So, after I heard about a couple of cool-sounding movies to check out in lieu of the new Halloween, I went to check my Fill-In Filmography to see which movies, if any, were on there. Most were, but then I spotted a title that intrigued me: Elevator to the Gallows. It’s not like the poster, basically a checklist, gives me much more information beyond titles and the year of release, but the JustWatch app on my iPad told me it was French and available on HBO Max. That’s not that surprising. HBO Max has a lot of artsy foreign language films through Turner Classic Movies’s Criterion Collection selection.
Oh, and it’s about a murder gone wrong? So, it gets worse after the murder? Color me intrigued beyond the title.
Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) and Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau) are in love. Small problem: Florence is married to Julien’s boss Simon (Jean Wall). However, Julien is a veteran paratrooper who did tours of duty in Algeria and Indochina, places Simon appears to have largely profited from. Julien’s plan seems foolproof: Simon’s office is on a floor above Julien’s own. Both have a balcony. Using his paratrooper skills, Julien scales up the side of the office to Simon’s and kills him with Simon’s own weapon. He then arranges everything to look like a suicide and scales back down, exiting the building with a secretary and a security guard to act as his unwitting alibis. He gets down to his car, but then he realizes he forgot to take his rope with him. He’ll have to go back for it.
From there, the film could be considered a comedy of errors, except nothing here seems to be played for laughs. Julien finds himself trapped in an elevator when the building’s power is shut off for the weekend. He’d left his convertible running, and young lovers Louis (Georges Poujouly) and Véronique (Yori Bertin) decide to take it for themselves. Louis has a record, so Véronique takes to calling him by Julien’s name since she knows the man from her job at a florist as a frequent customer. Meanwhile, Florence gets to wondering why Julien never showed up for their meeting and takes to the streets looking for him. Since his car and name are floating around with a generally disreputable young man anyway, it’s only a matter of time before someone hears something. There may be more blood shed before this night is over, and it’s a question of whether or not Julien can get away with anything, even crimes he had nothing to do with.
I admittedly don’t know much about French cinema aside from the handful of movies I’ve seen, but this was an incredibly tense crime thriller. The opening murder is well-executed, and then it all falls apart for both couples. Julien spends a lot of time trapped in an elevator, and he doesn’t know what’s going on outside of it, his efforts to escape hampered by various elements. Louis has a hair-trigger, and he’s not very good at lying to protect himself. Véronique is basically a girl-next-door type who made a poor choice for a boyfriend. And Florence keeps assuming the worst because she keeps hearing things about Julien driving off with another girl in his car because people don’t know it’s really Louis but know Julien’s car.
Really, everything seemed to be firing on all cylinders for this one, but there is one special thing I would like to point out, namely the score. Like I said above, I don’t know a whole lot about French film aside from having seen a couple movies and maybe recognizing a name here or there. But I know enough French to somewhat read the opening credits, most notably a music credit to American jazz musician Miles Davis. And let me just say, getting Davis to play for the musical score was just the one thing that was needed to make an already tight movie even better. I would say that, very much so in this case, the intriguing title led to an even more intriguing movie.
Grade: A
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