Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
(Ascenseur pour l'échafaud)
(Louis Malle, 1958)
Shot and post-produced in 1957, released in January 1958, this feature film debut of 25-year-old French director Louis Malle, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows), is the quintessential film noir, full of suspense, speedy sportsters, adultery, murder, and criminals vs. cops. Steeped in contemporary Paris nightlife and youth culture, with American jazz blaring from jukeboxes and sports-car radios, it's not about the milieu of jazz musicians per se (even in part, as was the case with last week's Sweet Smell of Success), but has arguably the greatest jazz soundtrack ever committed to film (and vinyl), composed and performed at a pivotal point in his career by Miles Davis, with legendary Bebop drummer Kenny Clarke and three young French musicians rounding out the quintet on piano, bass, and tenor sax. An immediate precursor of the French New Wave, and starring one of that movement's most iconic actresses, Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, La Mariée était en noir) in her first major role, the American release was also known as Frantic, but is not to be confused with the 1988 Roman Polanski film (totally unrelated, although also a thriller set in Paris). Though setting the tone for the nouvelle vague with this film and especially Zazie in the Metro (1960), Louis Malle was never considered one of the movement's primary exponents, though he went on in the ensuing decades to be one of the period's most prolific and popular directors, with such international hits as Murmur of the Heart, 1971; Lacombe Lucien, 1974; Pretty Baby, 1978; Atlantic City and My Dinner with André, both 1981; and Au Revoir, Les Enfants, 1987.