Elevator To The Gallows (1958)

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (1958)

Dir: Louis Malle

I don’t know how exactly it happened, but I can only imagine that when Miles Davis was paid to come into a French film studio and create a score. He let his ideas of love and sex in the city of lights swirl in his head. Because when he lets those first few bursts of trumpet hit the air, we are forever changed. At once they feel sexual but layered between something ominous. This would be the palette that Malle’s film would follow. Miles Davis’ score is a thing of profound beauty, and it was improvised on set with the film.

Years later, academics would fight over the placement of Elevator to the Gallows. Does it fit within the French New Wave movement? It’s a precursor to Breathless (1960). And you can see Godard’s influence in the young and naive couple that populates Elevator. Does it break the rules of contemporary film noir or filmmaking itself? No, it just masters those rules. Malle’s Elevator was his first narrative film, and it was from here that he ascended to greatness. But even before his first film Malle studied at the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris, worked as an assistant to Robert Bresson, and co-directed a documentary with Jacques-Yves Cousteau. As varied as his early experience was, it catered to a filmography of an auteur always willing to take large risks. And because of his technical prowess, he always won.

Seeing Elevator To The Gallows on a 35mm print was, as my wife Katie said, “a religious experience.” She said this as we sat in what we refer to as our church, The Music Box theatre in Chicago. The way Miles Davis echoed through the hall, the beaten-up image that has traveled over five decades before ending up before our eyes, and a socially-distanced lot of cinema lovers all awe-struck before those beautiful shadows on a cave wall… a religious experience indeed.