Constantine had already played this or similar roles in dozens of previous films; the character was originally created by British crime novelist Peter Cheyney.

People who show signs of emotion or refuse to adapt are presumed to be acting illogically and are executed by a variety of means: being machine gunned into a swimming pool, where they are stabbed by beautiful women to the applause of "very important people", or by attending the "execution theater", where they are electrocuted in their seats.

Images of E = mc2 and E = hf (the equations of, respectively, special relativity and quantum mechanics) are displayed several times to refer to the scientism that underpins Alphaville.

At one point, Caution passes through a place called the Grand Omega Minus, from where brainwashed people are sent out to the other "galaxies" to start strikes, revolutions, family rows, and student revolts.

As an archetypal American antihero private eye, with a trenchcoat, fedora hat, and weathered visage, Lemmy Caution's old-fashioned machismo conflicts with the puritanical computer.

The opposition of his role to logic (and that of other dissidents to the regime) is represented by faux quotations from Capitale de la douleur ("Capital of Pain"), a book of poems by Paul Éluard.

The computer identifies Caution as a spy and sentences him to death, but he escapes, shooting and killing the men guarding him.

As the citizens collapse, Caution leaves Alphaville with Natacha, who eventually achieves an understanding of herself as an individual with desires.

Constantine had become a popular actor in France and Germany through his portrayal of tough-guy detective Lemmy Caution in a series of earlier films.

[9] The opening section of the film includes an unedited sequence that depicts Caution walking into his hotel, checking in, riding an elevator and being taken through various corridors to his room.

Godard's first act was to ask Bitsch to write a screenplay, saying that producer Michelin had been pestering him for a script because he needed it to help him raise finance from backers in Germany (where Constantine was popular).

In fact, none of it even reached the screen and according to Bitsch the German backers later asked Michelin to repay the money when they saw the completed film.

The website's critics consensus reads, "While Alphaville is by no means a conventional sci-fi film, Jean-Luc Godard creates a witty, noir-ish future all his own.