Elevator to the Gallows

A man kills another man – and then everything goes wrong. The perfect plot to dispose of a lover’s husband unravels because of something as banal as a power cut that leaves an elevator stranded between floors. From the outset, this noir-inflected tale of love and murder seemed destined for success, thanks to its superb crime plot, the emergence of Jeanne Moreau as a new star, and Miles Davis’s extraordinary score, one of the defining achievements of his career. It was the soundtrack, in particular, that helped secure the film’s popularity. Reissued many times over the years, it quickly attained cult status.

Davis recorded the score with his French quartet in December 1957. He drew partly on ideas that came to him after watching a rough cut of the film, and partly on improvising directly to the images projected on screen. As he later recalled: “It was a great learning experience because I had never written a music score for a film before. Since it was about a murder and was supposed to be a suspense movie, I used this old, gloomy, dark building where I had the musicians play. I thought it would give the music atmosphere, and it did”.

Jerzy Szczerbakow

Louis Malle (1932–1995) – French film director and a major figure of postwar European cinema. He studied political science at the Sorbonne before enrolling at IDHEC, and gained early experience as an assistant to Robert Bresson and as a collaborator of Jacques-Yves Cousteau on documentaries, including The Silent World (1956), which won both the Palme d’Or and the Academy Award. He made his feature debut with Elevator to the Gallows (1957), followed by The Lovers (1958), which caused a moral scandal. Loosely associated with the French New Wave (notably Zazie in the Metro [1960]), he developed a distinctive voice, moving fluidly across genres and themes while working in both France and the United States.

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