Product Description

In this, his debut feature film, director Louis Malle captures the hidden beauty of Jeanne Moreau, the brilliant camerawork of Henri Decaë, and the musical force of Miles Davis in a tightly constructed film noir experience that launched his and Moreau’s careers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26229 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2006-04-25
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 92 minutes

Amazon.com
Elevator to the Gallows is many things: A tight, delicious crime thriller; the debut of director Louis Malle (Zazie dans le metro, Atlantic City, Au Revoir, Les Enfants, and many more works of subtle genius); a movie with perhaps the greatest jazz soundtrack of all time, created improvisationally by trumpeter Miles Davis; but above all, Elevator to the Gallows is the blooming of Jeanne Moreau to the status of true movie star, launching her on a career that included Jules & Jim, La notte, and La Femme Nikita. After killing his lover's husband, Julien (Maurice Ronet, Purple Noon) gets trapped in an elevator, forcing him to miss his rendezvous with Florence (Moreau) and allowing his car to be stolen by a joy-riding young couple. From there, the movie splits into three directions: Julien's efforts to escape; Florence wandering the streets, trying not to believe that Julien has abandoned her; and the car thieves, who get caught up in a murder of their own. The movie skillfully fuses Hitchcockian suspense with intimate psychodrama. As she stalks through the night, Moreau is a vision of tortured heartbreak, her woeful eyes and lush, sensuous lips illuminated by neon signs and baleful streetlamps. This is pure cinematic pleasure, visual beauty fused with taut, edge-of-your-seat storytelling.

Additional Features
As usual, high-end dvd distributor Criterion has fantastic extras for Elevator to the Gallows--in this case, an abundance of interviews. A 1975 interview with director Malle reveals a manic chain-smoker, animatedly discussing the political context of the film. A 2005 interview, shot for this dvd release, demonstrates that Moreau's charisma is undimmed; her smoky voice will lure you in as she discusses how she was cast, working without make-up, her affair with Malle, and kissing with tongues; then, in a 1993 interview with both at the Cannes Film Festival, Moreau gives more insight into how this film allowed her to find her artistic freedom as an actress. Footage of Miles Davis is hypnotic, and an interview with pianist Rene Urtreger and a critical discussion of the score expand on the music's crucial role. Malle's student film Crazeologie is an amusing tidbit and the essays and interviews in the accompanying booklet give more valuable background. But the unexpected gem of the extras is an interview conducted with Ronet in 1957, before the movie was even made; the interviewer needles Ronet with snide questions about the manliness of acting as Ronet affably, gracefully fends him off. It's impossible to imagine a contemporary star like Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford coping so genially with a combative journalist, or even allowing such a spontaneous interview to take place. While it may not tell us more about Elevator to the Gallows, this interview reveals a jarring gulf between that era and ours. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Shadows
Released originally in 1957, newly restored this year, Louis Malle's ("Pretty Baby") gorgeous "Elevator to the Gallows" ("Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud") is ultimately more flash than substance: many scenes were filmed with natural light (shades of Dogma95?) and Jeanne Moreau's penultimate scene walking down the Champs Elysees light only from the glare of the shop windows that she passes is stunning in its simple, shadowy beauty. Paris, in many ways has never looked more beautiful or more sinister.
The plot revolves around two couples: Florence Carala (Moreau), her paramour Julien (Maurice Ronet) and two juvenile delinquents, Veronique (Yori Bertin) and Louis (Georges Poujouly)...who steal Julien's car. The quartet meet only at the conclusion of the film though their actions definitely affect each other earlier.
There is also intrigue involving Julien and Florence's husband Simon Carala (Jean Wall) and their participation in war profiteering in the Indochina War (it is 1957, after all). But the plot takes a back seat to the mise en scene as Malle's camera and the mood take precedence over plot development and plot logic.
"Elevator to the Gallows" (a very witty title, by-the-way) is at times breathtakingly beautiful to behold: Decae's moody camerawork and Miles Davis' score and trumpet work are brilliant. And as a precursor to the emotional depth, flash and profundity of what was soon to arrive, "Elevator to the Gallows" is an important piece of the wonderful puzzle that was to become the French New Wave a few years hence.

Spectacular!
French New Wave at it's best? Louis Malle's first film has been considered one of the first if not the first film of the French New Wave and either way is certainly one of the best. The story has Hitchcockian undertones to it; A man kills his lover's husband and then gets trapped in the elevator while fleeing the scene. The tension mounts as the man's lover, Jeanne Moreau and the audience wait to see if he will escape or get caught. Like the early films of the new wave there are many shots of and around Paris. However Malle made one of the best decisions in cinematic history by having Miles Davis do the soundtrack. Miles gives those scenes in Paris and the entire film a quality that is indescribable. For those who admire the films of Godard, Truffaut or Varda will love this unbelievable piece of cinema. However this film is not available on DVD. Cannot for the life of me imagine why. Criterion please help!!! The soundtrack on its own is amazing and for jazz fans should be purchased immediately. I looked for it forever and it has finally been released on CD.

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.