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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0715515017725
Format: Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 25, 2006
Running Time: 92 minutes
Sales Rank: 13113
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1957
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Editorial Review:
Description:
In this, his debut feature film, director Louis Malle captures the hidden beauty of Jeanne Moreau, the brilliant camerawork of Henri Decaë, and the musical force of Miles Davis in a tightly constructed film noir experience that launched his and Moreau’s careers.
Amazon.com:
Elevator to the Gallows is many things: A tight, delicious crime thriller; the debut of director Louis Malle (Zazie dans le metro, Atlantic City, Au Revoir, Les Enfants, and many more works of subtle genius); a movie with perhaps the greatest jazz soundtrack of all time, created improvisationally by trumpeter Miles Davis; but above all, Elevator to the Gallows is the blooming of Jeanne Moreau to the status of true movie star, launching her on a career that included Jules & Jim, La notte, and La Femme Nikita. After killing his lover's husband, Julien (Maurice Ronet, Purple Noon) gets trapped in an elevator, forcing him to miss his rendezvous with Florence (Moreau) and allowing his car to be stolen by a joy-riding young couple. From there, the movie splits into three directions: Julien's efforts to escape; Florence wandering the streets, trying not to believe that Julien has abandoned her; and the car thieves, who get caught up in a murder of their own. The movie skillfully fuses Hitchcockian suspense with intimate psychodrama. As she stalks through the night, Moreau is a vision of tortured heartbreak, her woeful eyes and lush, sensuous lips illuminated by neon signs and baleful streetlamps. This is pure cinematic pleasure, visual beauty fused with taut, edge-of-your-seat storytelling.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Fifties-Style French Film Noir
Fete of Death
"Elevator to the Gallows" is a deliberately paced outstanding example of fifties-style French film noir. Accompanied by a desolate tenor sax in the score, this film does not have the jackhammer drive and breathtaking momentum of contemporary thrillers. What it lacks in nail-biting suspense, however, it more than compensates for with character and story line.
A motley collection of well-limned intriguing characters become ensnared in an intricate web of malevolence that is spun by an unhappy, alienated woman who decides to use her lover as a cat's-paw to do away with her wealthy corporate husband.
In the process, two joyriding teenagers are caught in the web after they rob the murderer's expensive car while he is stuck in the company elevator during his botched attempt to flee from the scene of his recently perpetrated crime. Trapped by circumstances beyond his control and desperate to escape, like all typical film-noir antiheroes, he can do nothing--no matter how hard he struggles--but meet his miserable fate when the elevator finally starts up again.
If you like Jean-Pierre Melville noir films like "Le Samourai," you should savor watching the various characters of "Elevator" succumb to their fates.
--Bryan Cassiday, author of "Fete of Death"
Rating: - Miles & Moreau: What a Ride!
The pristine images, the hypnotic faces and that great score make for a sensational 50's noir that's as coolly fascinating as it is thoroughly entertaining. I simply can't image anyone not enjoying this movie.
Rating:  - A decent Twilight Zone Episode in proto-New Wave style
I refer to the Twilight Zone, not because there are any fantastical elements in "Elevator to the Gallows," but because every shot, indeed every word of dialogue is for the specific purpose of tying all the loose strings of a mean-spirited little fable into a neatly knotted bow in the final scene. Not one of the major roles as written displays any slightest hint of character beyond that demanded by the plot.
If you question that assertion, then explain why the two German characters behave as they do. And what rationale does the self-destructive young street lout, car thief, lunatic driver, incompetent liar and homicidal jerk have for any of his decisions during the whole length of the film, if it is not simply a means to allow the plot to progress?
Returning to The Twilight Zone connection, "Elevator to the Gallows" attains feature length, running about an hour and a half, but there are long sequences that could be greatly shortened, recast into just a couple of shots while still hitting every plot point. This would reduce the whole to something that could easily be accommodated in a network time slot.
The whole sequence with the Germans is one of them. Hollywood directors of the 1940s would have encompassed it all in just a few moments by using a couple of wipe cuts. The single most famous scene in the movie, Jeanne Moreau fruitlessly seeking her lover throughout Paris for the length of a night, is at bottom no more than simple padding. The scene does ... Read More
Rating: - Elevator to the Gallows
An auspicious debut for Malle, just 25 when "Gallows" opened, this superb thriller pairs a noirish plot involving two murderous couples with a lurid, claustrophobic atmosphere. Julien's efforts to escape the crime scene are intercut with shots of the car thieves's dark exploits and Florence's aimless walks along the Champs-Elysées looking for Julien--a bold technique, in that the film's protagonists remain isolated for most of the picture. Moreau, who cemented her career on the strength of this performance, is a vision of distressed beauty, woefully illuminated by the glare of nighttime Paris. Lean direction, vivid camerawork, and a moody, soul-stirring jazz soundtrack by Miles Davis further emphasize the air of grim fatalism. Edgy and twisted, these "Gallows" will leave you hanging--and you'll love it.
Rating: - Top floor film noir from one of the greats
This was Louis Malle's first. Previously he had worked with Jacques Cousteau on "The Silent World" (interestingly enough) and now tried his hand at film noir. Several things fell into place to make this debut a memorable one.
First, he was able to get Jeanne Moreau to play Florence Carala. She had previously been mostly a stage and B-movie player who was obviously very talented, but as Malle put it, not considered really photogenic. What she becomes after her performance here is a premier star of the French cinema partially because of the way she is photographed, and partly because she was so perfectly suited to the character, which I suspect she helped to create. She does a lot silently or with just a few words in the scenes where she walks the streets of Paris, frantic because her lover and fellow murder conspirator, Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) has stood her up and she cannot understand what has happened.
Second, Malle's collaboration with screenwriter and novelist Roger Nimier adapting a roman thriller by Noel Calef to the screen turned out to be exactly right for the material, especially because they used mostly just the plot of the novel and expanded Moreau's role.
The third factor was the fortuitous jazz score by Miles Davis. Davis happened to be in Paris as the movie was being edited and Malle was able to talk him into doing a trumpet-centered original score, said to have been composed on the fly late one night and early the next morning as Moreau ... Read More
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