Category: Must-See

Sergio Leone | 2hr 12min

Few words are exchanged by rival bounty hunters Manco and Colonel Douglas Mortimer when they finally come face to face in the rural settlement of El Paso. For the first fifty minutes of For a Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone has been intertwining their paths in search of escaped bank robber El Indio, each scoping out their common target while remaining largely ignorant of each other’s presence. From their raised vantage points on either side of the main road, they spy on the outlaw’s gang gathering outside a bank, before incidentally turning their telescope and binoculars on each other. That evening, Manco sends the porter to packed Mortimer’s belongings and bring them outside where he is waiting, consequently leading to the pivotal confrontation that will ultimately decide the fate of both their quests.

Ennio Morricone’s score is sparse here, though the few notes he does play unite a pair of musical motifs. When we cut to Manco, a flute skims through a terse, cautionary phrase, while the Jew’s harp we have come to associate with Mortimer reverberates a piercing twang. The Colonel is framed in the classic Leone shot between Manco’s spread legs, before they take turns scuffing each other’s shoes. As much as this peacocking is an attempt to mark their territory, the prospect of either backing off seems increasingly unlikely, especially when they begin shooting at each other’s hats to prove who is the better gunslinger. The editing is taut, but with Morricone’s majestic score largely absent, we recognise that this sequence is not building to one of his deadly quick draws. From this rivalry, a begrudging respect is born between Manco and Mortimer, who soon begin negotiating the terms of their professional partnership over drinks.

This willingness to cooperate may be the greatest virtue which our heroes possess in For a Few Dollars More, contrasting heavily against the villain’s treacherous manipulation of his own gang. El Indio acts purely on greed and self-preservation, stoking mistrust among his henchmen in the hopes that they all end up murdering each other. If he and his lieutenant’s plans work out, then he need only split the loot they have stolen from the bank two ways.

Unfortunately, El Indio’s shrewdness is not so forward-thinking. The fracturing of his gang drastically weakens his position against Manco and Mortimer, placing him in a precarious position by the time their final showdown arrives. In the Old West, this choice between unity and division is the only shot anyone has at finding order in anarchy, and may be all that stands in the way of life and death.

After the extraordinary hit that was A Fistful of Dollars, it was only natural that Leone should continue probing these blurred binaries of Americana. With twice the budget, he is no longer restricted to a single location, but rather sprawls his narrative scope across multiple settings and expands his ensemble. The only point of continuity to carry over between films is Clint Eastwood as The Man With no Name, informally recognised here as Manco, and this time sharing the lead role with Lee van Cleef. Together, they form a stoic duo as they infiltrate, outsmart, and outshoot El Indio’s gang, seeking to claim the bounty that has been placed on the bandit’s head.

There is much tension to be drawn from such lively staging, layering shots with dynamic motion and nervous stillness, though it is once again Leone’s editing which most crucially navigates each moving part of his staggering set pieces. Beyond even his John Ford or Akira Kurosawa influence, Leone’s montages call all the way back to Sergei Eisenstein, patiently cutting between twitching hands, holstered pistols, and apprehensive faces as they anticipate an outburst of action. Suspense is also rife in his constant cutaways to the safe that the gang is planning to steal from the bank, while the rapid cutting between Mortimer’s eyes and El Indio’s wanted poster when the bounty hunter first learns of his prison break lands like bullets, binding their destinies together in a cacophony of gunshots.

After all, the Colonel is not merely in this for the payout, as handsome as it is. His stakes are personal, and although we don’t learn the details until Leone’s climactic conclusion, the foundations of this grand reveal are woven throughout El Indio’s backstory. Most prominently, flashbacks to the time he raped a woman, murdered her family, and stole her musical pocket watch as a memento sit like a pit in his stomach, hinting at a shred of guilt. Whenever it is opened, memories of that tragedy return in its delicate, tinkling melody, effortlessly weaving a haunting sadness into Morricone’s otherwise majestic score of electric guitars, percussive chants, and piercing whistles. This is the melancholy which resides in all these characters, his motif reminds us, feeding the vengeful sorrow which has transformed the frontier into a battlefield of personal vendettas. On a more sadistic level, so too is it a cruel countdown that El Indio frequently uses in duels, challenging his opponents to only draw their pistols when its wind-up tune has run out.

This pocket watch thus makes for a fitting accompaniment to his and Mortimer’s eventual showdown, staged within the circular boundaries of a low stone wall. As its melody slows to a halt though, an identical tune suddenly starts up elsewhere, and Leone cuts to a magnificent wide shot of both men on either side of the frame with Manco’s hand in the centre. There, a second pocket watch he pilfered earlier from Mortimer is flipped open, and the historic connection between hero and villain comes to light. El Indio’s eyes move between the pocket watch’s photo of his victim and his adversary, and recognition of a family resemblance crosses his face – yet this is not his story to see through to its completion. For the first time in his life, he is the slowest to draw, and Mortimer chooses not to claim the monetary reward, but rather the inner peace he has long pursued.

With set pieces as awe-inspiring as these, it is virtually impossible to separate Leone’s cinematic style and mythic storytelling. Character emerges from action, which is in turn born from a flawless synthesis of staging, music, and editing, revitalising the Western genre with the countercultural vigour of the 1960s. Manco is not a classical hero serving righteous ideals for the betterment of society, but a killer who sees death as little more than a commodity to be traded, though at the very least there is some grace to be found in Mortimer’s consideration of murder as an act of moral justice – however bloody it may be. In the absence of men living by virtuous principles, For a Few Dollars More gives us gunslingers choosing to wield their darkness as weapons, and strengthened by the coalition they form against greater, far more rotten evils.

For a Few Dollars More is currently streaming on SBS On Demand, and is available to rent or buy on YouTube and Amazon Video.

Sergio Leone | 1hr 39min

When the Stranger first arrives in the rural border town of San Miguel, the reception from its locals is foreboding. A noose hangs from a withered tree, warning visitors away from the lawless justice that runs rampant. From a distance, he observes a small child trying to sneak into a building, only to be kicked out and shot at as he runs back to his mother. As he rides down the street, the civilians aren’t much friendlier to him either. “I reckon he picked the wrong trail,” one mouthy bandit scoffs. “Or he could have picked the wrong town,” his companion retorts, before their small gang sends the Stranger’s galloping off in a panic.

It only takes a couple of minutes for our hero to deliver fierce retribution. With four swift gunshots, he wins the quick draw against their entire crew, and sends them to early graves. It is also in this moment that we see three separate artists make their first major step towards culture-defining excellence.

As the Stranger stands alone in his poncho against a daunting arrangement of outlaws along a wooden fence, Sergio Leone’s fine orchestration of his editing and staging ominously build their interaction to an impasse, before shattering the tension with an angry, violent bloodbath. This sequence was not only a resounding artistic breakthrough, but also marked the beginning of the Western genre’s most significant shake-up to date. Where America sought to define its own national mythology through fables of good vs evil, Leone’s importation of these archetypes into Italy infused them with a harsher, grittier edge, cynically leaning into the moral grey areas of history that never found easy resolutions. Perhaps even more impactful on his style though was the cinematic nihilism of Akira Kurosawa, with samurai film Yojimbo providing the narrative template upon which A Fistful of Dollars is based.

Also key to this pivotal scene are the distinctive musical cues of Ennio Morricone – and of course the accompanying silence that he wields with solemn purpose. A sharp, short series of descending notes on a flute accompanies the Stranger’s slight head raise, matching his piercing glare as it emerges from beneath his hat brim, and a high-pitched whining on strings carries us all the way to the inevitable gunfire. From there, Morricone continues weaving textured layers all through his score for A Fistful of Dollars, creating a sound which in decades to come would be recognised as the quintessential ‘sound’ of the Western genre. Whips crack, bells toll, and male voices chant in robust unison, while underscoring the bold, silent presence of the Stranger with blaring trumpets as he daringly strides into hostile territory.

It is impossible to imagine A Fistful of Dollars without either Leone or Morricone at the helm, but the final part of their trio would in time become the face of Spaghetti Westerns, and eventually transcend even that niche. Clint Eastwood’s screen presence is undeniable as the Stranger, squinting into glary landscapes and mumbling past a cigar that sits in the corner of his mouth. Faced with a town that is split between two rival families vying for control, he uses his sharp mind and sharpshooting skills to orchestrate their downfalls, though it is also the mystery that shrouds his stoic demeanour which turns him into such a compelling figure. After all, he is the Man with No Name, unbeholden to any title, status, or allegiance. When asked by the captive Marisol why he is helping her escaping the factions she has been traded between, his response is vague, yet hints at a past that has hardened him into an aggrieved, avenging angel.

“Because I knew someone like you once. There was no one there to help.”

This is a man driven by an internal sense of right and wrong, and Leone holds no regard for whether we believe he goes too far in certain instances. His quick anger and readiness to kill mars the image of the classic Western hero upheld by Hollywood throughout its Golden Age, yet he is nevertheless the closest thing to a saviour that San Miguel has. Even after being brutally beaten by his enemies, still he refuses to yield, instead recuperating in a cave and eventually being reborn from it as a Christ figure destined to deliver the town from evil.

After all, the feud which divides San Miguel is deeply entwined with matters of prejudice, greed, and corruption. On one side, the Mexican Rojo brothers control the flow of liquor, while the white American Baxter family smuggle guns across the nearby border. Outside of both, the Stranger proves his wits in outsmarting them equally, spreading a rumour in the wake of a recent assault from the Rojos that two survivors escaped and are willing to testify against their attackers. After he props a pair of exhumed corpses against a gravestone outside town to appear alive, both families race to the cemetery and engage in a gunfight, shooting the ‘survivors’ in the process.

The distraction couldn’t have worked better for the Stranger. This is the opportunity he needed to empty the town and poke around the Rojos’ base, which Leone deftly intercuts with the battle he instigated unfolding several miles away.

It is ultimately this mutual, self-destructive hostility between the clans of San Miguel which sets in motion their own demise. Falsely believing that the Baxters helped the Stranger free Marisol from their grip, the Rojos retaliate with unrelenting fury, setting their house on fire and mercilessly massacring those who try to escape. If it weren’t for this display of utter cruelty, perhaps the Stranger’s attempt to dismantle these corrupt power structures might have been a little more forgiving. Now as they sadistically torture his closest ally Silvanito out in the open though, Eastwood projects a ferocity unlike anything we have seen from him before, commanding a wide shot that establishes him as the true law and order of this town.

Bullets cannot harm him as he fearlessly strides down the main road to face his would-be killers, instead lodging in the handmade plate armour protecting his torso. The rhythmic, accelerating pace of Leone’s montage, Morricone’s score, and the magnificent blocking of actors once again drive up the tension, though with a few added camera zooms and extreme close-ups studying each bead of sweat, the suspense also becomes unflinchingly visceral. With six gunshots, the Stranger disarms the leader Ramón, and dispatches his band of cronies. With a seventh, he severs the rope binding Silvanito’s wrists, and after challenging Ramón to a quick draw, the eighth takes his life.

In using every cinematic element at his disposal to craft suspense and set pieces, Leone stands right next to a select few elite filmmakers in cinema history, including both Hitchcock and Kurosawa. Even outside of these gripping sequences though, A Fistful of Dollars also reveals his magnificent command of establishing shots, particularly using Techniscope technology to stretch vast, dusty landscapes across a wide canvas and draw dynamic compositions from beautifully designed interiors. When the arresting majesty of his crane shots is considered next to his creative framing of faces, Leone can’t help but reveal the influence of D.W. Griffith in his camerawork as well, proving his similarly extraordinary mastery in capturing both the epic and the intimate.

The cumulative result of such varied techniques is operatic, serving a narrative that carries a far greater scope than its 100-minute runtime would suggest. Next to such grand achievements, the awful voice dubbing in A Fistful of Dollars barely warrants a mention, besides an appreciation for Leone and his crew’s perseverance through such a trying production. It seems that all it took to push the genre forward was the voice of an outsider who had never stepped foot in America, yet nevertheless had the talent and vision to cynically undermine its revered mythology, delivering a portrait of the Old West drenched in blood, sweat, and violent anarchy.

A Fistful of Dollars is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

Jean Eustache | 2hr 3min

Life is not measured by months or seasons during the year that Daniel spends with his estranged mother in Narbonne, but rather by memories drifting by in their own timeless dimension. “How long were we there? Two hours? More?” his voiceover ponders while lying next to Françoise in the long, dry grass after their first kiss, grasping at however many minutes they have left together. It is only now as he approaches the date marking his return to his hometown of Pessac that time becomes a tangible limitation in My Little Loves, threatening to halt his emergence into adolescence. How could his old childhood friends possibly understand all that he has experienced in Narbonne, and the dauntingly seductive glimpse of adulthood that has been endowed upon him?

Through the nostalgic, mundane minutia that Jean Eustache composes in My Little Loves, Daniel’s self-discovery gradually unfolds. He is a quiet observer of the world who learns through imitation, reflects its lessons back into society, and hopes to gain some admiration from his peers along the way. Before moving away from his hometown, this takes the innocent form of a magic trick he picked up from a travelling daredevil act, yet when he surrounds himself with the older boys in Narbonne his influences become far more adult orientated. At the local cinema where teenagers go to make out, Daniel uses the moves being performed by his peers and the actors onscreen to crack onto a girl sitting in front of him, before quickly leaving once he has successfully procured a kiss.

Although this film takes a far brighter, more languid tone than the highly verbose character study of The Mother and the Whore, Eustache’s admiration of François Truffaut’s avant-garde storytelling remains just as present. Much like The 400 Blows, My Little Loves dedicates its realism to the study of a boy on the verge of adolescence, grappling with the expectations of a restrictive society while seeking to understand his own nascent masculinity.

Quite dominant in this struggle is Daniel’s thirst for an academic education that his mother cannot afford, with his only lessons now coming from the moped repair shop where he is forced to work. The brown wall of tools become a recurring backdrop to his wasted days here, leaving the regular passersby glimpsed outside the window as his only entertainment – a woman who consistently visits the same corner to kiss different men, for instance, and a young mother who frequently strolls by with her pram. Daniel falls asleep thinking about her, his voiceover divulges, as Eustache frames her in a dreamy vignette effect that seems right out of Truffaut’s playbook.

Very gradually, this repetition of familiar elements develops a mundane, formal rhythm in My Little Loves, aided by the elliptical fades to black between scenes. Daniel’s matter-of-fact voiceover does not dwell too long on sentiment or poetry, but rather offers a reflective, Bressonian distance from his emotions, which even he frequently struggles to comprehend. There is no reason to rush into adulthood at his age, and so there is equally no need for Eustache to artificially raise the stakes with disingenuous plot contrivances. Character tension emerges organically as Daniel tentatively wades through uncertain waters, choosing to remain silent when a pair of customers complain about today’s youth, while elsewhere letting his actions speak loudly by stealing back his crush Françoise from his more audacious friends.

This film evidently forms a crucial link between The 400 Blows and Richard Linklater’s plotless coming-of-age films some decades later, though within that cinematic lineage as well is Eustache’s contemporary, Eric Rohmer. There is an affinity between the colour photography of his post-New Wave work and the visual warmth of My Little Loves, giving each shot the impression of an old, faded photograph taken in the heat of a French summer. Their penchant for composing stylistic frames through windows and doorways further links both auteurs too, even if Eustache is clearly far more comfortable directing less talkative protagonists than Rohmer, often letting dialogue drop away to dwell on the picturesque scenery of Pessac and Narbonne. Tree-lined walkways bisect lush parks and rural roads run next to dry, yellow fields, hosting Daniel’s wandering journeys as he bikes and ambles through landscapes handsomely shot by Rohmer’s regular cinematographer, Néstor Almendros.

Eustache’s camera is also notably freer than Rohmer’s, mostly tracing the movements of his actors through scenes, while only moving on its accord in two prominent instances. After briefly capturing Daniel lying in bed at his grandmother’s Pessac home in the film’s very first shot, a graphic match cut fades into the next morning, the bed now empty and unmade. Very gradually, it drifts past the patterned wallpaper to an open window, before cutting again to his dresser where it tracks across a small collection of framed black-and-white photos, a carved figurine, and a small painted chest. The motion is not directly attached to any character, but rather reveals the nature of Daniel’s living situation before we properly meet him – this is a child living in the home of an old woman, drastically contrasting against the dark, cramped apartment he will soon occupy in Narbonne.

If Eustache’s meandering narrative can be said to have a climax, then the second unmotivated camera movement worth noting in My Little Loves delicately builds it around the kiss shared between Daniel and Françoise, letting us slowly orbit them as they freeze in their romantic embrace. For Daniel, this is the moment where he stops being a child and begins taking charge of his own life, even though he openly admits that he has no idea what he is doing. Upon moving back to Pessac, his attempt to act upon his newfound confidence results only in nonplussed rejection when he gropes one of his friends. Maybe he will one day learn the nuances of sexual consent, or perhaps he will grow up to be as cluelessly entitled as Alexandre from The Mother and the Whore, though that future escapes the scope of Eustache’s wistful ruminations in My Little Loves. This year spent isolated from familiar childhood comforts is a point of transition for Daniel, dense with formative experiences, and tenderly revealing the whiplash of a lonely, confusing, yet stimulating adolescence.

My Little Loves is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Jean Renoir | 1hr 35min

So tragically naïve is aspiring painter Maurice Legrand’s tale that Jean Renoir does not even let his demeaning fall from grace speak for itself in La Chienne, but rather frames it within the humiliating confines of a Punch and Judy puppet show. “The play we shall perform is neither drama nor comedy,” our wood-and-felt narrator explains. “The characters are neither heroes nor villains. They’re plain folk like you and me.” Indeed, the super-imposed images of Maurice, his mistress Lulu, and her pimp Dédé take their place upon this tiny stage like figurines playing the roles assigned to them by some invisible force – perhaps a cosmic power that has already written out their fates, or maybe a humble storyteller who lingers just outside the frame.

Either way, there are some inevitable misfortunes that simply have no regard for whether one might consider themselves a good person or not. Maurice is a laughingstock among his peers, so timid that he is even overshadowed by the portrait of his wife Adele’s seemingly deceased first husband on display in his home. Nevertheless, a crack in the moral fortitude of a righteous yet weak-willed man is an opening for corruption to plant its seed. There are simply no winners to be found in Renoir’s adaptation of this French novel, especially when the storyteller deems all characters to be equally undeserving of happiness.

With La Chienne kicking off Renoir’s magnificent 1930s run, this moral fable set the wheels of France’s poetic realism in motion, weaving lyrical musings on romance and despair through Maurice, Lulu, and Dédé’s love triangle. Besides a few effective uses of stark light and shadow, it does not possess the visual harshness of German Expressionism, but rather bridges the gap between that cinematic movement and Hollywood’s film noir with its brooding fatalism and seductive femme fatale. Fourteen years later in 1945, Fritz Lang would even adapt the same literary source material in Scarlet Street, shooting in darkened studio sets modelled after New York rather than around the bright streets and buildings of Paris.

The transitory nature of La Chienne’s production is only further underscored by the recent advent of synchronous sound in film, though one wouldn’t guess this was an issue for Renoir given the way his camera completely disregards the cumbersome audio equipment, preferring to glide into new frames rather than cut away. These delicate movements demonstrate a boundless creativity, rising with a dumbwaiter into the dining hall where Maurice’s tale begins, drifting past a row of laughing guests, and settling on the pouty face of our milquetoast protagonist. When we later visit Lulu and Dédé plotting how best to take advantage of this poor fool during a lively waltz, Renoir conversely distinguishes their passion with a kinetic burst of energy, displaying an early instance of handheld camerawork as we rock and sway with their dance.

The plan to milk Maurice of his money is thus set in motion, seeing Lulu claim his paintings as her own and remarkably find far greater commercial success. The trust that he places in her is pitiful, compelling him to look past the light that is suspiciously turned on in her apartment when she isn’t home, though we can’t feel too sorry for him either. Within the meekness of Michel Simon’s performance is a self-serving cowardice that particularly emerges when he breaks up with Adele, choosing to stage a cruel reveal that her first husband is in fact alive, rather than simply owning up to his infidelity.

Renoir’s blocking of this pivotal moment arrives with a gorgeous flourish as Adele and her astonished neighbours direct their eyes towards a doorframe bordered with patterned wallpaper, within which stands a living-and-breathing Alexis. This pairing of deep focus photography with structural frames continues to mark significant plot beats from there, notably including one devastating turning point that leaves a sliver of Lulu and Dédé visible through a doorway largely obstructed by Maurice’s body, frozen in shock at discovering them in bed together.

The window of Lulu’s apartment also makes for a series of stunning compositions in La Chienne, delicately framing her and Maurice’s romantic encounters behind a row of flowers sitting just outside, and delivering a Brechtian reminder of the puppet stage that this entire story is staged upon. When it appears in the first two instances, it is formally associated with Maurice’s tender devotion, though when we return for the last time it is tragically corrupted. As the camera climbs up the side of the apartment building and continues through this frame, Renoir’s camera finally settles on a truly horrific scene – the brutal distortion of Maurice’s love into a murderous rage.

That this failed painter so easily escapes suspicion throughout the police investigation that follows is a testament to the community’s total disregard for him, unable to even tease the idea that he is capable of such a vile act. Despite Dédé being innocent for once, it simply makes far more sense to pin this crime on the widely-loathed pimp, especially since he was unlucky enough to be witnessed coincidentally visiting the murder scene around the time of Lulu’s demise.

Just as Lulu’s fate led her to the end of blade and Dédé’s to a public execution for a crime he never committed, Maurice is doomed to suffer a humiliation greater than he has ever known. Death would be preferable to this personal hell living as a haggled tramp on the streets without any work or wife, and even he acknowledges as much when he learns of Adele’s passing some years later. Having lost all dignity, there are few people who believe the words of a madman claiming responsibility for a murder that has already been solved, and those who do care little anyway.

Meanwhile, the artistic greatness that Maurice was secretly capable of is being sold for a fortune just down the street, still being attributed to the woman he killed – a prodigious painter whose life, in the eyes of the public, was taken far too soon. With his matted beard and tattered clothes, he is unrecognisable in the old self-portrait now being carried away by a customer dropping a measly 20 francs behind them as they leave. As Maurice scrabbles to pick it up, he barely even considers that this is the first and only time he has effectively received money for one of his artworks, and neither does he register the meagreness of the sum compared to what it has sold for. The meal that it will secure is good enough for our humbled antihero, now effectively rendered more invisible than ever as Renoir draws the curtains on this fable, and accepting his place as a mere puppet on life’s stage of poetic irony.

La Chienne is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase from Amazon.

Louis Malle | 1hr 31min

After assassinating his boss, staging the scene to look like a suicide, and stealthily exiting the office building after hours to run away with his victim’s wife, all it takes is a single loose end to trip Julien up. The rope he used to scale the wall still hangs from the balcony, and the only way to retrieve it is to get back up, remove the evidence, and take the elevator down before making his getaway. No one will be in until Monday morning though, so surely all of this shouldn’t be too much of a setback?

Unfortunately for Julien, the fatalistic pull of destiny has other intentions in Elevator to the Gallows, playing malicious games that intertwine his tale of love and crime with a younger, more reckless couple. Louis and Véronique are a Bonnie and Clyde for 1950s Paris, but not nearly as clever in their spontaneous rebellions. Just as security turns off the building’s power and unknowingly traps Julien in the elevator for the night, these foolhardy lovers impulsively decide to steal his car, possessions, and identity, found tucked away in his wallet. After a friendly German couple they have been drinking with call out their fraudulence, Louis is similarly driven to homicide, though it is fortunately not his name that was written on the motel registration. As a result, a manhunt begins for one Mr. Julien Tavernier – just not for the crime he has actually committed.

With such sophisticated formal patterns knitting together these parallel plotlines in Louis Malle’s narrative, it isn’t a stretch to imagine a more comical version of this film that possesses the dry, morbid humour of the Coen Brothers, contemptuously observing amateurs botch and cover up murders. As an off shoot from Classical Hollywood’s film noir and a precursor to the French New Wave though, Elevator to the Gallows is as deadly serious as can be, prioritising a dark, seductive atmosphere over intricate plot machinations. The melancholic score warrants priority in such an analysis, typifying the jazzy musical style that many falsely associate with American noirs, even though the inspired innovation first occurred here with Miles Davis improvising trumpet lines over a steady accompaniment of piano, saxophone, double bass, and drums. Never has there been a greater sound to match Jeanne Moreau’s dour, brooding expression than this, reverberating a sombre loneliness as she saunters past streetlamps dimly illuminating her rain-drenched face, before sinking her back into the shadows of Paris’ wet, gloomy streets.

As Julien’s lover Florence, Moreau is merely one player in Malle’s ensemble, but every scene she shares with a co-star inevitably sees her intoxicating presence dominate the screen. After working in the film industry for almost a decade, Elevator to the Gallows marked her true breakout, and would propel her on to fruitful collaborations with other French directors including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Demy. Her introduction here through extreme close-ups and hushed whispers over a telephone line is treacherously intimate, inviting us into a shady urban world our gut is telling us to steer clear of, yet which nonetheless piques our curiosity. Despite her direct implication in her husband’s murder, our heart still breaks when she is led to believe she has been betrayed, while Malle’s breathtaking location shooting sets her morose depression against bleary backdrops of Paris’ lights and vehicles.

Alongside Malle, credit must also go to the expressionist photography of Henri Decaë as well, who in 1958 was already on a trajectory towards greatness through his collaborations with Jean-Pierre Melville. The Venetian blinds, chiaroscuro lighting, and skilfully blocked compositions are evidently signs of two visual artists well-acquainted with film noir conventions, and how they can be manipulated to breed suspense. At the same time, the lack of studio polish in Elevator to the Gallows also signals a purposeful engagement with cinema’s avant-garde potential. Malle is clearly looking to its future here just as much as he is calling back to its past, and isn’t afraid to let his narrative wander off on tangents that we trust will eventually tie back together, paying off on the intriguing formal mirroring between these couples.

By the time Julien manages to free himself from the elevator the next morning, his picture has already been posted in local papers for the crime committed by Louis and Véronique, who in turn have attempted suicide back home to avoid capture. Time passes slowly in the black void where Julien is captured and interrogated in a black void, drifting by on long dissolves while Florence works desperately on the outside to absolve him of his false accusation. Just as Julien’s rope had ruined an otherwise flawless murder and cover-up, so too are Louis and Véronique incriminated as the German couple’s killers by the roll of film they had stolen from Julien’s car, and carelessly left behind at the motel. Unfortunately for Florence though, so too does it contain photos revealing the truth of her affair with Julien, and thereby expose them as her husband’s executioners.

Not only that, but Florence’s own future seems far rockier now that she has been implicated too, while the death sentence that Julien was previously facing seems to be downgraded to a few years in prison. As Davis’ wistful trumpet croons, Malle’s camera sits on those photos of Florence and Julien slowly developing in the rippling water, just barely catching the upside-down reflection of her sombre face.  “No more ageing, no more days. I’ll go to sleep. I’ll wake up alone,” her voiceover murmurs, resigning to a destiny she still hopes will one day set her free.

“Ten years, twenty years. I wasn’t indulgent. But I know I still loved you. I wasn’t thinking of myself. I’ll be old from now on. But we’re together here. Together again, somewhere. You see, they can’t keep us apart.”

If fate can find its way back to the perpetrators of two near-perfect crimes by unexpectedly converging both, then surely it can also one day reunite these sweethearts whose love must be similarly preordained, Florence reasons. Given how much destiny seems to have a mind of its own throughout Elevator to the Gallows though, it is not so easy for us to rely on the faith of a condemned, lovesick woman, desperate to find hope in a perilously mischievous universe.

Elevator to the Gallows is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the Blu-ray is available to purchase from Amazon.