Ascenseur pour l'echafaud

Jeanne Moreau

Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) is a crisp and sleek thriller released in 1958. The film was based on an Série noir novel by Noël Calef published in 1956. Jeanne Moreau stars as Florence Carala, the unfaithful wife of a munitions magnate played by Jean Wall. Florence, we immediately discern, is involved in an affair with a subordinate of her husband named Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet), a former soldier in the French Foreign Legion. We first see the lovers talking to each other on the phone, expressing their love for one another and going over the last few details before Julien attempts to rub out Florence's husband. Malle frames Moreau in enormous close-ups here, heralding her arrival in a role that helped make her a major film star after a decade of playing bar girls in B pictures; albeit, usually superbly.

I first saw this film nearly fifty years ago through the snow on my television on a broadcast from Washington D.C. 's WETA. Viewing the Criterion Collection's disc gave me a greater appreciation for the high contrast black and white cinematography of Henri Decaë, but my overall impression of the film remained the same. The film is effective when it focuses on Tavernier and his somewhat unbelievable plight after he manages to get stuck in an elevator while trying to escape from the site of the murder. Even better are the scenes following Florence as she prowls the streets of Paris searching for her lover. Moreau's face, like Garbo's at the end of Queen Christina, becomes a mask that both hides and projects a myriad of conflicting feelings. Malle's tracking shot of Moreau striding down a boulevard, shot apparently by Decaë using a pram, cemented her as a cinematic icon.

What still didn't work for me was Malle's handling of the two beatniks in love who steal Tavernier's car and go on a spree that ends with murder. Part of this is due to the actors. Malle was tentative at this point in his handling of his players, so that those actors who needed the least guidance (Moreau, Wall, and Lino Ventura as a homicide chief) fare best. One thing I can better glean from this viewing was the effects of Malle's influences on this picture. Malle confessed that the film was an amalgam of Bresson and Hitchcock. He had been an assistant to Bresson on that master's A Man Escaped and that picture informs Ascenseur's interiority: especially Florence's monologues and the trapped Tavernier. The frisson of excitement in the film owes much to the cross-cutting utilized by Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train. What the film lacks is the lovers on the run fervor of Ray in They Live By Night and Rebel Without A Cause.

And that leads me to the question of Louis Malle's artistic personality. Ultimately, it was more malleable than forceful. His best films display a lively intelligence and some sensuality, but lack the flair or intellectual rigor of great filmmakers. I like Ascenseur, The Fire Within, Atlantic City and a few others, but the impression they leave strikes me as the work of a nice man, but not an artist who wants to break ground. His disasters were numerous: Zazie dans le Métro, A Very Private Affair, Black Moon, Crackers. I warn all semi-interested parties to avoid these pictures. They are among the worst films of anyone considered a major director