Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (or Lift to the Scaffold) was directed by Louis Malle in 1958, and adapted from Noël Calef’s book written in 1956. The French film was considered a Film Noir, which was a 1940’s cinema style featuring femme fatales, crimes, claustrophobic sensations, and very dark atmospheres. The Maltese Falcon and Touch of Evil are other examples of this style. Louis Malle explains during an interview he was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson, both really famous film directors of the time: “Today, I don’t see Ascenseur as an exercise in style. Rather, I see an ambitious film from a first-time director who wanted to reconcile his contradictory admiration for Bresson and Hitchcock” . While Hitchcock was known for his suspense and surprising movies, Bresson used a more spiritual, daunting and disorienting style.…show more content… For example when the two young lovers Veronique and Louis try to commit suicide together. It relates to Hitchcock’s thought that feelings and bombs have similar effects. This Film Noir was a notable success for the public and the press. This was mostly due to the fact that the directors took elements from traditional old cinema, while incorporating new elements and stylistic features. The movie was shot in France, in 1957, in the middle of the post-war period, although the colonial conflicts in Indochina and Algeria were still running. The failing 4th republic government was unstable and economically weak. The movie highlights the fast modernisation of the society, with the trendy technologies acquired by the newly consumer