How the Paris of Lift to the Scaffold looks today

Over a 40-year career, French director Louis Malle seemed able to turn his hand to almost any type of cinema, whether documentary, comedy or crime. Having won the Palme d’Or with his debut feature The Silent World (1956), an undersea documentary co-directed with Jacques Cousteau, he made his solo fiction debut with a film for the ages: romantic crime drama Lift to the Scaffold (1958).

Based on the novel by Noël Calef, Malle’s film follows two overlapping crimes. The main one concerns Julien (Maurice Ronet), who murders his employer Simon (Jean Wall) in the building where they work, making it look like suicide. He’s intending to run away with Simon’s wife Florence (Jeanne Moreau), but just as he’s about to leave he notices he’s left a vital clue in the building and heads back to remove it. But in doing so, he becomes trapped in a lift and the plan falls apart.

Outside, his scheme is further unravelling. Julien’s car has been stolen by two tearaways, Louis (Georges Poujouly) and Véronique (Yori Bertin). They stay the night in a motel out of town, only to end up using Julien’s revolver to murder a couple they befriend. Can Julien escape from both the crime he has committed and the one he’s wrongly suspected of?

Malle’s film features some of the most atmospheric shots of Paris seen in any film of the period. The moody black-and-white photography, coupled with Miles Davis’s evocative score, makes its night segments especially effective, with Jeanne Moreau’s lonely walk through the dark now one of French cinema’s most distinctive images.

Here are five locations from the film as they stand today.

Julien’s plan is reliant on the very architecture of the building where he works. The building drives the narrative and even foils his fine-tuned plan. Malle films the location in detail, finding different ways to shoot its designs throughout. The building was originally at 26 to 28 rue de Courcelles. We can see the street and the adjacent boulevard Haussmann as Julien exits.

With the many architectural changes that have occurred in Paris since the 1960s, the building itself has changed dramatically, with an entirely new design for its frontage. However, Julien’s plan could still work as the overall structure of the building, including the tiers at the top, has been retained and simply given a modern redesign. 

Later, when Florence becomes worried Julien isn’t coming, she heads to the building to look for him. She is seen waiting outside before walking away towards rue Paul Cézanne.  

Julien’s plan seems to go wrong almost straight away. He leaves the rope hanging from where he climbed into the office of the murdered man, running to get it back as it would dash the story he’s concocted of suicide. In the meantime, he leaves his car outside a florist’s, where Louis and Véronique steal it. The shop was 168 boulevard Haussmann and is still a florist’s today.

Malle also shoots from the perspective of the florist’s, looking back over boulevard Haussmann towards the building of the film. 

Finally, the pair steal the car and drive off up the north side of rue de Courcelles. This shot is taken just before the various shots of their getaway.

Part of Julien and Florence’s plan is to rendezvous at a café not too far from the office. The café was the Royal Camée at 182 boulevard Haussmann. We see Florence waiting there at various points in the film, before it gets late and she wanders in search of Julien.

Today, the café is an Italian restaurant, and the layout of the road around it has changed in the intervening years.

After Louis and Véronique have returned from their murderous sojourn out of town, the young couple head to a flat. The address was at 55 boulevard de Grenelle, noticeable in particular by the large entrance to its inner courtyard.

Florence also manages to track down the location later in the film, and Malle provides a closer view of the doorway. The shops around it have changed, but very little else has.

Stealing yet another car, the Mercedes 300 SL Coupé belonging to the couple they’ve murdered, Louis and Véronique drive it back to Paris and dump it. Malle shoots them as they drive along the pont de Bir-Hakeim, which – with its distinctive pillars supporting the raised train track – is unchanged today, though certainly busier.

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