Elevator to the Gallows - B / Les Amants - C
Now Playing: (both Louis Malle, 1957/1958) [seen in theatre]
Gotta say this Malle/Moreau double feature didn't really blow my hair back. Perhaps it's that Moreau's never really done much for me- I know her jowly soulfulness represents all that's right with French cinema to some, but I just can't join in the chorus in this one (were she cast in 8 Women, she prolly would've been a party pooper). Or maybe it's my overwhelming disdain for gratuitous voiceover. I mean, dudes, show us or tell us, one or the other, but to do both, well that's just lazy. Either way, this pair let me down. Didn't know much about Elevator besides director and cast and that Miles Davis improvised the score. It's a pretty small-scale film, with Moreau as a company owner's wife who gets her boyfriend to kill hubby so they can run off together, and of course things don't go quite as planned. I liked the relaxed pace of the movie, which served to steadily build tension, as well as the proto-New-Wave look and feel of the thing. Some scenes worked nicely too, especially when the dude is stuck in the elevator. But Malle has to go and kill more than one scene with voiceover that basically underlined the emotions on Moreau's face, which really ought to speak for themselves thank you very much.

Still, it was better than the once-controversial Amants, which was once the subject of obscenity trials here in Ohio (ground zero for censorship it seems, lest we forget the to-do over the theatre re-cutting Center of the World two years back). Not sure if the hubbub was over the carefree way in which Moreau leaves her husband or (more likely) a few glimpses of her boob, but either way, it looks pretty tame now. And in my opinion anyway, if a movie divorced from the context of its notoriety fails to be effective, it's just not very worthwhile (see also: High Noon). So what we're left with is rich and idle Moreau, her workaholic hubby, her playboy boyfriend, her dumbass best friend, and some guy she's just met but has already fallen in love with. They get together, Moreau and her new flame do a proto-Semi-Obligatory-Lyrical-Interlude (thanks to Ebert for that one- oh, and is one reason this movie gets critical love because the Semi-OLI is set to Brahms instead of some long-forgotten Flower Power combo? Sorry, digression...), and then they run off while nobody else does anything about it. HUH??? I mean, yeah, I guess I can accept the idea that she'd fall in love with this guy she just met, and they might even be so passionately feeling it that they'd make haste from the company of the others (though they don't exactly heat up the screen), but when the only reaction any of the others has is the dumbass friend saying how shocked she is at Moreau and the two dudes just stand there as if to say "hey, cool, bon voyage, you crazy kids!" as though they were audience members watching this movie rather than HER HUSBAND AND HER PREVIOUS LOVER, that sounds an alarm bell or two in my brain. Maybe the even-more-tiresome-than-in-Elevator to the Gallows gratuitous voiceover by Moreau (made even more mannered and unwelcome by her referring to herself in the third person throughout) clouded my judgment, but I don't care. This isn't a good movie and certainly not the classic that so many people are making it out to be. If I have to watch an Amants movie again, they'd better be in the immediate vicinity of the Pont-Neuf.