Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is a 1958 French crime film directed by Louis Malle. It was released as Elevator to the Gallows in the United States (aka Frantic) and as Lift to the Scaffold in the United Kingdom. It stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as criminal lovers whose perfect crime begins to unravel when Ronet is trapped in an elevator. The film is often associated by critics with the film noir style. According to recent studies, it introduces very peculiar narrative and editing techniques so that it can be considered a very important experience at the base of the Nouvelle Vague and the so-called New Modern Cinema.

The film presents also unique and completely new solutions in the history of cinema in the relationship between music and image. The score by Miles Davis has been described by jazz critic Phil Johnson as "the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear, and the model for sad-core music ever since. Hear it and weep."

Synopsis

Florence Carala (Moreau) and Julien Tavernier (Ronet) are illicit lovers who plan to kill Florence's husband, Simon Carala (Wall), a wealthy industrialist who is also Julien's boss. Julien, an ex-Foreign Legion parachutist officer veteran of Indochina and Algeria, climbs up the office block on a rope, shoots Carala in his office without being seen, and arranges the room to make it look like a suicide.

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