Film review: Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

Only the French could make such a silly film so ineffably cool.  Well, it's not really silly, but the characters do some very stupid things.  However, apart from being Louis Malle's debut film, it has two major aces up its sleeve: Jeanne Moreau in her breakout film role and a soundtrack by Miles Davis.  Here's the plot in a nutshell: Moreau is the wife of a rich arms dealer who has fallen in love with his right-hand-man Julien Tavernier.  They have (prior to the film's events) come up with a plan to bump him off that involves Tavernier scaling up one story on their building to the boss's penthouse office, shooting him, and then locking all the doors so it looks like a suicide.  Tavernier (who was in the foreign legion and has done various dirty tricks for the boss) accomplishes this and then leaves, making sure the security guard sees him doing so, and goes to where his car is (illegally, as the girl in the flower shop admiringly notes) parked, starts it up to go rendezvous with Jeanne Moreau, and then glances up and notices that he's left the rope and grappling hook hanging off the building!  He goes inside, gets in the lift to go up to get it... and the security guard, who thinks the building is empty, turns off the power!  So he's stuck in the lift, with clear evidence of his crime hanging off the building for all to see.  But it gets worse for poor Julien, because the flower girl's delinquent leather-jacketted boyfriend sees his car running and decides he's going to take it for a joyride.  She disapproves, but is evidently a bit of an airhead, because it doesn't take long before she's laughing and ransacking the glove compartments (where she finds a gun that all the rules of drama tell us will be used to no good end).  There follows the escapades of the world's dumbest Bonnie and Clyde as they get into a race with a German couple, end up rear-ending them, but the man (who is older) is incredibly forgiving and invites them to stay at the same motel and gets them drunk.  They sign in as "Mr and Mrs Julien Tavernier" and the boy tries to spin stories to match what they know of Tavernier's heroic past, but the German isn't the least bit convinced.  Meanwhile the girl takes photos using the tiny spy camera she found in Tavernier's coat.  While this is all going on we also cut back and forth between Tavernier desperately trying to escape the elevator (and nearly getting killed because he's hanging underneath the elevator when a nightwatchman briefly turns the power on because he needs light to find his lost keys) and Jeanne Moreau pacing the city asking everyone she meets if they've seen Tavernier.  (Smart move: on the night your husband is killed, you're wandering around asking after the prime suspect.)  She also thinks he may have dumped her because she saw the young couple drive by in Tavernier's car and she couldn't see the driver.  Anyway, the dumb kids get up in the middle of the night (in a rainstorm) to make their escape (presumably to avoid paying for the motel) but the boy wants to steal the German couple's sporty Mercedes.  He grinds the gears so badly it wakes up the German, who, throughout all this remains avuncular, and jokingly pretends to hold the kid up with what looks like a cigar tube.  The boy panics and shoots both him and his wife dead!  Then they drive off and abandon the Mercedes near the girl's flat where they go and panic.  The girl's solution is that they should kill themselves by overdosing on tranquilizers, and they take a fistful each and lie down on her bed.
MEANWHILE, the cops think the killer really was Tavernier and are on the lookout for him.  They come to his office to look for him and start up the power, so he can finally get out (without them noticing) and goes to a cafe for breakfast, where a little girls stares at him because he's in the papers and the cafe owner calls the cops.  MEANWHILE Jeanne Moreau has worked out basically what's happened and gone to the flower girl's flat where she finds the kids just groggy, because they didn't take nearly enough pills.  She locks them in and goes to get the cops, but they have a spare key and the boy leaves to get the photos which the girl was having developed at the photo developer that is somehow attached to the motel (because it's where holiday-makers go?)  Jeanne sees him go and follows him in her car and they both arrive at the developer... only to both get arrested.  Because not only do the photos show the kids with the murder victims, they also show Tavernier and Moreau snuggling, and the detective has worked out that Tavernier must have killed her husband.  (But, rather bathetically, he figures that Tavernier will only get ten years, so the title is VERY misleading.)
So should you watch it?  Sure!  It's oozing with style and it has endless shots of Jeanne Moreau wandering the neon-lit streets of Paris muttering to herself in the rain. And while there isn't all that much of Miles Davis's score, what there is is too cool for school.