James Cain meets I Love Lucy

o Elevator to the Gallows

1957 / B&W / 87 Min. / French with subtitles
Louis Malle, dir. / New Yorker Video

This film was Louis Malle's first feature and like much of the early films of the French New Wave, it seems at once both original and highly derivative of the American films that preceded it. The story involves a plot by a woman (Jeanne Moreau) and her lover (Maurice Ronet) to murder her well-off husband. While this doesn't seem like a particularly original plot now, it must have seemed even less so in 1957. In the previous 15 years dozens of noir classics had plot lines similar to this, the best of which were the adaptations of James Cain's novels, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

o The Common Plot

The common story throughout these films was this: a woman who no longer loves her husband, or, more usually, never did love him but married him for his money, has a younger, more handsome man as a lover. One of the lovers convinces the other that they need to eliminate the husband. The crime is committed, but invariably cracks begin to occur in the lovers' plans and/or alibis and they eventually get caught. (Interestingly, while this outcome occurs in nearly all the films, in the original book version of Double Indemnity, the lovers get away!)

o Twisting out of the Mold

Since Malle had chosen a rather formulaic outline for his film, it was imperative that he develop it in a way that makes this film his own. In this he was only partially successful. Like their predecessors, the lovers are able to plot and carry out their crime. And like their predecessors they soon begin to encounter a series of complications. What is unique in this film is the number and elaborateness of the complications. While this manages to differentiate Elevator to the Gallows from its noir heritage, there are times when the film seems to be turning into a hideous mixture of Double Indemnity and an I Love Lucy rerun, with one improbable event following another.

Elevator to the Gallows is an entertaining film, though perhaps not a particularly artful one. If not taken too seriously, it will not disappoint those looking for some good suspense.

-- Robert Stewart