Jazzfest: Elevator to the Gallows

Paris 1957. Jeanne Moreau walks the streets at night to the hoarse notes of Miles Davis' trumpet. She waits for her lover, Tavernier, who is stuck in the elevator of the office building where he works after he shot her husband. The plan is for them to run away together. At the same time, a younger couple steals his car, which is parked outside. Nothing goes as planned on this fateful night in Paris.

Elevator to the Gallows is one of the most stylish French films ever made, perhaps the very essence of "French cool", evocatively filmed in black and white, with flashing neon lights, cigarette smoke and a legendary, improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis at the height of his career, and with Jeanne Moreau at her most irresistible. The film combines restless energy and lingering moods, and tells an impossible story in which all the characters are lost in their own way. The Elevator to the Scaffold is a thriller, but also a film noir, and the film is often considered the first nouvelle vague film.

The movie is shown as a collaboration between Cinemateket, Jazzfest Kosmorama International Film Festival.