MOVIE · 1958

Elevator to the Gallows

CrimeDramaThriller92 min

After killing his employer — the husband of the woman he’s seeing — a confident executive thinks he has arranged the perfect crime, then gets trapped in an elevator on his way out. Maurice Ronet is the lover whose careful plan starts to unravel over the course of one Paris night, while Jeanne Moreau is the woman left roaming the city, trying to understand why he’s disappeared. An abandoned car, a reckless young couple, and a crime scene that won’t stay contained push the story outward in unexpected directions, with Louis Malle keeping the action lean and nocturnal under Miles Davis’s drifting jazz score.