Elevator to the Gallows

In 1957, Louis Malle made his feature debut as a solo filmmaker (he had earlier collaborated on a Jacques Cousteau documentary) with this taut thriller about a murder plot that goes horribly wrong. In the process, Malle made two brilliant decisions that turned Elevator to the Gallows into a classic noir and provided thematic material for nearly all the supplements in this two-disc package. First, he cast Jeanne Moreau as the lovestruck female lead, sparking a change in image for the young actress and making her an icon of the French New Wave. Moreau is quite emphatic about expressing her admiration for the film, which "opened doors" for her, and for Malle himself, with whom she had a love affair (and made three more movies, including the notorious The Lovers). The two are seen together in a 1993 TV broadcast from Cannes, during which Moreau plugs her ears and hums in embarrassment when Malle praises her extraordinary talents. This package focuses primarily on Malle's second wise decision—to have Miles Davis oversee an improvised jazz score for the film. Jazz critic Gary Giddins and trumpeter Jon Faddis talk about the important place the soundtrack holds in Davis' development as an innovator, and pianist Rene Urtreger provides a first-person account of the all-night recording session that produced the improvisations. A snippet of TV footage shows Davis hard at work, but as expected with the decidedly non-verbal icon, not a single syllable from Miles appears in any of the supplements.