Elevator to the Gallows

Elevator to the Gallows

Criterion Collection Edition #335

Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly

For his feature debut, twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle brought together a mesmerizing performance by Jeanne Moreau, evocative cinematography by Henri Decaë, and a now legendary jazz score by Miles Davis. Taking place over the course of one restless Paris night, Malle’s richly atmospheric crime thriller stars Moreau and Maurice Ronet as lovers whose plan to murder her husband (his boss) goes awry, setting off a chain of events that seals their fate. A career touchstone for its director and female star, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS was an astonishing beginning to Malle’s eclectic body of work, and it established Moreau as one of the most captivating actors ever to grace the screen.

Elevator to the Gallows
  • Elevator to the Gallows

    Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly

    For his feature debut, twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle brought together a mesmerizing performance by Jeanne Moreau, evocative cinematography by Henri Decaë, and a now legendary jazz score by Miles Da...

Extras

  • Louis Malle on ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, 1975

    During the production of his 1975 film BLACK MOON, Louis Malle was interviewed for Canadian television about his unusual start in filmmaking and his first feature, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS.

  • Jeanne Moreau on ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

    This interview with actor Jeanne Moreau was recorded at the Brasserie La Lorraine in Paris in 2005.

  • Malle and Moreau at Cannes, 1993

    For this conversation, recorded at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival for the French television program “Le cercle de minuit,” director Louis Malle and actor Jeanne Moreau sat down with Michel Field to reflect on their early work together and Malle’s development as a director.

  • Maurice Ronet, 1957

    One of France’s most popular actors of the fifties and sixties, Maurice Ronet performed in nearly one hundred films before his death in 1983. This interview by François Chalais, recorded for the television program “Reflets de Cannes” in May 1957, shows Ronet just before his lead performance as Ju...

  • The Miles Davis Score

    On December 4, 1957, at Le Poste Parisien studio in Paris, Miles Davis recorded what would become the score for ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. Released under the film’s French title, ASCENSEUR POUR L’ÉCHAFAUD, the soundtrack is considered a pivotal recording in Davis’s career. Presented here are interv...

  • On Piano, René Urtreger

    Pianist René Urtreger, the only musician from the soundtrack session for ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS still living, was interviewed in 2005 for the film’s French DVD release.

  • Miles Goes Modal

    In 2006, jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis and critic Gary Giddins discuss the iconic Miles Davis and the critical time in his career when the score for ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS was recorded.

  • Crazeologie

    Directed by Louis Malle • 1954 • France

    In 1954, Louis Malle was a film student at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris, where he shot this rarely seen short, CRAZEOLOGIE. Inspired by the theater of the absurd of such playwrights as Samuel Beckett and Eugène Iones...

  • ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS 2005 Rerelease Trailer