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Ray Vega returns for part two of his exploration of films with great jazz soundtracks, this time looking at Louis Malle’s supremely stylish proto-New-Wave 1958 noir, featuring a knockout soundtrack from no less than Miles Davis. Just 25 years old when he made the film, Malle employs a moderately ridiculous plot as a mechanism to film Jeanne Moreau wandering around Paris at night, looking sad. Legendary cinematographer Henri Decaë – the man behind the lens for some of the best films by Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut – creates Paris as a dreamy, nocturnal wonderland of sexy sadness and elegant longing. An important pre-New-Wave film – and a definite touchstone for Godard’s Breathless just two years later (another movie about a guy, a girl, a gun and a nice car set to a jazz soundtrack) – Elevator to the Gallows remains a fabulously French cinematic experience.
As for the soundtrack, legend has it that Davis wrote the score in one sitting while watching the film, then recorded the music in one late-night session while sipping champagne with Louis Malle and Jeanne Moreau between takes. Some people know how to live.