Lift to the Scaffold

 

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.

Soul

Soul

Directors - Pete Doctor & Kemp Powers

Story – Pete Doctor, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers

2022, USA

Stars – Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton

 

Life is worth living and all that jazz.

 

Of course, you might have to die first to reflect on your lost chances, et cetera. This is Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a loser jazz musician who dies in an accident just as he gets his big chance. Or maybe you are a potential soul called 22 (Tina Fey) and are scared to live, and you hide this behind a smartass attitude and an annoying white middle-aged woman’s voice? As Joe is our way in, and this is about a life lived in lost chances, disapproval and regret, there’s quite a mature feel going in. Pixar demonstrates a deceptively gentle mastery of the family-friendly animation as there’s a lightness of touch accessible to all. The animation is excellent – look at that hair and fur! – and there are a lot of fun little gags in the background and in passing (the impressionable pre-life souls for example). It’s rich, amusing, addressing big themes, etc.

 

Then 22 body-swaps with Joe and he’s in the cat. Probably not enough cat-specific gags, but that’s not what causes a dip in investment. The issue is this: it was originally meant to be 22’s story but it became Joe’s and then got shared. But when 22 goes on a kind of teaching Joe how to live when in his body, it seems a betrayal of Joe’s agency and seems unwarranted. He doesn’t feel like the incompetent loser his mother says; he’s just following his muse and that’s a rewarding life in itself. Are we really to think that Joe wouldn’t convince his pupil to continue playing her instrument, that only 22’s possession and childishness achieved this? And what about how the people in the barber are all enraptured at 22-as-Joe’s childish profundities? There is the sense that Joe is being dumped on needlessly and incorrectly.

 

Something just doesn’t fit quite right – the result of the original 22-dominated script and trying to make that still work even though Joe stepped forward. And that’s before we get to the issue that, however androgynous the soul fleetingly claims to be, 22 has a sassy white middle-aged woman’s voice that defines the entity, and that’s what we sense when “she” appropriates Joe’s black character and life and teaches him life-lessons. It’s always Tina Fey’s voice and it never varies, although it could and probably should. Hey, her naiveté even wins over his mother. All the fine work establishing Joe’s relatable life-challenges and building him into someone to like, a maturity and flaws to root for, and it all plays second-fiddle to one of those animated sassy-troll conceits that dominate contemporary franchises. As I watched, I had the sneaky suspicion that Joe’s character was being betrayed and it was Robert Daniels’ writing that shone a light for me on why that might be. 

But, the jazzy feel is so accomplished that not even the otherworldliness overturns it: it’s likely the street scenes and the barbers that will stay with you. There’s an underlay of melancholy that sympathises with adult viewers’ life disappointments while at the same time offering its young audience the advice to seize your chances and yet appreciate what you have. It may stumble, but in its approach to this from both ends of life-experience shows the narrative ambition Pixar is often heralded for. ‘Soul’ is beautifully made, its exploration of The Meaning Of Life is standard, and one can only applaud its emphasis on art enriching a life and soul

 

Jazz and all that life, etc.