New Restoration of Godard’s Alphaville to Screen at Film Forum

From February 7^th to February 13^th, the Film Forum in New York will screen a new restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 sci-fi-noir, Alphaville, in a Rialto Pictures release. Starring Eddie Constantine as the hardboiled secret agent Lemmy Caution caught up in a strange dystopian future, and Godard’s go-to muse Anna Karina as the daughter of the professor that Caution is trying to track down.

The new restoration comes with a new translation and subtitles by Lenny Borger and Cynthis Schoch, and will be presented in DCP for its seven-day run.

It’s been quite a long time since Alphaville’s Criterion debut at spine #25 way back in 1998—the film’s cover art even sports the Collection’s oldest DVD-logo incarnation—and has been out of print for a number of years.

The chances that an updated, dual-format release for the film remains to be seen, and would be extremely welcome by all means, but if you get a chance to watch it on the bigscreen in its restored form it should easily blow the old transfer out of the water.

The film is personally one of my favorite Godard films, and is definitely among his most easily accessible given its familiar genre experimentation and cast. I have to admit the film has never looked good on DVD or any of the crumby 35mm prints I’ve seen it on, so watching Lemmy’s final showdown with Alpha 60 all cleaned and polished should be a priority for any Nouvelle Vague fan.

Check out the Film Forum’s site here for tickets and showtimes.