[Image: Jeanne Moreau and Miles Davis]
A couple of days ago I ran across this list of (according to the Guardian) the “Top Ten Film Noir.” It was an interesting selection; I couldn’t recall seeing a a few of them, and one — #7 on the list, 1958’s Lift to the Scaffold — I couldn’t remember even hearing of. Said the Guardian:
Louis Malle’s first fiction feature, based on Noel Calef’s 1956 novel, occupies a very interesting space. It qualifies as film noir for its appropriation of US postwar cinema in its tale of lovers gone bad, but also heralds the imminent arrival of the French new wave. The director was in his mid-20s at the time and clearly using the crime-thriller genre (something he never returned to) as a testing ground and not a strict template. Perhaps that explains why his film is such a melting pot of influences, drawing not only on Hitchcock but also the Master of Suspense’s overseas admirers, including Henri-Georges Clouzot and his Les Diaboliques.
…in the film’s signature sequence [Jeanne Moreau’s character, Florence’s] man fails to turn up, so she walks the streets trying vainly to find him. Filmed on the fly without professional lighting, accompanied only by Miles Davis’s brilliant, melancholy score, these few minutes capture the bleak and beautiful essence of Malle’s film.
When I finally got around to looking it up on Wikipedia, I found (among the usual “much else”) a quote from a reviewer, jazz critic Phil Johnson:
The score by Miles Davis has been described by jazz critic Phil Johnson as “the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear, and the model for sad-core music ever since. Hear it and weep.”
(Johnson’s description appears to be pretty much de rigeur in anything posted on the Web about the soundtrack.)
All of which more or less commanded me to hunt the film down. We rarely rent DVDs anymore, preferring the convenience of streaming films and old TV shows. The search took several tries: in the first place, the Guardian‘s piece referred to the film only by its British title; and, in the second, my main resources for streaming films (Netflix and Amazon) currently offer the film only via DVD. (I finally found it to stream on Hulu Plus.)
Although it’s now in the Hulu queue, I haven’t actually seen the film yet. But the Miles Davis score — oh, my. From the first listen, I knew I’d have to post the whole thing this week. It’s not even a half-hour long*; still, if you put it on auto-replay while writing, don’t be surprised to find “guns, dames, and hats” (as the Guardian sums up the genre) creeping into your storyline.
| # | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Générique | 2:48 |
| 02 | L’Assassinat De Carala | 2:09 |
| 03 | Sur L’Autoroute | 2:17 |
| 04 | Julien Dans L’Ascenseur | 2:09 |
| 05 | Florence Sur Les Champs-Élysées | 2:50 |
| 06 | Dîner Au Motel | 3:57 |
| 07 | Évasion De Julien | 0:51 |
| 08 | Visite Du Vigile | 2:03 |
| 09 | Au Bar Du Petit Bac | 2:52 |
| 10 | Chez Le Photographe Du Motel | 3:04 |
(Note: The playlist goes automatically from start to finish, once you click the little Play button. To skip to the next number, once a song is playing you’ll find a little fast-forward button to the right of its progress meter — and a fast-rewind to the left, for that matter.)
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* The ten songs here are as they appeared on the original soundtrack album; they all appear in the film. However, a later release of the album included sixteen additional tracks — alternate takes, sometimes multiples, of the core ten. A recent re-release of the soundtrack (as above) omitted these out-takes, a fact which drives some Amazon reviewers crazy: they feel cheated. Sorry; I myself just cannot get worked up about missing the snippets from the cutting-room floor — not given the score as delivered.
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