Blogorium Review: Elevator to the Gallows

I try to start the year off right when it comes to movies, and to date the Cap'n isn't positive that anything I've kicked off a new calendar with is going to top Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows. Call it French New Wave, call it Proto-Neo-Noir, call it what you like; the film is so well put together from top to bottom that I only regret not seeing it sooner.

Elevator to the Gallows - made in Paris, 1957 - is somewhere in the middle of the "birth" of Film Criticism in France and the death of what would be called Film Noir in the United States (it falls between 1955's Kiss Me Deadly and 1958's Touch of Evil*), and while Malle's fourth film shares stylistic similarities with what Godard and Truffaut would do in the 1960s, I'd go out on a limb and put Elevator to the Gallows firmly within the realm of Film Noir.

It meets all of the essential criteria: an anti-hero who, down on his luck after a distinguished war record, agrees to kill the husband of his mistress (who also happens to be his boss). Without spoiling anything, the murder goes as perfectly as one could expect, but the aftermath is symptomatic of a chaotic world, one where chance and bad coincidences send Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet)'s life down a far darker path.

All while Tavernier is trapped inside of an elevator with no power.

Rather than set up the illicit affair, Malle begins the film right before the deed is to be done, before we know who Tavernier and Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau) are. Information is cleverly doled out, as are clues that can only make Tavernier's life worse: a stolen car, mistaken identity, a spy camera, a gun not meant to be used, two German tourists running afoul of joyriders, and the angry Mrs. Carala, who assumes Tavernier left her behind, husband quite alive.

To say any more about the plot would undermine the work put into making Tavernier's existential nightmare together as carefully as it is, or the wonderful way that Elevator to the Gallows pays off each piece of information, which we know even as the characters struggle to reconcile truth from appearance. The film appears to have been shot using real locations (save, perhaps, for Carala's office and possibly the elevator). Miles Davis' improvised score sets the mood without ever being distracted, and Malle's camera captures Moreau without make up and with natural lighting, apparently for the first time. Moreau carries most of the film on her face, and while it was considered unflattering for her by some, I can't imagine a better way of Florence's world slowly unraveling.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. Even small reservations I have about certain character beats (like Julien's refusal to push forward with escape after a brush with disaster), the ending more than makes up for the necessity of some "dumb" decisions, and Elevator to the Gallows is as essential viewing as any Film Noir being taught today.


* IMDB has Elevator to the Gallows listed as 1958, but the title screen has a copyright date of 1957. As it was released in January of 1958, either is potentially accurate.