|
|
|
 |
|
|
WD_408/ 2007
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 5 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 31.1 x 21.4 | | Size (mm): | 790 x 544 | | Catalog #: | WD_0408 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
ASCENSEUR POUR L' ECHAFAUD (1957)
Fiche technique
Film français
Date de sortie: 29 janvier 1958
Genre: La faute à pas de chance
Durée: 1h30
Scénario: Roger Nimier et Louis Malle
D’après le roman de Noël Calef
Musique: Miles Davis
Directeur de la photographie: Henri Decae
Avec Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Lino Ventura, Yori Bertin, Jean Wall, Charles Denner, Hubert Deschamps, Ivan Petrovich, Felix Marten…
-cinecritiques.free.fr/site/index.php?2006/10/18/
963-ascenseur-pour-lechafaud-1957-louis-malle
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud -
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is a 1958 French film directed by Louis Malle. It was released as Elevator to the Gallows in the USA and as Lift to the Scaffold in the UK. It stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as criminal lovers whose perfect crime begins to unravel when Ronet is trapped in an elevator. The film is often associated by critics with the film noir style.[citation needed]
The score by Miles Davis has been described by jazz critic Phil Johnson as "the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear, and the model for sad-core music ever since. Hear it and weep."[1]
Synopsis:
The central characters, a pair of lovers, plan the perfect crime - the murder of the woman's husband, Simon Carala. The murderer, Julien Tavernier, abseils up the office block to kill the husband in his office without being seen, but on going to his car, realizes that he has left the rope dangling outside the building. Leaving his expensive car unlocked and with the keys in the ignition, he returns to remove the evidence, but in doing so becomes trapped in the lift as the building closes down for the weekend. In the meantime, the car is stolen by a young couple, Louis and Veronique. They stay overnight with a German couple at a motel. When Louis attempts to steal their luxury car, he is caught out and shoots them with Julien's handgun that he found in the car. While the police still consider Carala's death a suicide, Julien is charged with the killing of the Germans, and his lift-related alibi is not believed. Much of the suspense comes from Julien's attempt to escape from the lift. Although he succeeds, the murder plot is eventually discovered through photographs taken by the young couple with the camera they find in his car.
References:
1. ^ Phil Johnson, "Discs: Jazz—Miles Davis/Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Fontana)," Independent on Sunday, March 14, 2004.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_to_the_Gallows
Essays - "Louis Malle on the Ground Floor" by Terrence Rafferty.
François Truffaut once wrote, “All of Louis Malle, all his good qualities and faults, was in Elevator to the Gallows”—a statement that, even given French film criticism’s traditionally high tolerance for the counterintuitive, pretty unambiguously qualifies as, well, false. What’s most striking about Elevator to the Gallows, in fact, is that Malle, having made this almost insolently proficient Série noire thriller, never went anywhere near the genre again, and for the rest of his career rarely displayed much interest in the sort of tightly controlled visual and narrative style he uses with such mastery here. It would be more accurate, I think, to say that “all of Louis Malle” is all that is not in Elevator to the Gallows—or, for that matter, in any individual Malle movie—but is, rather, what lies in the spaces between his films, in the habit of renunciation that required him, it seems, to turn his back immediately on whatever he had just accomplished.
To put it another way: Malle spent the four decades of his filmmaking life saying, “Been there, done that,” over and over again, searching constantly for somewhere he hadn’t been and something he hadn’t done. From the chilly elegance of Elevator to the Gallows, in 1957, he moved quickly to the humid romanticism of The Lovers (1958) and then to the frenetic zaniness of Zazie dans le métro (1960). Next came A Very Private Affair, in 1962, a caustic film à clef about and with Brigitte Bardot, which was followed immediately by the melancholic, Fitzgerald-like The Fire Within (1963), the movie that was the occasion of Truffaut’s rather desperate attempt to fit the director’s already bewilderingly diverse body of work into an off-the-rack auteurist suit.
The best way to look at Elevator to the Gallows, it seems to me, is as an anomaly—as the first in the long series of anomalies that was Louis Malle’s career. The uniqueness of Elevator to the Gallows is that it is the only Malle film designed purely as a genre exercise, the only one in which execution seems more important to him than process. He was all of twenty-five when the movie came out, and it’s clear that he was testing himself, the way a young poet might flex his or her muscles with a conventional form like the sonnet. The screenplay, adapted by Malle and Roger Nimier from an undistinguished novel by Noël Calef, is a fairly straightforward murder-gone-wrong story: more elaborate than most, perhaps, but still characterized by the sort of swiftness and brutal linearity that thriller audiences expect.
An adulterous couple, Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau) and Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet), kill her husband (Jean Wall), a middle-aged grand-fromage businessman, and do not get away with it, because, as is so often the case in thrillers, fate is seriously not on their side. The murder, which takes place in the first few minutes of the film, has obviously been lovingly planned, and Julien, who works for the inconvenient husband in a high-rise Paris office building, does the deed briskly, just before quitting time. But he forgets a potentially incriminating piece of evidence—sacrebleu!—and before he can retrieve it gets himself trapped in the elevator, in the now utterly deserted building. As if this were not misfortune enough, his getaway car, a snazzy little convertible, is stolen by a couple of brainless kids named Véronique (Yori Bertin) and Louis (Georges Poujouly), who go joyriding in the country, eventually stopping at a hilariously futuristic motel, where they register as Mr. and Mrs. Julien Tavernier and do something very, very criminal. Florence and Julien must have been born under the same sign as Albert King: if it wasn’t for bad luck, they wouldn’t have no luck at all.
Florence, waiting for word from her lover, is quietly frantic. (Frantic was, in fact, what the film was called for its first American release, in 1961.) She wanders the lamp-lit streets of Paris searching for him, often to the accompaniment of the sinuous, evocative jazz of Miles Davis, who, playing with a group that included the brilliant bop drummer Kenny Clarke and three Frenchmen picked up on the fly, recorded the score in a single session. (That impromptu session has since acquired a certain historic significance as an early instance of Davis’s interest in the modal approach to jazz composition—the approach that culminated, less than two years later, in the classic album Kind of Blue.) These nighttime sequences, voluptuously photographed by Henri Decaë, are the movie’s most original and memorable passages, the moments at which you can feel, faintly but unmistakably, the stirrings of something young and fresh straining at the boundaries of the thriller form, like a baby kicking in the womb.
The new wave doesn’t quite get born in Elevator to the Gallows, but it’s clearly in the late term here, more than ready to emerge. You can sense it in Decaë’s remarkably daring natural-light cinematography (which he would soon be putting to good use for Truffaut and Claude Chabrol as well); in the funky ebullience of young bit players like Jean-Claude Brialy and Charles Denner, both destined to become new wave luminaries; and, most of all, in the unleashing of Jeanne Moreau, who, nearing thirty, was a busy actress but never quite a star until Malle turned her loose in the nocturnal city and did justice, for the first time, to that amazing, imperious, gravelly sexy walk of hers—which would, over the next couple of decades, come to seem the defining movement of the new wave, the embodied rhythm of freedom.
Malle later said of Elevator to the Gallows, “I showed a Paris not of the future but at least a modern city, a world already dehumanized,” a statement that, I think, serves as a useful description of the film itself: not of the future but at least modern. Some of that modernity is on the surface—in the “automated” paraphernalia of the office and the motel, in the glass-and-concrete boxiness of the Carala building, in the sleekness of Julien’s sports car and suit. What’s most deeply modern about the film, though, is an undertone of war weariness and general cynicism, which is most evident in the character of Julien, a veteran of France’s recent wars in Indochina and Algeria. Ronet, who doesn’t have much dialogue, is the very picture of postcolonial tristesse: all haunted eyes and uselessly correct bearing. (He would employ these same resources, and several more, in his indelible portrayal of a suicide in The Fire Within.) And it’s probably not an accident that Malle gave the role of the anomic punk Louis to Poujouly, a young actor best known for playing one of the death-obsessed children in René Clément’s great 1952 antiwar film Forbidden Games.
These characters are not, however, the sort of complex, rounded, infinitely surprising people that Malle would explore with such exhilarating curiosity in films like Murmur of the Heart (1971), Lacombe, Lucien (1974), Atlantic City (1980), and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Florence and Julien and the rest are all essentially working parts of a thriller machine, and whatever nuance Malle gives them is just a little oil to keep them from clanking too loudly. The film’s beauty lies in its economy, in its formal rigor (Malle once said that he was torn between Robert Bresson and Alfred Hitchcock, and both influences are apparent here), and in the sly, nearly absurdist humor of the cascading coincidences that doom the homicidal protagonists.
And although nowhere close to all of Louis Malle is present in Elevator to the Gallows, the movie does supply a nice ironic metaphor for his unique, bravely eclectic career. This terrific thriller is about the horror of being stuck, trapped, unable to move: that is, about the stasis this filmmaker devoted the rest of his life, and the best of his art, to avoiding.
Terrence Rafferty is Critic at Large for GQ magazine and author of The Thing Happens: Ten Years of Writing about the Movies.
-www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=335&eid
=472§ion=essay
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud - (a.k.a. Lift to the Scaffold, Elevator to the Gallows, Frantic)
Le Poste Parisien Studio, December 4-5, 1957.
Here's what Boris Vian wrote about this session, and the film Ascenseur pour l 'échafaud:
This recording was made at night in the studios of the Paris broadcasting station, in a most informal atmosphere.
Among those present was Miss Jeanne Moreau, the principal star of the film. She proved a very charming hostess, serving refreshments to musicians and technicians in an improvised bar. There were those responsible for the production and the technical staff, but also Louis Malle (with his braces dangling loosely!). He tried to get Miles to do his utmost in the way of the musical accompaniment of the film. The orchestra members who enjoyed this informal atmosphere very much, looked at the images of the principal scenes of the film, and being thus in the right mood for their work, improvised various musical paraphrases as the reel was projected. In the melody Dinner at the Motel you will notice a curious sonority of Miles' trumpet. The explanation for this is a strange one: while he was playing, a tiny piece of skin from his lip got loose and stuck in the mouthpiece of his instrument. Miles gladly accepted this strange new element, in the literary sense of the word an 'unheard heard-of' musical effect, in quite the same way as those painters who often owe the plastic quality of their coat of paint to mere chance or coincidence. There is hardly any doubt that music lovers will be thankful to the great negro musician, who is admirable assisted by his colleagues, for the spellbinding, tragic atmosphere he has created, even though they might miss the magic of the film itself.
The story commences with a love scene between Florence -- Simon Carala's wife -- and her lover Julien Tavernier. They feel imminent danger over their heads which they are anxious to shake off (Générique).
In the office building of the Société Carala we witness how Julien Tavernier commits a perfect crime (L'assassinat de Carala). Following a well-devised plan Julien succeeds in making his murder look like a suicide, then he goes back to his car. So everything works like clockwork.
As it happens, however, he must go back to his office, but while doing so, he has to hide from the porter who, unfortunately, switches off the current: it's Saturday night. Thus is Julien kept a prisoner in the elevator, at a height of fifty feet from the ground floor, a prisoner of his perfect murder, until Monday morning.
Meanwhile Florence, who has been waiting for him on a café terrace, sees his car pass by. It is an old Chevrolet convertible, and she observes a young girl whom she thinks she recognizes, sitting next to the driver: it is Véronique, assistant of the florist whose big shop faces the Carala building.
She is only partially wrong. Véronique, though still a young girl, is head over heels in love. The name of her lover is Louis, a bookseller's assistant. The young man, annoyed by the admiration Véronique is showing for Captain Tavernier, and attracted by the Chevrolet car which gives him an impression of wealth, decides to steal it just for the night. This was an easy thing to do, for the engine was still running while Julien had entered the building once again on his way to the office. Young Louis thinks the use of the car will be a unique source of pleasure for his girl, as indeed it proves to be (Sur l'autoroute).
Out of town a really beautiful car, a big white Mercedes, tries to pass Louis. A race ensues and Louis has a hairbreadth escape just saving him from a serious accident. Incidentally, the place where this happens, near a motel in Paris, turns out to be the spot the Mercedes was heading for. Thanks to this incident, the passengers of the Mercedes are soon on friendly terms with Louis and Véronique.
Click to enlarge... During the night the plot develops in three different places: Julien still remains a prisoner in his elevator (Julien dans l'ascenseur). Florence is looking for him all over Paris, and finally Louis and Véronique are becoming entangled in a confusing adventure. Julien tries to get out of his prison (Évasion de Julien). After unscrewing a trap door, he lets himself down by the elevator cable, but his descent becomes a breathtaking fall because a night watchman has switched on the current (Visite du vigile). Julien has a narrow escape and struggles back to his cage, utterly exhausted. Florence walks back to the Champs-Élysées (Florence sure les Champs-Élysées), a prey to the feelings that keep turning in her head. Alternately, her mood is murderous, loving, sympathetic, and hurt; every time she meets one of Julien's friends she asks about his whereabouts. And all the time she keeps asking herself where he may be, whether he has committed the crime and whether he loves her. With a haggard look on her face she walks endlessly until finally she comes to a bar in the rue du Bac (Au bar du Petit Bac). As for Louis, he has taken a violent dislike to the owner of the Mercedes, a German, altogether too rich and too cynical for him, who has talked him and his girl into having dinner with him (Dîner au motel). The night ends in a flash. At daybreak Louis leaves the motel and, for spite, steals the Mercedes. He is soon caught red-handed by Horst himself and because he thinks the German threatens him, shoots him with Tavernier's gun. Véronique persuades him to return to Paris. They hide in her room and in the firm belief that they are lost, the two young people swallow an overdose of sleeping tablets.
Early next morning Julien is freed from his hiding place and arrested soon afterwards. He cannot offer any defense as his first crime has been perfect, but he has no watertight alibi for the second crime: his car has been identified, his gun has been found, etc.... Florence now plays her last card: she rushes over to Louis and succeeds in convincing Louis that Tavernier is the only one who is suspected. To remove all guilt from himself he needs only to destroy the photographs that show him side by side with the Germans. Heavy with sleep he hastens to the motel with Florence following him. There, the two of them meet Monsieur Chérier, Police Commissioner (Chez le photographe du motel). By means of a double "coup de théatre" he shows them where they are wrong: the photographer has already developed the whole film. Several snaps show Louis together with the car. Chérier understands that Florence has had her husband killed by her lover. Louis soon finds himself handcuffed: Florence looks dreamily at the snapshots taken from her lover. This is the first time we see them together. Florence's game is up...
-www.plosin.com/milesAhead/Ascenseur.html
| | | send price request |
|
|
|
|
|
Gallery opening
500 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1820 (Between 42nd and 43rd)
...
|
|
more
|
|
