Back to the Gallows

It’s raining in Paris, and it’s hard to say what is most seductive—starlet Jeanne Moreau’s come-hither French murmuring, the sensuous jazz of Miles Davis or the cité d’amour itself. This, Louis Malle’s 1958 film Elevator to the Gallows, was the birth of cool.

The director’s stunning debut gained new life this summer with a Lincoln Center retrospective on Malle’s career and a re-release by Rialto Pictures.

In Gallows, Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) is having an affair with his war profiteer boss’s wife Florence (Moreau). They decide to commit the perfect crime by murdering her husband and making it look like a suicide.

But this is a film noir, and things are never that simple. Soon Murphy’s Law kicks in and their plan goes horribly wrong, as Julien becomes trapped in the office building’s elevator after committing the deed. Before long, a juvenile delinquent and his girlfriend steal Julien’s car, Florence madly wanders the Parisian streets thinking Julien has abandoned her and the car thieves frame Julien for the murder of two tourists.

The plot, though deliciously ironic and laced with political insinuations, is clearly not the main attraction here. The movie is more notable as the forerunner to the then-burgeoning French New Wave. The movement in itself was sexy—a way of breaking all the rules of filmmaking that liberated the directors from the studio system. The Wave was a renegade way of moviemaking that utilized shooting on location rather than in studios, often done on a very low budget. In Gallows, a number of tracking shots follow Moreau through the Parisian moonlight, where a baby carriage was used as a makeshift dolly.

Viewing the restored, retranslated film in 2005 is surely a different experience than it was in 1958. It has been removed from its late-’50s context, but the film still resonates on a political level. Malle and his actors seduce the audience in this tale of retribution, morality and mistaken identity that is no less powerful now than it was 47 years ago.

Elevator to the Gallows began its run in New York City, and will be touring the country through September.