Elevator to the Gallows
Alternate title(s):
Foreign Title: Ascenseur pour l’échafaud
Date: January 01, 1958 to December 31, 1958
Dates Note: 1958
Country of Origin:
France
Place of Origin: France
Languages:
French
,
German
Color: B&W
Silent: No
Based On: the novel by Noël Calef
Additional Info:
Curator Notes
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2019Description:
We close out 2019 with Louis Malle’s first feature, an elegant, Hitchcockian thriller. Maurice Ronet and Jeanne Moreau star as an ex-paratrooper and his lover whose plot to murder her husband goes awry. Adroitly bringing in the wider issues of the Indochina war, industry, and runaway machinery, Malle creates a milieu for his frantic, frustrated lovers (who never once share screen space), while an improvised score by Miles Davis becomes an abstraction of their punctuated existence. “A terrific thriller” (Caryn James, New York Times), and a perfect companion piece to Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, also screening this month.
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2016Description:
Louis Malle’s first feature is an elegant, Hitchcockian thriller. Maurice Ronet and Jeanne Moreau star as an ex-paratrooper and his lover whose plot to murder her husband goes awry: Ronet becomes trapped in an elevator, his escape car is stolen by two teenagers on a spree that itself ends in murder, and Moreau is left to search Paris for news of her missing man. Adroitly bringing in the wider issues of the Indochina war, industry, and runaway machinery, Malle creates a milieu for his frantic, frustrated lovers (who never once share screen space) while an improvised score by Miles Davis becomes an abstraction of their punctuated existence.
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