Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

Louis Malle's first fiction feature, based on Noel Calef's 1956 novel, occupies a very interesting space. It qualifies as film noir for its appropriation of US postwar cinema in its tale of lovers gone bad, but also heralds the imminent arrival of the French new wave. The director was in his mid-20s at the time and clearly using the crime-thriller genre (something he never returned to) as a testing ground and not a strict template. Perhaps that explains why his film is such a melting pot of influences, drawing not only on Hitchcock but also the Master of Suspense's overseas admirers, including Henri-Georges Clouzot and his Les Diaboliques.

As in that film, the story concerns a conspiracy to murder. Ex-Foreign Legion soldier Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet), a veteran of French military misadventures in Algeria and Indochina, is planning to kill his boss, who is also his lover's husband. On paper, the plan is seamless – Tavernier secures his alibis and enters his victim's office unseen, by means of a rope – but things soon get messy. On returning to the crime scene to retrieve a key piece of evidence, Tavernier finds himself trapped in the elevator, leaving his car parked outside with the keys in the ignition.

Although its elements point towards nailbiting tension, this isn't so much what Lift to the Scaffold is about; it draws more on the blanket fatalism of film noir rather than the savage irony so often associated with the genre. Key to this is Jeanne Moreau as Tavernier's lover, Florence; in the film's signature sequence her man fails to turn up, so she walks the streets trying vainly to find him. Filmed on the fly without professional lighting, accompanied only by Miles Davis's brilliant, melancholy score, these few minutes capture the bleak and beautiful essence of Malle's film.