"Poetry is a craft for mortals and therefore mortally dangerous...Contraband...and consequently the more precious, for it is true...that if the world becomes a dream, the dream in turn becomes a world" (Godard on Cocteau's Orphée). In Alphaville, Godard establishes a techno-Fascistic city in which poetry and ideas of love and conscience are contraband, therefore mortally dangerous. His stunning dream/nightmare world is created by Raoul Coutard with mysterious, dread-filled and hauntingly beautiful images; but Alphaville, the "capital of pain," is Paris, underlit. Black shadows are pools of ambiguity, glass surfaces reflect fear. Alphaville is a masterpiece of non-special effects. The plot is a brilliant mixture of comic strip, film noir and science fiction. Special agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is sent on an intergalactic mission to Alphaville to dispose of the diabolical scientist Leonard von Braun (a.k.a. Léonard Nosfératu), whose mechanical brainchild Alpha 60 tortures the populace with logic. Here is a playful homage to film noir and also a sad one, particularly in the wretched figure of Akim Tamiroff as a soul-dead ex-agent. A wonderful moment in this surprisingly moving film finds the poker faced, monosyllabic, hard-as-nails Lemmy Caution trying to communicate the meaning of the word "love" to von Braun's robotized daughter Natasha (Anna Karina).