Criterion Collection Edition #335
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.
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...
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.
This interview with actor Jeanne Moreau was recorded at the Brasserie La Lorraine in Paris in 2005.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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...
