Two couples — one young and in love, the other threatened by an extramarital affair — intersect in the most unfortunate manner in Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (US: Elevator to the Gallows), considered by many to be the first film of the French New Wave, combining streetwise criminality, youthful rebellion, and an American jazz score two full years before Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 À bout de souffle (Breathless). Anti-war veteran Julien Tarvernier (Maurice Ronet) murders his war profiteering employer in the office after hours, making it look like suicide, then flees to meet up with the dead man’s wife Florence (Jeanne Moreau) who is also Julien’s lover. Leaving his convertible idling outside, Julien re-enters the building to retrieve a piece of evidence but gets stuck in the elevator, providing sufficient time for the young Louis (Georges Poujouly) and Véronique (Yori Bertin) to steal his car, which contains his identification and his gun, and go for a joyride. It’s a fantastic setup that leads to mistaken identity, attempted suicide, and multiple additional murders. Malle’s debut launched not only his career but a distinctive style of realism: note, for example, the sequence in which Moreau wistfully wanders the Paris streets bathed in neon lights, not always flatteringly, and soothed by plaintive trumpet and bass, or the police interrogation scene which cinematographer Decaë lights as a stage production, a sea of pitch black surrounding the spotlit desk and actors, anxiety building along with the rattle of cymbals.