Actress Jeanne Moreau and actor Maurice Ronet
Actress Jeanne Moreau with the director Louis Malle
Miles Davis
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) B
aka: Frantic
France (91 mi) 1958 d: Louis Malle
Louis Malle, who got his start working as an assistant
director/research assistant to Robert Bresson on A
Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s'est échappé) (1956), was only 24 when
making his first feature, quite unusual at the time, adapting a novel by the
same name from Noël Calef, collaborating on the screenplay with French novelist
Roger Nimier (who received a backlash of condemnation for his right-wing political
leanings), yet inventing a role for Jeanne Moreau that was virtually
nonexistent in the novel, sketching a film that is at times spacious and overly
detached, yet hauntingly spare. Maximizing
an internalized perpective, making use of street locations, the film was shot
in black and white, creating a low-budget B-movie thriller that introduced
actress Jeanne Moreau to the world, making her an international sensation, though
she was by then a recognized theatrical star from Comédie Française and had
already made more than a dozen films, including Jacques Becker’s French
gangster picture with Jean Gabin, TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1954), that happens to
feature Moreau and Lino Ventura, both of whom reappear here, using Melville’s
cinematographer Henri Decaë, whose insistence to use natural light in night
shots from the illuminated store windows of the shops along the Champs-Élysées
was revelatory at the time, given a documentary sense of naturalism, anticipating
the breezy cinéma vérité style of the French New Wave. Most astonishingly, however, who could ignore
Malle’s collaboration with jazz legend Miles Davis in FRANTIC (1958), the
American film name when it was initially released in 1961, renamed ELEVATOR TO
THE GALLOWS (where the LP record under the original title remains a collector’s
item), composed in one all-night session, music that so beautifully captures
the aching sorrow of loneliness, sadness, anxiety, and regret, JEANNE
MOREAU IN "LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD" (MILES DAVIS THEME) YouTube
(2:15), improvisations perfectly in synch with Moreau’s long wandering nocturnal
walks down the Champs-Élysées (much of it shot from a baby carriage on a moving
dolly, including the reactions of ordinary people walking down the street
gaping at Moreau), a moody portrait of Paris in the late 50’s, with Moreau
feeling isolated and removed from the rest of the world, where her haunted face
becomes the drama, lost in her own thoughts, remaining a complex enigma
throughout the film, and a prelude for a similar sequence in Antonioni’s LA
NOTTE (1961). Etched with a predominate
theme of fatalism, the noirish-tinged atmosphere perfectly expresses the
continual moral failings of the characters portrayed, each with a go-for-broke
mentality, where you can be at the top of the world one day, but at the bottom the
next. Set to the romanticized strains of
an existential love story, our ill-fated lovers, Jeanne Moreau as Florence Carala
and Maurice Ronet as Julien Duvalier, are separated throughout, never once in a
single scene together, yet a lingering opening phone call suggests they can’t
live without the other, agreeing to meet in a half-hour, with hopes they will
be together always, where their love feels strained, perhaps even fantasized,
feeling more like an obsession, where its mere existence depends upon carrying
out the perfect crime, which viewers see in great detail right from the outset,
leading to murder, a crime of passion.
While Julien appears to get away scot free, he notices a traceable
clue he left behind, returning to the scene of the crime, but since it takes
place on a Sunday in an office building closed for the weekend once he
presumably left, he ends up getting stuck between floors in the elevator once
the power is shut off. Thinking this
would just take a minute, he leaves his car running on the street, quickly
taken advantage of by a pair of young adolescent lovers, small-time crook Louis
(Georges Poujouly) and florist Véronique (Yori Bertin), who swipe his vehicle
in an infamous joy ride (viewed by Florence, who sees the girl in the front
seat, assuming Julien chickened out on their plans), making a mad dash to a
euphoric freedom that comes with not having a care in the world, expressing
contempt for the bourgeoisie, a model for Godard’s young lovers in Breathless
(À Bout de Souffle) (1959), and a signature moment in the French New Wave,
which never really accepted Louis Malle, as he was not part of the Cahiers du Cinéma crowd that got their
start writing pointed criticism of established conventions, yet this film
helped pave the way, though it lacks the playfulness and buoyant spontaneous
ingenuity associated with the movement and is instead a picture of modern alienation
predating Antonioni, becoming a vacuous character study known for its lengthy
wordless sequences. Finding Julien’s gun
in the glove compartment, while wearing his trench coat and gloves, the couple
fantasizes themselves through his quixotic life, a former officer of the French
Foreign Legion and a veteran of the Indochina and Algerian wars, a man leading
a double life, respectable on the outside, but hired to do the dirty work for
his boss, a wealthy industrialist Simon Carala (Jean Wall) whose business is a
front for crooked arms dealing. Political
implications are embedded into the backstory, with Malle offering a
surprisingly prescient subtext centered upon France’s sullied colonial history
(Algeria wouldn’t gain independence for another 4 years), creating an allure of
subterfuge, espionage, back-room deals, and corruption. These kids can only imagine whose car they’ve
stolen, racing up and down the highway, thrilled with driving as fast as they
can, attempting to outrun a Mercedes-Benz
300 SL, but is dismally outclassed, following the car to an outlying motel where
they cause a minor fender bender, meeting a German couple on holiday, Horst
Bencker (Iván Petrovich) and his trophy wife Frieda (Elga Andersen), who invite
them over for drinks. Deciding to
register under the name Mr. and Mrs. Julien Tavernier, the lovebirds are
welcomed by the charming warmth of the older couple, where Horst has a bon
vivant, larger-than-life personality, like a worldly Charles Boyer, angrily
recalling a lack of champagne during his involvement with the conquering German
Occupation of Paris during the war (which is only 12 years removed), then emptying
several bottles of champagne while the women play with the tiny cigarette
lighter-sized camera, like a James Bond device, before retreating to their
separate rooms. Louis decides to leave
under cover of darkness, thinking he’ll swap cars, but is caught red-handed
trying to steal the Mercedes, resulting in an eruption of gunfire, with Louis
emptying the chamber, shooting both of his neighbors with Julien’s gun, quickly
retreating back to Paris. Feeling
doomed, sure to get caught, but not wanting to separate, they consume sleeping
pills in a suicide pact.
Meanwhile, Julien attempts to crawl his way out of the elevator,
but is unsuccessful, while Florence wanders the streets endlessly searching for
him, returning to the places they frequent, not really expecting to find him,
feeling lost and despondent, with the moody, introspective music of Miles Davis
playing through the interludes, eventually finding herself in a late hour bar
scene with drunken associates of Julien painting an ugly picture of his sordid early
career. The bar is raided by the vice
squad, suspects are rounded up and we confirm her actual identity from Lino
Ventura as Chérier, the Police Inspector, politely apologizing that she was
mistakenly included in the arrests, noting her husband is a distinguished
figure that regularly lunches with the Interior Minister, receiving special
treatment, in stark contrast from the others, as she is quickly released. When police discover the gunned down German
couple, all evidence points to Duvalier as the murderer, shot by his gun, with
his trenchcoat left behind in his car, making the front page of the morning
newspaper headlines. When police arrive
at the office building where he works, they turn the power to the elevator back
on, allowing Julien to discreetly exit without being seen, but he’s ravenous,
ordering coffee and croissants at a nearby café, where he’s quickly recognized
by the newspaper photos, with police arriving at the scene, bringing him in for
questioning, discovering Carala’s body in the same building, but it appears he
committed suicide, shot by his own gun.
Police, however, refuse to believe Julien’s explanation that he was
stuck in an elevator all night and charge him with murdering the Benckers, a
crime he did not commit, yet he’s guilty of killing someone else in a film filled
with mistaken identities and misunderstandings.
It’s the presence of Lino Ventura that adds weight to these scenes, as
he’s a cool and calm figure, always measured and circumspect, forever
associated with Melville, and the centerpiece of Army
of Shadows (L’Armée des ombres) (1969).
His mannered professionalism contrasts with the impulsive spontaneous
combustion of the other tragic figures, weighing carefully what witnesses
actually said, following leads and examining the evidence, finding it curious
that both Mrs. Carala and Mr. Duvalier both contended they barely knew the
other, yet both spend eventful nights that he has to dutifully deconstruct,
finding them at the center of the crime, though both share the same alibi of
only a casual acquaintance. Turning into
a police procedural, inspired by Hitchcock-like themes and precise execution, including
the long hours Julien spends alone in silence struggling to escape captivity
(mirroring Moreau’s long and captivatingly silent walk), yet also the dimly
lit, uninterrupted interrogation scene that is brilliantly choreographed, a
shadow play of darkness and light, with the two cops circling in and out of the
surrounding darkness, elevated by the powerful presence of Lino Ventura, the
finale is emphatically conclusive, distinguished more by mood than dialogue,
where the Miles Davis music literally transforms the film, with the bottom
dropping out of this incriminating love affair, turning a love story into a
crime thriller filled with calamitous implications.
Elevator To The Gallows -
video dailymotion entire film in French, no subtitles, YouTube
(1:31:30)
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