Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958)
Directed by Louis Malle

Film Review

It is a moot point as to which film marks the beginning of the French New Wave, but a likely contender is Louis Malle's stylish suspense-thriller Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (a.k.a. Lift to the Scaffold). Malle was keen to dissociate himself from the Nouvelle Vague (which, for him, consisted of the former critics on the film review paper Les Cahiers du cinéma) but there is no doubt that his early films, which include Les Amants (1959) and Le Feu follet (1963), exhibit a strong aesthetic connection with those being turned out at the same time by his bona fide New Wave contemporaries, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, et al.  Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is the first film that Malle made as a solo film director, but prior to this he had co-directed another groundbreaking film with the oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Le Monde du silence (1956).  This earlier film had been the surprise winner of the Palme d'or at Cannes in 1956, making Malle the youngest film director ever to receive the award (at the age of 23).

After serving his apprenticeship with Cousteau, Malle offered his services as an assistant to another cultural giant, Robert Bresson.  The experience that Malle gained by working with Bresson on Un condamné à mort s'est echappé (1956) was to prove invaluable and accounts for the unmistakable Bressonian patina to his early films (in particular Le Feu follet).  Ascenseur pour l'échafaud was made for the same company that had produced Un condamné à mort s'est echappé, Nouvelles Éditions de Films - the company that Malle would subsequently buy to produce his own films.  The man who played the lead character in Bresson's jail-break film, François Leterrier, ended up as Malle's assistant on two of his films (Ascenseur and Les Amants), before becoming a film director in his own right.

The other important influence on Malle at this stage in his career was the English film director Alfred Hitchcock.  Ascenseur pour l'échafaud may have been adapted from a French pulp fiction novel (by Noël Calef) but it abounds with Hitchcockian themes and motifs and is the closest thing in French cinema to a Hitchcock-style suspense thriller.  The sequences in which the main male character, Julien, attempts to escape from the titular lift are a remarkably effective fusion of Bressonian and Hitchcockian technique, whilst the central plot idea of a man being inculpated for the wrong crime and the use of doubles (the ironic cross-linking of the two main male characters) are pure Hitchcock.

It is interesting to compare Ascenseur pour l'échafaud with two similar films from the 'official strand' of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (1960) and François Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste (1961).  Each of these three films is a far from subtle homage to American film noir and each has a crafty modernist slant.  Yet whereas Godard and Truffaut are both consciously attempting to subvert the pulp fiction genre, Malle adheres respectfully to its conventions, and this is, in essence, what differentiates Malle from his New Wave contemporaries.  Godard and company had made it their mission to reinvent cinema; Malle was happy to build on what had gone before.  Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is not too dissimilar to most French policiers of the 1950s and is a natural progression from Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) (both films feature Lino Ventura, an actor closely associated with the genre).  There are three things which set Ascenseur pour l'échafaud apart from other French crime films of this time: Henri Decaë's mesmerising black-and-white photography, a stand-out performance from Jeanne Moreau, and a revolutionary improvised score from the legendary jazz musician Miles Davis.

If there is one person who deserves to be credited for creating the distinctive look of the early films of the French New Wave that person is assuredly Henri Decaë, one of France's greatest cinematographers. Decaë started his career by working for Jean-Pierre Melville on Le Silence de la mer (1949), a film noted for its radically new approach to lighting.  Decaë's preference for using natural lighting wherever possible would prove to be a great asset on his films for François Truffaut (Les 400 coups) and Claude Chabrol (Le Beau Serge) - not only did it allow the films to be shot more quickly but it also brought a heightened reality.  Decaë's approach had a strong influence on another key cinematographer of the French New Wave, Raoul Coutard.  Decaë's work on Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is some of his finest and contributes much to the aching sense of melancholia and futility that pervades the film, powerfully expressing the feelings of the four protagonists as their hopes and dreams are brutally smashed to pieces by coincidence and chance.

It is impossible to watch Ascenseur pour l'échafaud without being deeply troubled and captivated by Jeanne Moreau's hauntingly sultry presence.  This is the film that established Moreau as France's leading actress and gave her the international profile she deserved.  She had by this time appeared in twenty films, few of which were seen outside France.  Despite some high-profile roles - she starred opposite Fernandel in Meurtres (1950) and Jean Gabin in Gas-Oil (1955) - Jeanne Moreau hadn't yet been given the chance to fulfil her potential.  The turning point in her career came when she played the part of Maggie in Peter Brook's Paris stage production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  It was on the strength of this performance that Malle gave her the lead role in Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, the role that was soon to make her an icon of the French New Wave.  Whilst not a conventional beauty, Jeanne Moreau has an irresistible siren-like quality about her, which was first revealed here, through Henri Decaë's brutal yet sensual lighting of her face (most notably in the huge, hypnotic close-ups that open and close the film).

The film's third crucial element is the highly innovative score provided by Miles Davis and his jazz quintet.  It so happened that whilst Malle was making the film, Davis was on tour in Paris.  On impulse, Malle invited Davis and his group to improvise a score for the film.  In the course of one evening, Miles Davis gave French cinema one if its most memorable and evocative film scores, the highlight being the unforgettable sequence in which Moreau is seen walking alone in the rain down the Champs-Elysées.  Davis's trumpet playing gives the sequence such an unbearable sense of loss that the spectator is totally immersed in Moreau's feeling of abandonment as she walks unseeingly into the night, crushed and hopelessly alone.

Another inspired touch was the casting of Maurice Ronet as Moreau's luckless lover Julien.  Like Moreau, Ronet was an established screen actor who had yet to prove his mettle.  Malle gave him that opportunity in two important roles that were to make him a star: Julien in Ascenseur pour l'échafaud and the suicidal writer in Le Feu follet (by far his greatest role).  In both of these films, Ronet is perfectly cast as the disconnected loner who, try as he might, just cannot get to grips with life and is ultimately overwhelmed by his failure.  Ronet's Julien makes an exquisite counterpoint to the young tearaway Louis (Georges Poujouly) who steals his car, his identity and ultimately his reason for living.  Julien and Louis represent two generations with completely different moral outlooks, and yet they seem to have so much in common.

Through his experience of combat in Indochina, Julien has had to grow up fast and has a cold, cynical view of life.  He can doubtless find a moral justification for murdering his lover's husband - he is, after all, an arms trader with a highly dubious past.  Louis, by contrast, has been spared such a brutalising history and appears to be no more than a boy.  If Julien's morality is flawed, Louis's is non-existent.  Whereas Julien's crime is a carefully planned execution, Louis's is a senseless act of thuggery.  The courts will show Julien leniency and he will get off with a ten year stretch in prison; Louis stands a good chance of being guillotined, despite his tender age.  Julien and Louis are different in so many ways, yet they represent the same thing: a generation of young men living in the shadow of France's far from glorious recent past, whose lives will be indelibly marked by their country's painful process of decolonisation.

A critical and commercial success, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud won Louis Malle the Louis-Delluc Prize in 1957 and established him as one of France's most promising filmmakers, at the age of 26.  Having worked with Malle a second time on Les Amants (a highly controversial film on account of its daring love scenes), Jeanne Moreau scored another triumph as Catherine in Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962), by which time the French New Wave had well and truly arrived.  The slickest and most involving French thriller of the decade, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud remains one of Louis Malle's most highly regarded films - not just a compelling policier but also a sombre meditation on the darker realities of contemporary France, in particular the indirect consequences of the country's seemingly interminable colonial wars, the scars of which endure to this day.

Film Synopsis

Julien Tavernier and Florence Carala are passionately in love with one another, but there is an obstacle to their future happiness: Florence's husband Simon, a wealthy industrialist.  A former paratrooper, Julien conceives and executes the perfect murder, but after shooting Carala dead he manages to get himself trapped in the lift to his office.  When Julien fails to keep their appointment, Florence roams around Paris, wondering what has become of her lover.  She captures a glimpse of his car and is surprised to see a young woman in the passenger seat.  In fact Julien's car has just been stolen by a pair of joyriding adolescents, Louis and his girlfriend Véronique.  These two check into a motel, where they make the acquaintance of a pair of German tourists.  Louis shoots the tourists dead, with the gun that Julien previously used to kill Carala, and flees with his girlfriend.  Véronique convinces Louis that they must commit suicide as they are certain to be arrested.  No sooner has Julien escaped from the lift than he is picked up by the police, charged with a crime he did not commit...