Ascenseur Pour LEchafaud

Description

Ascenseur Pour Léchafaud is a 1958 French film directed by Louis Malle. It was released as Lift to the Scaffold in the UK. The film was nothing special, but it did accomplish one thing: it proposed a new ideal of cinematic realism, a new way to look at a woman. Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a jazz fan and Malles assistant at the time, suggested asking Miles Davis to create the films Soundtrack. He showed Davis a screening of the movie, and afterwards Miles knew exactly how to portray the smoky hazed or frantic scenes through sonic imagery. On December 4 1957, he brought four French Jazzmen (Barney Wilen / tenor saxophone, René Urtreger / piano, Pierre Michelot bass and Kenny Clarke drums) to the recording studio Le Poste Parisien Studio without having them prepare anything. Davis only gave the musicians a few rudimentary harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room. Eventually Ascenseur Pour Léchafaud has become a great achievement of artistic excellence.