Lift to the Gallows

Another great soundtrack that I’d like to present to you is the music for the 1958 French film “Ascenseur pour l'échafaud” (released in the US as “Elevator to the Gallows” and in the UK as “Lift to the Scaffold”.) As well as Miles also uses a leitmotif or a repeating melody (actually two of them) throughout the whole soundtrack. It wasn’t actually his intention nor the case of using the method, but when you listen to the album, it feels like he did. The story of the recording is quite different that one would actually expect; Davis only gave the musicians a few basic harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room the night before, and the band improvised without any precomposed theme, while edited loops of the musically relevant film sequences were projected in the background. Tom Waits’ “Night On Earth”,

It was recorded at Le Poste Parisien Studio in Paris on December 4 and 5, 1957. It was Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a jazz fan and director Louis Malle's assistant at the time, who suggested asking Miles Davis to create the film's soundtrack. Miles was booked to perform at the Club Saint-Germain in Paris for November 1957. Rappeneau introduced him to Malle, and Davis agreed to record the music after attending a private screening. On December 4, he brought his four sidemen (French jazzmen -- bassist Pierre Michelot, pianist René Urtreger, and tenor saxophonist Barney Wilen -- and American expatriate drummer Kenny Clarke) to the recording studio and in two days they finished the job.

In Europe, the soundtrack was originally released as a 10 inch LP on the Fontana label. In America, it was released by Columbia as side one of the album “Jazz Track”, with the second side filled by three new tracks recorded with his regular sextet. The album received a Grammy nomination in 1960 for Best Jazz Performance, Solo or Small Group. While the movie itself was praised for several novelties it introduced in the production process, the score was also dubbed as groundbreaking in the sense of the relationship that the film establishes between the music and the visuals.