Sure, you might own The Criterion Collection release, and perhaps have seen the film already, but there’s no better way to watch Louis Malle‘s “Elevator To The Gallows” than on the big screen. And the good news is that Rialto Pictures have given the classic film a new digital restoration, with the movie returning to theaters this summer.
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet and Lino Ventura, and featuring an absolutely fantastic score by Miles Davis, the story follows a woman and her lover who conspire to kill her husband, only for things to not go according to plan. Here’s the synopsis:
Blonde-tressed Jeanne Moreau and ex-paratrooper lover Maurice Ronet scheme to murder her husband by faking a suicide, but a forgotten rope, a leather-jacketed young punk car thief (Georges Poujouly, the boy of Clément’s Forbidden Games), and a malfunctioning ascenseur conspire to complicate their plans, and then flics Lino Ventura and Charles Denner turn up the heat. For 24-year-old director Malle, his first feature after years of shooting fish with Jacques Cousteau; for Moreau, already dominant on stage (Maggie the Cat in the Paris production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), her screen-star-making role after nine years and twenty films; for DP Henri Decaë, a breakthrough in near-total avoidance of artificial light during Moreau’s night-time walk down the Champs-Elysées; for Miles Davis, a brooding, legendary jazz score, recorded in a single all-night session.
Louis Malle couldn’t have made a better statement of talents than with his debut feature film. Don’t miss it when it rolls to an arthouse near you. “Elevator To the Gallows” kicks off at New York City’s Film Forum on August 3rd.
