Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Lift to the Scaffold)

Exactly 60 years ago Louis Malle was finishing his first feature film, a stylish thriller titled “Ascenseur pour l’échafaud”, starring Jeanne Moreau. The 25-year-old French director invited Miles Davis, then beginning a European tour, to provide the soundtrack. The other members of the quintet were the saxophonist Barney Wilen, the pianist René Urtreger, the bassist Pierre Michelot and the drummer Kenny Clarke. Over two days in a Paris studio in December 1957 they improvised the music while scenes were screened for them. By giving his musicians nothing more than a few chords as a basis for improvisation, Davis discovered an entirely new direction for his music, one that led directly to the modal jazz of “Kind of Blue”, the best selling jazz album of all time, and beyond. The artificial echo added after the recording enhanced the mood of a film which gave early impetus to Malle’s distinguished career and became recognised as a vital precursor of French cinema’s nouvelle vague.