Its certainly an assured and impressive first feature. Some of the filming inside the lift shaft is amazing with tight angles and a daring level of suspense, the rainy nighttime scenes of Moreau searching the Paris streets are wonderful, the dark black and sparkling white shining as if new on the Blu-ray disc. But the things that go wrong verge on the comedic and the young kid and the German tourists are poorly drawn. Brilliant though much of he early film is, after about an hour I found my attention waning and I began to muse on why a car would have been left with its engine running, why a lift would have been used when the building was about to be shut up, why you would sit and smoke in such an enclosed space? Not terrible but not very original and not a patch on almost any US noir B-picture from the previous ten years. Far too self conscious to be a real noir contender.
Review of Elevator to the Gallows
