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Vintage Malle put French Stamp
on Noir
Saturday,
June 25, 2005
Elevator
to the GallowsBy Stephen Whitty, Star Ledger Staff
In the States, it was just taken for granted, written off under the vague label of "private eye stories" or "B-movies." But it was the French who rediscovered it in the '50s. It was the French who saw the nagging sense of doom behind it all, the dark conviction that the world was in a precarious state of balance and one foot placed wrong would send it tumbling.
And once the French had defined it, they began to copy it.
What became known as the French nouvelle vague that break-the-rules New Wave of handheld cameras, jump-cut editing and unconventional storytelling always had one foot planted in American noir. Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player" was adapted from a novel by genre icon David Goodis.
Godard's "Breathless" made direct homage to noir star Humphrey Bogart.
Predating both was Louis Malle's "Elevator to the Gallows," made in 1957, and now revived for the first time in years, with new subtitles.
Based on a novel by Noel Calef, it's a story rich in American traditions, its doomed lovers straight out of James M. Cain, its sick suspense a nod to the twisted Cornell Woolrich. Its current return marks an ongoing re-appreciation of Malle whose films are beginning to be rediscovered and French noir itself, with many classics currently being re-distributed on DVD by Kino.
"Gallows" begins simply enough. Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet are in love; she has an old, rich, and very unpleasant husband standing in their way. Ronet an ex-soldier, with all the cynicism ex-soldiers usually have in the movies ingeniously slips into hubby's locked office, kills him, and then slips out before the door locks behind him. It's the perfect crime.
And then Ronet gets stuck in the elevator.
It would make a good short story, but Malle's movie then twists the tale; Ronet's car is stolen by another pair of lovers, including a young delinquent, who blithely giving Ronet's name commit a couple of murders. So when Ronet finally extricates himself from the lift, he's faced with a dilemma: Admit to being in the elevator, and he places himself at the scene of one crime; deny he was there, and he has no alibi for two others.
It's a trickily plotted story, and if it were only that, would be forgettable. Malle, however, makes it indelible.
Part of that, of course, is simple nostalgia. The film is such a time capsule of an era, and a style of filmmaking, from the gamine ingénue with her short haircut, to the Miles Davis jazz on the soundtrack, to the New Wave style of letting characters emerge from a blurry background to walk into focus, as if the camera had just discovered them. The edgy politics of the time occasionally poke through, too. The hated husband profiteered in Indochina and Algeria; the tourists the young delinquent kills are rich and vulgar Germans, chatting offhandedly about how hard it was to find good champagne during the Occupation.
But all of those are subservient to the complicated storytelling, as the camera switches back between the two pairs of lovers, both from different generations and different classes, each headed in their own way to destruction, half in love with the death they're already rushing to meet.
This is not a film that ends sunnily for everyone; that is what makes it noir. And this is a movie that tells its story with leisurely style and a careful observation of the telling detail; that is what makes it French.
(Unrated) Rialto (91 min.) Directed by Louis Malle. With Maurice Ronet, Jeanne Moreau. In French, with English subtitles. Stars: 3
Ratings
note: The film includes some brief violence.
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