Movie Type: Post-Noir (Modern Noir), Psychological Thriller
Themes: Perfect Crime, Trapped or Confined, Femmes Fatales
Main Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Felix Marten, Lino Ventura, Jean Wall, Yori Bertin
Release Year: 1957
Country: FR
Run Time: 92 minutes
Plot
The feature-film debut of famed director Louis Malle is an interesting, modern film noir with the classic theme of lovers plotting to kill the husband and make it look like suicide (reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice). Jeanne Moreau, as Florence Carala, gives an astonishing performance, perverse but naive as she leads her young lover down a path that can only lead to doom for both of them. Malle and his cinematographer Henri Decae make extensive use of Paris at night, giving the film the feel of claustrophobia and desperation reminiscent of the classic noir films. The excellent score by Miles Davis adds to the entire effect of this mystery thriller. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
Review
The first feature of the 24-year-old Louis Malle, this assured film was one of the earliest rumblings of the Nouvelle Vague, a more conservative precursor to Godard's Breathless. Claiming a desire to combine the disparate styles of Bresson and Hitchcock, Malle's film is less a noir than a low-key meditation on the genre, as shots of a disconsolate Jeanne Moreau walking the streets of Paris in search of her lover (Maurice Ronet) are intercut with the adventures of the young couple who have stolen their car. Taking the familiar plot of homicidal lovers, Malle skips past the customary heavy breathing, beginning in medias res as the murder of Moreau's husband is carried out with clinical detachment. Ironically, Malle's older lovers are separated from each other for nearly the entire film, with Ronet's frantic efforts to get away from the scene of the crime almost a parody of the prisoner's calm demeanor in Bresson's contemporaneous A Man Escaped (1956). As the dominoes begin to fall, Moreau is reunited with Ronet, at least on paper, in one of the most elegant busts on celluloid. The melancholy of Miles Davis' improvised score underlines the film's tone of stoic fatalism. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Elga Andersen - Mme. Bencker; Micheline Bona - Genevieve; Jean-Claude Brialy - Chess player at motel; Gérard Darrieu - Maurice; Charles Denner - Inspector Cherier's assistant; Hubert Deschamps - Attorny of State; Jacques Hilling - Garage owner; Marcel Journet; Ivan Petrovich - Horst Bencker; Jacqueline Staup; Marcel Cuvelier; Francois Joux
Credit
Jean Mandaroux - Art Director, Rino Mondellini - Art Director, Francois Leterrier - First Assistant Director, Alain Cavalier - First Assistant Director, Louis Malle - Director, Leonide Azar - Editor, Miles Davis - Composer (Music Score), Boris de Fas - Makeup, Henri Decaë - Cinematographer, Irenee Leriche - Production Manager, Jean Thuillier - Producer, Louis Malle - Screenwriter, Noel Calef - Book Author
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is a 1958French film directed by Louis Malle. It was released as Elevator to the Gallows in the USA and as Lift to the Scaffold in the UK. It stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as criminal lovers whose perfect crime begins to unravel when Ronet is trapped in an elevator. The film is often associated by critics with the film noir style.[1]
The score by Miles Davis has been described by jazz critic Phil Johnson as "the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear, and the model for sad-core music ever since. Hear it and weep."[1]
Synopsis
The central characters, lovers Florence Carala and Julien Tavernier (Moreau and Ronet), plan the perfect crime — the murder of Florence's husband, Simon Carala. The murderer, Julien, an ex-Foreign Legionparachutist officer veteran of Indochina and Algeria, rappels up the office block on a rope to kill Carala in his office without being seen, but on going to his car, realizes he left the rope dangling outside the building. Leaving his expensive car unlocked and with the keys in the ignition, he returns to remove the evidence, but in doing so becomes trapped in the lift as the building closes down for the weekend.
In the meantime, the car is stolen by a young couple, Louis and Veronique (Poujouly and Bertin), who have watched Julien. Veronique, a flower seller at a kiosk next to the Carala building, is seen in the car by Florence, who assumes Julien has run off with Veronique. Louis discovers Julien's pistol and his miniature camera in the glove box and fantasizes about being a secret agent and war hero. They stay overnight with a German couple with a preference for fast cars and a swinging lifestyle at a motel, with Louis embarrassing himself by telling war stories, supposedly of his own experiences. Veronique takes pictures of the two couples with Tavernier's camera. When Louis attempts to steal their luxury car, the man threatens him with a "gun" (really a cigar), but Louis shoots the couple with Julien's handgun. Later, Louis considers himself saved when he realizes the mistaken identity as a newspaper has the headline "Julien Tavernier: Assassin [Murderer]" on its front pages, but Florence visits the couple in Veronique's flat (after the couple's failed suicide attempt prompted by Veronique) and challenges them over the error of others.
While the police still consider Carala's death a suicide, Julien is charged with the killing of the Germans, and his lift-related alibi is not believed. Much of the suspense comes from Julien's attempt to escape from the lift. Although he succeeds, the murder plot is eventually discovered through photographs taken by the young couple with the camera they find in his car that also contains photographs of Julien with Florence.
References
^ Phil Johnson, "Discs: Jazz—Miles Davis/Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Fontana)," Independent on Sunday, March 14, 2004.
