Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958)

Elevator to the Gallows is a brilliantly constructed misdirection, moving so quickly into a premeditated murder that, in retrospect, it's only natural that the film should so quickly switch gears due to mishaps. Malle soon plunges into a series of things going awry that introduces characters solely to trap them in their own morbid downfalls. The film sometimes gets labeled as a film noir, yet the film's sense of macabre irony is far more indicative of the coming genre deconstruction of the Nouvelle Vague than just another thriller. Indeed, for all the icy beauty of the picture, Elevator to the Gallows is often a dark riot, made by a director with a multilayered, daring grasp on cinema even with this marvelous debut.

The film begins with the hushed, torrid whispers of lovers speaking to each other on the telephone, reaffirming their romance and putting the final touches on a plan to kill the husband of the woman, Florence (Jeanne Moreau), who is also Julien's (Maurice Ronet) boss. With silent precision, Malle immediately cuts to the act in question, an absurdly grandiose maneuver that has Julien scaling the modern office building walls of glass to sneak into Simon's floor without detection, allowing him to kill the old industrialist and frame it as a suicide. Undetected, Julien climbs back down to his office and leaves, getting out to his car and putting the key in the ignition before he takes one last look at the building and...notices he left the rope danging. All it takes is one slip-up.