Views on the content and images of "Ascenseur pour l'échafaud"

Donna 2022-01-12 08:01:24


"The Elevator to the Death Penalty Table" is the first feature film of Louis Malle (born October 30, 1932). This film came out in 1957 when the young director was only 25 years old. .

As a pioneer of the New Wave, Louis Mahler filmed this film during the colonial war between France and Algeria. The dialogues between the characters in the film talked about war issues many times, which also reflects the background of this era. Regardless of the historical background of the movie, this movie starring Jeanne Moreau (born January 23, 1928), with its brand-new movie concept and a sense of breaking away from the traditional film creation, was established in Louis Mahler. The era we lived in was undoubtedly a great innovation.

Simply speaking from the content of the movie, "Ascenseur pour l'echafaud" (Ascenseur pour l'echafaud) tells ordinary suspenseful stories with two main lines. One main line is this: the hero in the film, Julian (Maurice Ronet) retired from the paratroopers and worked as an employee in an arms company, but fell in love with the boss’s wife, Jeanne Moreau, in order to be together. , Julian carried out the murder of the boss. After thinking that he had a seamless and successful murder, Julian was accidentally locked in the elevator because he went back to clean up the crime scene. On the other hand, Florence, who had made an appointment with Julian to meet on Saturday, started a worried search because Julian hadn't arrived. In another story clue, two young men who were inexperienced stole Julian's car and some of his tools, and were involved in another murder. The two stories seem to develop independently, but they are also closely related to each other and mock each other.

In terms of content, this crime suspense film even has a main structure such as Hitchcock-style fate intertwining and crime shifting. But despite this interlacing of fate, the main focus of the film is not the dramatic ups and downs, crime details, and tense atmosphere of suspense movies (there are murder scenes in the film, but no blood is seen), and Florence The anxiety of being separated from Julian, the fear of Julian being trapped in the elevator, and the frustration of young people, these people's inner emotions are the focus of the film. In addition, a more aftertaste monologue at the end of the film seems to bring the film to the theme of "LOVE".

So how does the film express the characters' hearts?
The first is the heroine Florence. The first shot of "The Elevator to the Death Sentence Table" was a close-up of the heroine Florence's face, and then slowly pulled back from this partial close-up to present a panoramic view. From here on, the director Louis Mahler seems to have deliberately changed the audience’s viewing habits. He omitted the process of setting up the camera in traditional movies, causing the viewer to suddenly face the protagonist’s face close-up, combined with the heroine’s face to the phone. The whispering, interfering, solitary, unchanging tone, seems to come from the world of the underworld. The combination of video and monologue whispers makes the audience suddenly fall into the inner emotions of the characters. And from the next plot of the movie, it can be known that the director presented to the viewers Florence is a lonely soul who walks in the streets and cafes of Paris, thinking that she has been abandoned by Julian, but is still looking for an unwilling lonely image. Moreover, in this process of searching and pacing, there are still a lot of close-ups and inner monologues. Lonely, alienated, uneasy, and fearful, the inner emotions of these characters are well reflected through the images in Florence's film and the narration of inner activities.

Once again, the film portrays Julian's heart. Compared with Florence's more feminine inner portrayal methods, Julian's inner presentation is more masculine. Such a portrayal is embodied in his helplessness, loss, and fear in confronting destiny but repeatedly losing battle. The viewer can know that Julian spends most of his time in the elevator in the film, and such a guilty man is stuck in a situation where he can't get out of the elevator. In such a "closed, small (a very symbolic place)" place, enduring the anxiety and fear of being discovered moments of sin, one can imagine how difficult it is to calm his heart. So how does the director Louis Mahler express the inner feelings of the characters? Mainly through two aspects, one is character behavior, and the other is the configuration of sound effects. Unlike the direct presentation of inner activity in the narration, Julian was anxious in the small elevator until he finished smoking the last cigarette. After he scribbled helplessly, he got up and tried to get out again. There is also the sound effect (perhaps implicit heartbeat) that is used in the movie when it is almost discovered. These two are the indirect means of expressing Julian's inner activities.

The existence of the theme of the movie seems to be very easy to make the viewer feel depressed, which can be seen from the portrayal of the heroes and heroines. But this movie, which tells the story of murder but focuses on the heart of the characters, is not only characterized by this (in the film environment at the time). The most important feature is the picture tension expressed by the cinematic lens. Louis Mahler once claimed to be deeply influenced by Bresson's realistic approach and Jacques Tati's rare dialogue. When it comes to "The Elevator to the Death Penalty Table", we can easily find that this feature is everywhere in the film: the hero and the heroine never met each other from the beginning to the end, and it seems that there is only the connection in the photo, and only at the beginning of the film. There was a short conversation (only to show the connection between the two). Looking at the sound effects and picture processing, in this movie, the sad jazz soundtrack and the deep sound effects that express the inner activities of the characters often appear alternately. The former is calm and calm, and the latter is nervous, life and death. For one thing, the two forms a strong auditory contrast, which in essence also reflects the emotional relaxation of the characters. In terms of picture processing, the narrow elevators that make people nervous and scared, the empty buildings filled with darkness, and the bright and dark building lights are just like horror films. However, the film has repeatedly recorded the order of Paris in reality. The streets, the warm and relaxing cafes, give people a completely different feeling. Therefore, from these two points of view, the biggest feature of this film classified as a crime suspense genre is not its suspense setting, nor the existential temperament revealed in the film, but the film’s overall emotion and picture tone. There is a degree of relaxation that people feel.

As the feature film debut of Louis Mahler, the veteran director of the Left Bank, this film's success heralds the advent of a new era of cinema, and a new wave of movement in the French film industry began to surge one year later.

View more about Elevator to the Gallows reviews

Extended Reading
  • Caitlyn 2022-03-17 09:01:06

    The relationship between people is a state of shared fate in "The Elevator to the Gallows". Although no one knows anyone, everyone can find a bit of commonality in evidence from the ardent desires between the sexes. Unfortunately, the intimate and tense relationship between the sexes suddenly lost connection and dialogue in an immoral cheating/theft. People are thrown into their own plights by their uncontrolled destiny: men are sent to prison by their own crazy reason and become criminals waiting for trial. The woman is locked in "Night" by her own imagination, like a homeless wandering soul. Louis Mahler’s suspenseful work is full of class meaning, and the most intuitive image is the elevator. The heroes and heroines never meet from beginning to end. The young couple is not only their stand-in in this story, but also the protagonist in the bottom story. Two parallel stories finally converge in a darkroom. All accidents have their inevitability. Only love is so positive, obvious, and full of mystery, just like those indisputable photos from scratch. The love between the sexes, waiting, kissing, is also so touching.

  • Cary 2022-03-19 09:01:07

    Film noir always reveals the chaos and contingency of the world, but in the end it returns everything to order. But the pair of young men and women other than the protagonist is always primitive and disorderly. They kill or commit suicide for no reason.

Elevator to the Gallows quotes

  • Simon Carala: Honestly, my dear Tavernier, you often keep me waiting. During the Indochina War, it didn't matter. What was one defeat more or less? But now you're in big business. This isn't a dream.

  • Simon Carala: I needed a hero in my business.

    Julien Tavernier: A retired hero.

    Simon Carala: This kind of work doesn't call for ragpickers but for angels. A paratrooper is a good angel.