Elevator to the Gallows [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Louis Malle Louis Malle

Overview

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.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/06/2018
UPC:	0715515209717
Original Release:	1958
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:31:00
Sales rank:	9,600

Special Features

Interview from 2005 with actor Jeanne Moreau; Archival interviews with Moreau, director Louis Malle, actor Maurice Ronet, and original soundtrack session pianist René Urtreger; Footage of musician Miles Davis and Malle from the soundtrack recording session; Program from 2005 about the score, featuring jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis and critic Gary Giddins; Malle's student film Crazeologie, featuring Charlie Parkers's song "Crazeology"; Trailers

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Maurice Ronet	Julien Tavernier
Jeanne Moreau	Florence Carala
Jean Wall	Simon Carala
Georges Poujouly	Louis
Yori Bertin	Veronique
Lino Ventura	Insp. Cherter
Felix Marten	Subervie
Elga Andersen	Mme. Bencker
Micheline Bona	Genevieve
Jacqueline Staup	Actor
Marcel Cuvelier	Actor
Gérard Darrieu	Maurice
Charles Denner	Inspector Cherier's assistant
Hubert Deschamps	Attorny of State
Jacques Hilling	Garage owner
Marcel Journet	Actor
François Joux	Actor
Iván Petrovich	Horst Bencker
Jean-Claude Brialy	Chess player at motel
Miles Davis	Composer

Technical Credits

Louis Malle

Louis Malle	Director,Screenwriter
Jean Thuillier	Producer

Editorial Reviews

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.

All Movie Guide - Michael Costello