Avis des critiques

The way that Louis Malle shoots Jeanne Moreau—those are some of the most beautiful walking scenes I’ve seen. She’s walking in the rain with her head held high, lost in herself, mumbling, and with that amazing score being played by Miles Davis. There is something so modern about the film, and it feels like it opens so many doors.

Malle appeared to be torn between a hyper-controlled aesthetic that's reminiscent of artists like Alfred Hitchcock, and an open and chaotic kind of drama that anticipates the concerns of Malle's later films. The characters are components of a formal and political schematic rather than living and breathing creations, though Malle also captures Paris with a docudramatic volatility that hints at the greater films that would follow from him and the blossoming French New Wave.

The film is best appreciated on a big movie screen, or in a darkened home viewing room with an excellent TV that can perceive fine shades of grey. Its meandering rhythms take some getting used to, and you're never not aware that the movie is coasting on pure attitude throughout much of its running time. It does not seem to have been written and directed so much as composed and then performed, in the manner of a classic jazz arrangement rendered live for a paying audience.

The movie utilizes an effortlessly suave musical score by Miles Davis to conjure up an overall feeling of chaos that surrounds the characters' every move. Blistering trumpet notes rain down from the heavens as Florence wanders the streets of Paris suffocating in doubt over her lover's disappearance... Malle spins new webs around typical noir conventions, giving darker implications of fate and comeuppance a fresh verve.

A schematic thriller about a wanton wife looking to dispose of her spouse. The movie attracted attention for its contemporary proto-nouvelle vague style and the presence of Jean Moreau, whom Malle cast after seeing her as Maggie in the Paris production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; it is lifted toward greatness, however, by its electrifying jazz score—supposedly improvised by Miles Davis in a single, all-night recording session.

Sure, the Miles Davis score might be the most cited element when it comes to Elevator to the Gallows placing in some sort of proto-Nouvelle Vague French cinema canon, but while the sad trumpet that travels alongside its main characters is genuinely one of the best scores of all time, it's just one of the many virtues of this masterpiece.

The direction isn't particularly inventive, the script isn't very substantial, and even the excellent cast, headed by Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet, isn't given much to do. Its historical significance, however, is that it looked, for a moment, like what a New Wave film might be—and even offered crucial elements that burst into full flower when the real thing came along.

It was a transcendent congruence between two art forms navigating experimental, audacious territory. Elevator to the Gallows married a new kind of jazz to a new kind of cinema, and created something altogether sublime.

Though hardly as humanistic or naturalistic as Malle's later work, it's undeniably crackling entertainment that'll have you reaching for a pack of Gauloises.

Affairs of this kind — wrought with secrecy and murder — don't seem long for survival, which adds that final blow of existential angst to the film. This open-endedness and desperation will carry over into the best films of the New Wave, as Ascenseur pour l'échafaud becomes one of the most crucial lead-ups to the game-changing early 60s movement.

The incredible manner in which the narrative plumes out manages to pile one contrivance on top of the next. There are more than superficial similarities to Á Bout de Souffle here, though unlike Godard, Malle lacked the courage of his convictions when it came to bold postmodern stylisation of a pulp source. The problem with the film is that nuances feel forced and over-emphasised which, in turn, makes the "real" world in which the film takes place feel phoney.

I hate to admit it, but as much as I enjoy watching Elevator to the Gallows, I think I'd be just as happy if everything were cut out of it except for Jeanne Moreau wandering the Champs-Élysées at night, accompanied by Miles Davis's elegiac soundtrack. It's those scenes that really make the movie for me.