Review of Elevator to the Gallows (1958) by Donovan S — 09 Oct 2010

New wave's obsession with crime fiction seems both out of character and totally appropriate: the genre is so dependent on tightly structured plots that films can easily surprise audiences with the merest hitch in the rhythm.

While Malle's film is not the total formalist playground that Godard would explore later on, it lays the groundwork: we see some sequences in excrutiating, suspenseful detail; others happen in a flash, or a a playful cut-away.

But this is not merely a twist on Hitchcockian themes: grafted onto the plot is a terrifying allegory of France's youth needing to exorcise the demons of previous generations by murdering them. Indochine looms in the background as myth and real trauma, and the games played by Malle and his characters are all born from frustration at a dawning age of complicity.

And yes, one could walk Jean Moreau stalk through rainy streets forever; she emanates the unattainable, which is less sexy than mournful.