Directed by Louis Malle.
Starring Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet.
In a Nutshell: A broken elevator inconveniences a murder plot.
Yup, another French noir film and this one is scored by the legendary Miles Davis. This film was the first by legendary noir director Louis Malle, and it is one breathtaking debut. It has a wickedly dark sense of humor and is an engaging parable on the price of grand romanticism. The plot is wonderfully uncontained and irregular; a man named Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) who plans with his lover Florence (Jeanne Moreau) to murder her husband and live the high life. However, en route to leaving the crime scene, the power goes off and he is stuck in the building’s elevator. During this, a teenage couple, swept up in their own romanticism, steal Tavernier’s car and (in the male’s case) identity as they themselves commit murder. While Tavernier is physically stuck, albeit with an incriminating alibi for the teenager’s murders, a ghostly Florence wanders the streets, believing that Tavernier left her for the female teenager. Quite the inopportune of plot twists for Mr. Tavernier.
Yup, another French noir film and this one is scored by the legendary Miles Davis. This film was the first by legendary noir director Louis Malle, and it is one breathtaking debut. It has a wickedly dark sense of humor and is an engaging parable on the price of grand romanticism. The plot is wonderfully uncontained and irregular; a man named Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) who plans with his lover Florence (Jeanne Moreau) to murder her husband and live the high life. However, en route to leaving the crime scene, the power goes off and he is stuck in the building’s elevator. During this, a teenage couple, swept up in their own romanticism, steal Tavernier’s car and (in the male’s case) identity as they themselves commit murder. While Tavernier is physically stuck, albeit with an incriminating alibi for the teenager’s murders, a ghostly Florence wanders the streets, believing that Tavernier left her for the female teenager. Quite the inopportune of plot twists for Mr. Tavernier.
I admit to not having been totally emotionally involved with this movie, even when all was said and done. Tavernier, Florence, and the teenage couple are given no real likeability in their immorality, they exist to either be screwed over by the plot’s mechanisms or move it forward in delightfully misguided ways. The closest there is to a real character is Moreau as Florence who spends much of the film roaming the desolate streets, having felt abandoned by her love. At first I was bothered by Moreau’s performance, which looked like she was just ambling around while being hypnotized (even when being arrested on a mistaken prostitution charge). Though I gradually awoke to the idea that she was supposed to act trance-like. She may walk around like a hollow shell, but Moreau is so good at looking detached, I almost mistook it for flat acting. The teenagers make for a nice parallel between the more mature and equally blinded by love couple. Though their grand gesturing is much more pathetic thanks to their naive youthfulness.
It seems to have been Malle’s intention to have so little involvement with the protagonists, much more eager to watch his characters squirm about through the plot. Malle would go on to direct much greater films, but Elevator to the Gallows, with its jazzy haunting score and disconnected performances makes it an elegant descent into humanity’s lesser quality. Would highly recommend, but only as a start into more Malle films.
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