Question: Build a movie plot around this: The concept of the individual self has been lost to what? the collectivized citizens of Alphaville
Answer:
Lemmy Caution is a secret agent with the code number of 003 from "the Outlands". Entering Alphaville in his Ford Mustang,[3] called a Ford Galaxie,[4] he poses as a journalist named Ivan Johnson, and claims to work for the Figaro-Pravda. He wears a tan overcoat that stores various items such as an M1911A1 Colt Commander automatic pistol. He carries a cheap Instamatic camera (new in 1965) with him and photographs everything he sees, particularly the things that would ordinarily be unimportant to a journalist.Caution is, in fact, on a series of missions. First, he searches for the missing agent Henri Dickson (Akim Tamiroff); second, he is to capture or kill the creator of Alphaville, Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon); lastly, he aims to destroy Alphaville and its dictatorial computer, Alpha 60. Alpha 60 is a sentient computer system created by von Braun which is in complete control of all of Alphaville.Alpha 60 has outlawed free thought and individualist concepts like love, poetry, and emotion in the city, replacing them with contradictory concepts or eliminating them altogether. One of Alpha 60's dictates is that "people should not ask 'why', but only say 'because'." People who show signs of emotion (weeping at the death of a wife, or smiling) are presumed to be acting illogically, and are gathered up, interrogated, and executed. In an image reminiscent of George Orwell's concept of Newspeak, there is a dictionary in every hotel room that is continuously updated when words that are deemed to evoke emotion become banned. As a result, Alphaville is an inhuman, alienated society.Caution is told that men are killed at a ratio of fifty to every one woman executed. He also learns that Swedes, Germans and Americans assimilate well with Alphaville. Images of the E=mc and E = hf equations are displayed several times throughout the film as symbols of the regime of logical science that rules Alphaville. At one point, Caution passes through a place called the Grand Omega Minus, from where brainwashed people are...