The Film Museum in Vondelpark is showing the restoed version of
Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud!



I really want to see it, who's with me?

imdb plot summary

Florence Carala and her lover Julien Tavernier, an ex - paratrooper want to murder her husband by faking a suicide. But after Julien has killed him and he puts his things in his car, he finds he has forgotten the rope outside the window and he returns to the building to remove it...

Review by Graham Deans Williamson (gdwilliamson@deathsdoor.co.uk) from Middlesbrough, England

One of the very best films it has ever been my pleasure to watch. Louis Malle started off his career as a cameraman for Jacques Cousteau, and his attitude towards his characters in this, his feature debut, is a similar mix of detachment and honest curiosity. He's helped along with a superb cast and - the movie's most immediately notable aspect - a wonderful original score by the legendary Miles Davis.

'Lift to the Scaffold' carries off a curious double triumph. It is both one of the best noirs and one of the best French New Wave films ever made. Unlike Godard's noir entries, it was actually made during what is widely accepted to be the noir age (1944-1957, by consensus). As a result, it feels more like 'Double Indemnity' (1944) than 'A Bout de Soufflé' (1959) - the taut plotting and terrifying cause-and-effect chain of tragedy is recognisable from the very best American noir thrillers.

Yet it also makes good use of the freedoms afforded European directors, with a more explicit political edge than the American films of the same era (with the arguable exception of Aldrich's 'Kiss Me Deadly' (1957)). The world of 'Lift to the Scaffold' is an explicitly post-war one, with suspicion and violence never far from the minds of a damaged, traumatized populace. Moreover, the gentle observations of everyday life point the way forward to Godard and Truffaut's groundbreaking work in a few years' time. Like the best New Wave movies, anything can happen in this film, at any time.

It would be genuinely sadistic to reveal where it goes from here, where the plot twists and turns on its way to and how Malle wraps up his disparate plot strands. Suffice to say that 'Lift to the Scaffold' is an immediate All Time Top Ten contender, and something that really is worth your effort tracking down. And at eighty-five minutes, you could never accuse it of outstaying its welcome.
[Edited 7/16/05 2:18am]

Of course, the soundtrack is an amzaing coup de force by Miles Davis...

HamsterHuey said:

IstenSzek said:

Mawning beautiful man...

purrr

HamsterHuey said:

mornin' handsome

:playing generique:

IstenSzek said:

Swoons.

I think that is my fave MD track EVER...

HamsterHuey said:

I have to confess that that's a Miles album I've never heard

soulyacolia said:

Awwwww. Actually it is one of my favourites!

It has the one track on it that makes Prince swoon as well (I know, I heard him play it); Générique. The entire soundtrack is rather repetitious, as it is soundtrack music with re-occuring themes, but it is so wonderfully moody, melancholic and sad...

Love it to bits.

How fucking weird is this?

I have 7.974 musical items on my Windows Media Player.

And of all the songs it could play it plays Générique!!!

This songs fills me with a joy I cannot describe...
Sigh...