Movie - Ascenseur pour l'échafaud

Movie - Ascenseur pour l'échafaud

(English title : Elevator to the gallows)

(UK title : Lift to the scaffold)

Score : 9/10 

Year : 1958

Director: Louis Malle 

Cinematography: Henri Decaë 
Music:  Miles Davis

Country:  France
Language: French
Duration:  1h31 (IMDB) 
Writers: Roger Nimier (dialogues & adaptation) ;  Louis Malle (adaptation) ; 

Noël Calef (novel + pre-adaptation) 

Full cast & team (IMDB)

Florence Carala and her lover, Julien Tavernier, conspire to murder her husband - Simon, who's also Julien's boss, and plan to meet half an hour later. Julien's plan is very clever, calm, methodical and yet, he forgets one crucial element on his way out... He notices and goes to fix it, and...other people enter the story and intersects with his crime, for more, ill-fated series of events and even more crimes.

This is an excellent French Film-Noir, with a very good score from Miles Davis- who apparently composed and recorded it in a single session while he watched a screening, taking notes, and then improved with a Quartet of French and US musicians, over 6 hours. I only started liking jazz as a regular genre I'd listen to in the past few months, so having watched this film this week (on the 14th), I can actually appreciate this score more than I would have done before my musical horizons had widened to include jazz, which is cool.

For his very first directorial film, Louis Malle did an amazing job. Indeed, at the time, the narrative, cinematographic, and editing techniques were brand new - resulting in a near perfect artistic movie, full of dark humor, mix of close-up scenes, with many tight-angled ones showing actors faces, alternating with wider-angels for cityscapes, but also great night shooting - with excellent control of light and exposure, using lights from street lamps (far fewer than are present in modern city-light-pollution), and where Louis chose to use only natural light and no makeup for the lead actress, Jeanne Moreau, capturing her performance to its core. 

Acting is really good, both from Jeanne and her co-star Maurice Ronet (Julien Tavernier). His interpretation of a cold, collected and calculated murderer, who doesn't panic in tight situations, is really well portrayed. One gets that his character's backstory shows through his every action. 

The pacing is great, and editing/camera panning to introduce new characters are always fresh and unique in their flow. Really good job in changing perspectives to the newly shown characters. 

The director makes a cameo... but saying when exactly may be a spoiler. Instead, I'll indicate it is some time during the second half of the film. 

There are two main goofs, both involving photography - factual goofs of how photos are developed, ie in the dark (vs light in the film) and characters putting hands straight into the developer before the photos are ready to be taken out. 

This second goof is probably the result of the artistic aspect of the scene.

Highly recommended, entertaining and interesting, influential film-noir. 

Starring : Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin, 

Jean Wall, Iván Petrovich, Félix Marten, Lino Ventura, et al.

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Elevator... to the media...

We watched this movie on a DVD borrowed at the media library. It's a French edition, EAN 3607483207543, presenting it with a remastered version, b&w image in 1.37, 4/3 format - and with a Pal Speedup, lowering duration to 1h27.

Sound is mono 2.0 Dolby Digital, in original French language, with subtitles in French and in English (rare for French editions).

Bonuses ( Only in French) : 

'' L'espace d'une nuit" (in the space of one night) (31 minutes long). It's a documentary made by Pierre-Henri Gibert, with 12 people interviewed. I didn't watch, and not sure if it's even related to this movie, as their names aren't part of the cast nor crew. 

"Souvenirs du pianiste René Urteger sur l'enregistrement de la musique de Miles Davis" (15 minutes long), as hinted, the pianist's recollections of recording Miles Davis' music. 

Trailer

The Uk's dvd and bluray editions are sold under the title "lift to the scaffold" and those of the USA are under "elevator to the gallows".

In Italy, under "ascensore per il patibolo", Germany "Fahrstuhl Zum Schafott"... 

 I'll let you find the ones corresponding to you - and know that sometimes, the movie is included in box-sets, either for Louis Malle, or Jeanne Moreau, for ex.

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If you are in the UK, you have access to the movie via a free trial on Amazon Prime's BFI channel, or rent/buy straight from Prime. At that price, it's probably better to get the dvd, in my opinion.

You can (currently only rent/buy on USA's or France's Prime alike. 

It is included for free on amazon.de's  Prime... 

Here again, i'll let you find out for your own Prime, and/or Netflix and other streaming services, as these offers always vary. 

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PS, Miles Davis soundtrack is also available on cd, under those same titles.