to take the driver said that the south end was better to take because the north end was snowing. The rooms in which criminals were interrogated were also controlled by the machine. The sense of feelings were also lost or forgotten. No one was allowed to love or ask any questions. This was very much like the story “The Machine Stops” because the people underground were also very reliant on this supreme computer. They had this book that was like the Bible to them telling them what they can say or what they can’t say (which is more like a dictionary than a Bible). They also mention the term “ideas” alluding to the same story.
So rather than summarizing the whole story let me say how I felt about the movie. I thought it was way too long for the whole story to follow through. At one point I was just getting restless. Though the idea of the movie was interesting some of the scenes were really strange. The music was also horrible and it was playing in every scene. This would probably be a lot better if it was 50 years ago when technology wasn’t as advance as it is today. It was an interesting film though, maybe they should remake it.