Lift to the Scaffold
Elevator to the Gallows
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud
Director ~ Louis Malle
Writers ~ Roger Nimier, Louis Malle’ Noël Calef
1958, France
Stars ~ Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly
I can’t quite recall if it was Louis Malles’ ‘Lift to the Scaffold’ or his devastating ‘Au Revoir les Enfants’ that I saw first. They were featured on some World Cinema season on Channel 4 or BBC2 and they were certainly the first French films that I recall seeing. I mean, I had probably seen something badly dubbed Europudding during childhood, but nothing that I remember. They were quite the revelation. Amazon synopsises the film as a s a “French black comedy in which a crime of passion goes horribly wrong when the killer gets trapped in a lift.” Although a succinct summary, I’m not sure about the “black comedy” part, although there’s definite incremental amusement in seeing the randomness of fate work on everyone. Although adapted from Noël Calef’s novel, it really isn’t so much the crime plot that you’ll come away with from ‘Lift to the Scaffold’, but Jeanne Moreau wandering aimlessly through the night streets of the city in a particularly Gallic romantic delirium, murmuring and thinking “Je’taime… Je’taime…” Surely many parodies of French films start here – all that posing and smoking – but the jazz-noir atmosphere is a triumph of mood and cool posture. Here is a film credited with starting the French New Wave and creating a new syntax between naturalism and score. However, one can argue that Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Bob le Flambeur’ (1956) pre-dates ‘Ascenseur’ in intent. If American noir thrillers were distinguished by being tightly wound and staged, the loose feel Malle offered was more akin to the improvised existential jazz and loneliness of Miles Davis’s trumpet. It is about accidents, incidentals and chaos theory usurping the clockwork ingenuity of the thriller anti-heroes.
The influence of Malle’s prior documentary work can be clearly seen in this low-budget streetwise grab for verisimilitude. Its influence can be seen on Cassavetes to Jarmusch, for example, not just the French New Wave. The unforgettable tracking shots of Moreau walking the city were made using a baby carriage and natural streetlight. It was ‘Lift to the Scaffold’ that truly put her on the map, although Moreau was already an established working actor; Malle cast her after her theatre performance on ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’. Her character was not key to the book, but she was brought in and bolstered to give more name draw appeal. An overheated interior, cold bitch exterior, sultry ice maiden Moreau drags the whole narrative along without make-up: filimng a star without make-up was in fact one of the appeals of the role for Moreau.
In fact, Davis’s contribution is mostly assigned to Moreau’s nocturnal search for her lover: it is the voice of her loneliness and longing. Reported by Simon Mas,
“On 4 December 1957 at 10 p.m., Davis and his band went to the Le Poste Parisien studios to record the score. The band drank together for an hour, played for four hours, then took two hours of editing, and left the studio by 5 a.m. the next day having finished the film score.”
The band may slip in later to provide some notation to the action, but without trumpet: it’s the raw, melancholic wail of Davis’s trumpet that is unforgettable.
The plot is split into three parallel narratives, even genres: the romantic-delirious woman; the foolhardy wildcard young lovers; the murderer stuck in the lift. It is a pleasure to watch them leisurely wander around and come together, bookended by Moreau’s romantic euphoria for a most satisfactory conclusion. There are always excellent little details to keep fascination with the deliberate pace almost distracting to how tightly wound the plot is. Disgust and outrage at the Algerian war underlies a lot of background, not just infidelity and romantic fantasy, giving proceedings political edge. It is all directed with flare and enough smarts even if it is Moreau and Davis’s digressions that linger.
Moreau talks of cinema as “a modern way of communicating with the world”, and “the mirror of the world”, and “truer than the truth”. The intention of reaching for more can be found in ‘Lift to the Scaffold’s mood taken from the streets, not reliant on make-up and full filmmaking artifice. But ultimately ‘Lift to the Scaffold’ remains a very entertaining thriller, taking sly digs at its characters, with a genre-instigating mood.
