Germany Year Ninety 90 Zero

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

1991 / 62min / DCP

Eddie Constantine, age 73, reprises his signature role as detective Lemmy Caution, last seen on the big screen in Godard’s 1965 Alphaville, here found roaming a newly unified Berlin, left with nothing to do when the abrupt end of the Cold War renders his mission moot. Prompted by producer Nicole Ruellé’s invitation to make a telefilm about solitude, Godard’s film was originally to have described the solitude of isolated East Germany, but with the fall of the Wall became something very different, a film steeped in the atmosphere of both exuberance and dazed “What’s next?” confusion of Mitteleuropa in a post-Eastern Bloc world.