If a negative is pale and hard to see, then it means that not enough light reached the film. There could be a number of reasons for this. For one reason or another, the image is underexposed. When you get the CD with the photos, I would imagine that the images will be very very dark.

The actual exposure time was too fast or the aperture was too small. Did you meter with the camera, use any automatic settings or did you shoot with manual settings? If you used manual settings, how did you meter? Have you got a digital camera where you can set the same settings and take the same shots if you shoot another roll of film? For each frame on the film, take a photo with the digital camera of the same composition, or as close as possible, and with all the same settings that were used on the AL-1. This might be able to give a comparison when you get the next film developed.

Are you sure that the aperture is changing when you change the settings on the camera?

Another thing to check is to ensure that the camera body knows you were shooting with ISO400 film. If the camera was set to ISO800 for example, it's going to think that the exposure time is going to need to be faster than it actually is, whereas ISO400 film inside is actually slower to respond to the light than the ISO800 that the camera is expecting.

I don't think it's the film that's at fault here. There is also the possibility that something went wrong in the film processing. I'd suggest trying the same type of film again with similar settings, and getting it developed somewhere else if possible to help eliminate that as a possibility.