Elevator to the Gallows (a.k.a. Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) (1958)

Directed by Louis Malle; produced by Jean Thuillier

Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) and Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau) have plotted to kill the latter’s husband, a wealthy, amoral industrialist. However, when Julien carries out the deed, murdering the victim in his office, he becomes trapped in the building’s elevator when the security guard shuts down the power and goes home. This is just the start of the couple’s problems, though, as Florence thinks her lover has abandoned her, Julien’s car is stolen, and more murders are committed. Conspirators should realise that, worse than the police or their consciences, random chance is their deadliest enemy.

Neither a mystery nor a detective story, Elevator to the Gallows is a crime-movie, fairly straightforward, despite the complications the plot throws at the characters and the audience. Indeed, the film, stripped of its trappings, is a basic story of a plot gone awry. It is nonetheless a decent tale, competently told, and may provide a moderately entertaining evening for that alone.

What sets Elevator to the Gallows apart from many other films in its genre is the style of the movie, especially its direction. This was the first feature film from Malle, who would go on to direct a wide variety of motion pictures, French and American, and whose body of work included greatly different subjects and settings. He makes his mark here, especially in the use of lighting and make-up. His manner of presenting leading lady Moreau is cinematically revolutionary.

Also of note is the music-score, dominated by the lone trumpet of Miles Davis. While the work done with Moreau is probably of greater interest to film-makers and students of film history, the music has more of an effect on the viewer, as it creates, right from the start, a feeling of loneliness, even of desperation, later depicted by Florence’s random wanderings through Paris.

The acting is good, though quiet, though the sub-plot featuring a pair of young criminals, necessary to the main story-line even as it is, is distracting and the characters annoying. The narrative’s resolution is adequately satisfying from a dramatic point of view, but would, I think, leave film noir aficionados a little unfulfilled.

I believe that what the director (who co-wrote the screenplay) and producer wanted was to create a movie of atmosphere, more than of story. The acting, the dialogue, the music, all go to make a feeling, much more than a compelling or involving story. In this, Malle and company do what they set out to do. But I believe that Elevator to the Gallows would succeed in generating more discussion of its art than in creating an enjoyable night at the movies.

(A note on the title. The original French title of the film is Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, literally ’Elevator for the Scaffold’. A gallows is associated with hanging, a form of capital punishment not used in France in 1958. A scaffold is, among other things, the raised platform on which a guillotine is set, that instrument being the means of execution in France at the time. The British title of the film, Lift to the Scaffold, is therefore more accurate. In the U.S., the debate was circumvented by calling the movie Frantic.)