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Rating:  - Inches From Escape and Miles Apart (recommended)
Amid war, espionage and social oppression, wealthy Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau), fed up with her corrupt husband, becomes enamored with one of his most trusted employees, Julien Travernier (Maurice Ronet). Together, they plot a way for their hearts to belong exclusively to one another. Separated in a manner neither could imagine, forlorn Florence is silently consumed by jealousy, blame, fear, and desperation as she searches all night, warmed only by the passion of her desire. By chance, young lovers Louis (Georges Poujouly) and Veronique (Yori Bertin), intersect paths with Julien and Florence in ways that forever alters the future of all four.
With skillful direction and co-authorship, Louis Malle depicts indifferent anti-social behavior capitulating 10 years after this directorial debut. Optimizing a minimal budget, the film-noir ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS employs stark natural lighting, shadows, and alternating depth-of-field, punctuated with just enough dialogue to make reading English subtitles a necessity but not a chore. ELEVATOR conveys the feeling that one is witnessing the genesis of something big. Indeed, the synergism of creative expression combined in roughly 90 minutes helped define future roles of Louis Malle, Jeanne Moreau, and Miles Davis.
The Criterion Collection of DVD extras makes this a true collector's item. With the silent film projected in front of him from a light booth over his shoulder, watch Miles Davis interpret the emotions of Moreau as she wanders along the Champs-Elysees under Paris streetlights. Listen to ambitious director Malle confidently discuss his yet-to-be-released film. Then sit down with him 18 years later as he reveals its impact on cinema. Hear Moreau in the 21st century convey how ELEVATOR was a catalyst for similar emotional attachment between her and the director nearly 50 years ago. At the 1993 Caines Festival, Moreau and Malle sit down together to share when they first met; Malle reveals that Moreau's prominent "Have you seen Julien?" introspective role was absent from the original novel but crafted just for her to give the film its enduring impact. Such footage is spectacular.
Like Hitchcock, Malle makes a brief cameo appearance. A lighthearted reference to his prior experience with Jacques Cousteau is made when a woman tells Veronique, "You ought to try underwater photography." It is amazing to think that prior to ELEVATOR, the only thing Malle directed was fish.
The spatial void of physical contact, melancholy music, and to American audiences, lack of English dialogue may leave some wanting more action. But such desire turns out to be a platform for power in the movie -- the sense of an unsatiated night of emotional turmoil transmigrates to the viewer. If I were were fluent in French, I would likely rate this movie with 5 stars. Feeling that some of the natural dialogue is lost in the translation, I subtract one when recommending to fellow English speaking viewers.
Movie quote: "I lost you in the night Julien. I shouldn't have kissed you or caressed your face. If you didn't kill Simon, never mind. If you were afraid, so much better. But you must come back."
Rating: - Ironic murder mystery
Louis Malle's classic French film noir "Elevator to the Gallows" is accompanied by a smooth musical score courtesy of legendary jazz musician Miles Davis. Pouty lipped femme fatale Jeanne Moreau, in a pivotal early role, playing Mme. Carala, young wife of wealthy arms merchant Simon Carala played by Jean Wall is an accomplice in a murder plot. She and her husband's business associate Julien Tavernier played by Maurice Ronet, an ex-paratrooper in Indochina and Algeria plot to kill Moreau's husband by faking a suicide.
Everything goes as planned until Ronet spots a rope he used to rapel up to Mr. Carala's office as he's departing in his convertible. When returning to the office, he gets trapped in the elevator as the company's security guard turns off the electricity for the weekend.
Meanwhile, a young flower shop girl and her delinquent boyfriend steal Tavernier's car and go on an escapade which results in the shooting of a German couple at a motel. The young man, Louis is posing as Tavernier and uses his revolver to commit the murder.
Moreau while waiting at a cafe for her beloved Tavernier, spots his stolen car with the young flower shop girl hanging out of the window. Thinking she's been jilted, she roams the rainswept Paris streets in a state of bewilderment mourning the loss of her lover.
Tavernier finally released from his entombment in the elevator quickly gets picked up for the murder of the German couple. In a twisted conclusion, justice is aptly served to the whole array of criminals involved in the respective murders.
Rating: - a murderer trapped in an elevator
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
Elevator to the Gallows, known in France as "Ascenseur pour l'échafaud" is Loius Malle's first major film.
It follows a man who murders his boss in his office and gets trapped in the office building elevator when the power is shut off for the night.
The film has an excellent original score improvised by Miles Davis.
The DVD has some fine special features in a double disc set.
Disc 1 contains the film with theatrical trailers.
Disc two contains an interview with actor Jeanne Moreau, director Louis Malle, actors Maurice Ronet, Maurice Moreau, and soundtrack pianist René Urtreger, Footage of Miles Davus and Louis Malle during the soundtrack recording, a film about the score with music critic, Gary Giddins and jazz musician Jon Faddis. Also included is Louis Malle's first student film Crazeologie.
This is the best edition of the film currently available and I recommend it highly
Rating:  - Indispensable
Louis Malle's first film Elevator To The Gallows (1957, released 1958), his homage to US pulp, is out for the first time ever on DVD. Jazz-buffs know it for its spare, haunting score by Miles Davis. Malle himself is better known these days for his US films - think Pretty Baby and Atlantic City. Those featured his then-partner Susan Sarandon. In Elevator To The Gallows he introduced the young, jolie-laide Jeanne Moreau as the wife of a wealthy businessman who has arranged for her ex-Foreign Legion lover to murder her husband and run off with her.
What seems a perfect plan goes awry and Moreau (looking oddly like '60s UK actress Hayley "Pollyanna" Mills - how different little Hayley's career might have been if she'd been born in France) spends much of the film wandering the Paris streets alone at night. Her lover has not only failed to turn up at their rendezvous; she has seen him drive by with another woman in his car.
In fact, the lover/murderer - played by Maurice Ronet as the epitome of cool ten years before Belmondo in Breathless - is trapped in the elevator of the building where he has killed Moreau's husband. His car has been stolen by a punk who is joyriding with his girlfriend. What the joyriders get embroiled in during the night ensures that what seemed a perfect murder plot has unravelled by the time the sun comes up again.
Elevator To The Gallows is pacy and tense, luminescently photographed and superbly acted by all the leads. The score is sublime, of course. The DVD is packed with great extras. Indispensable.
Rating: - Malle's Atmospheric Debut Made Resonant by Moreau's Haunting Presence and Davis's Jazz Score
Louis Malle was all of 25 when he made his directorial debut with this 1958 noirish thriller that also serves as a morality play. Using the elevator of the title as a vehicle for his leitmotif, he does an admirable job of capturing the smoky gray atmosphere of Paris in the 1950's and using it to great cinematic effect on a chain-link story of deception and murder. In fact, the whole movie plays like a Francophile version of a James M. Cain novel times two with plot twists coming in quick and sometimes contrived succession. To its credit, the brief 92-minute running time trots by quickly given the multiple storylines.
The labyrinth story focuses first on illicit lovers Florence Carala, the restless wife of a corrupt arms dealer, and Julien Tavernier, a former war hero working for Florence's husband. There is not a wasted moment as they plot her husband's murder, but of course, things go awry with a forgotten piece of evidence and a running car ready to be taken. An amoral young couple, sullen and resentful Louis and free-spirited Veronique, enter the scene tangentially and get caught up in their own deceptions with a boisterous German couple whom they meet through a fender bender. The plot strands meander somewhat and eventually come together in a climax that has all the characters confronting the harsh reality of their past actions. There is a particular poignancy in the photos Florence sees at the end since we have no indication of the depth of emotion between the lovers otherwise.
Malle, along with co-screenwriter Roger Nimier, presents an interesting puzzle full of irony and chance events, but there is a periodic slackness to the suspense, for instance, Florence's endlessly despondent walk though nocturnal Paris. Jazz great Miles Davis contributes a fitting hipster score, though the music is not as big an element as I expected in setting the mood. With her sorrowful eyes and pouting intelligence, Jeanne Moreau makes a vivid impression as Florence and gives her obsessed character the necessary gravitas to make her journey worthy of our interest. Maurice Ronet effectively plays Julien like a coiled spring throughout, and it's intriguing to note how most of his performance takes place in an immobilized elevator. As Louis and Veronique, Georges Poujuloy and the especially pixyish Yori Bertin are the forerunners for the runaway pair in Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" replete with youthful angst and mercenary cool.
The print transfer on the 2006 Criterion Collection DVD package is wonderfully pristine. The first disc also contains the original and 2005 re-release trailers, though there is surprisingly no scholarly audio commentary track (the usual bonus for a Criterion release). The second disc, however, makes up for it with a bevy of extras starting with an extensive 1975 early career retrospective interview with Malle, a 2005 interview with an aged but still haunting Moreau, and a joint interview with the two icons and one-time lovers at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Three shorts on the second disc focus on Davis's contribution - the six-minute "The Record Session" shot the night Davis and his musicians recorded the score; a remembrance piece with pianist Rene Utreger, the only surviving member of Davis's ensemble; and the celebratory "Miles Goes Modal: The Breakthrough Score to Elevator to the Gallows" where jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis and music critic Gary Giddins discuss Davis's influence over the generation of musicians to come. There is also a short by Malle set to Charlie Parker's "Crazeology" and an informative 25-page photo essay booklet.
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