Louis Malle
Ascensore Per Il Patibolo

LA RECENSIONE

I adore this splendid film by Louis Malle from '57, a noir with a nouvelle vague twist, a film about the dangers of passion and the allure of certain Parisian atmospheres.

The plot of the film is the classic noir: 2 lovers, Julien (Maurice Ronet) and Florence (Jeanne Moreau), decide to kill her husband to live their love freely. The husband is Julien's boss, a former army fighter, who manages to kill the husband, but when he is about to escape from the office, there’s an unforeseen event: he gets trapped in the building's elevator as the doorman, thinking no one was left, has cut off the electricity.

While his lover waits for him at the bar, 2 young people steal Julien's car and commit a crime in Julien's name. They are seen driving Julien’s car by his lover, who thinks that Julien is in the car with another woman.

The story proceeds with a perfect, crushing, and inescapable finale.

From a classic theme, Malle constructs a film with wonderful cinematography and the music by Miles Davis adds charm and mystery to these scenes in a dark, nocturnal Paris where the noises, thoughts, and emotions dominate more than the unfolding of the story or the dialogues: splendid is Moreau’s promenade during the night searching for her lover while her mind questions if he has escaped with another, if he was afraid to kill, where he ended up, if he still loves her.

Or even Julien himself, rather than behaving like a classic American hero, waits for his destiny as a victim, a predestined fate brought by passion to condemnation (in this it recalls the characters of Prévert and Carné).

This focus on the characters rather than the plot, traveling along their thoughts, the sounds of rainy streets, and the sharp shots anticipates the Nouvelle Vague, as well as the final solution linked to photography and cinema itself.

But the film, besides the beauty of the charm it exudes, also tells us about two lovers who, for the love and passion that bind them, are willing to risk everything, their entire lives, unlike the other young couple of lovers who can't even manage to commit suicide and worry about the headlines in the morning paper.