Frankly, this classic turns out to be a disappointment for this particular viewer. The cinematography is great, as expected. The famous Miles Davis improvised score is delicate and suitable melancholy. But the movie suffers from an overall listlessness: the narrative is slack, the rhythm is sporadic, and the performance is over-stylized and deliberate. When you have only cardboard characters, like mosy Noir films do, try make their lines and movement fluid and natural; deliberation only reminds one of the inherent emptiness of plot and characterization. Where is the energy? Miles Davis helps alleviate the boredom, but not even half-way enough.
Along with Godard's "Breathless" and "Band Apart", Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player", and God-knows-how-many Melvilles, this debut by Malle was part of the "American chic" before French recovered their "alt-Europa "cultural self-respect. Good thing THAT was over.
The adoring haziness of portraiture when Moreau's face came into the frame is also off-putting: after all, this is a film noir, and noir audience can handle a less cloy, high- contrast black-and-white. How old fashioned, and how patronizing!
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Elevator to the Gallows reviews
