Get Out: Elevator to the Gallows at SIFF Cinema

We can guarantee that when you think of French New Wave cinema, a sultry feeling of cool washes over you. Suddenly, even if you can't name one French New Wave film, you're driven to wander forlornly down moodily lit city streets wondering where your lover has gone while an ultra-cool soundtrack plays in the background and your lover is trapped, desperately trying to reach you.

All of that is thanks to Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows which leads off tonight's double feature at SIFF Cinema. Simply put, this is the coolest movie ever made and we don't mean cool in the sense of "neat." We mean cool like Miles Davis was cool. We mean the kind of cool you had to have in order to sit in a smoky lounge circa 1958 listening to George Shearing while nursing a bourbon (neat, natch). We mean the kind of cool that makes it sound normal when you say "natch."

The main plot is pretty simple. Jeanne Moreau wanders the streets of Paris wondering why her lover, played by Maurice Ronet, is not back from murdering her husband (for whom he works). Ronet hasn't made it back because the power went out just as he was making his escape in the elevator. But it's not the plot that matters as much as how the story looks while it's being told. How it sounds is just as vital: The score -- mostly improvised by Miles Davis -- helps make the movie what it is (listen).

We haven't seen the second feature in tonight's double header, Touchez pas au Grisbi (Don't Touch the Loot), but it sounds like a classic film noir thriller that we'll love, based as it is on a pulp novel. Since we still have a collection of Maigret mysteries by Georges Simenon from our childhood, we'll probably hang around to see it.

But it's really Elevator that's getting us to SIFF Cinema tonight, and it should get you there too.

Elevator to the Gallows tonight at 7:30 pm and Touchez pas au Gribisi at 9:30 pm. They're playing as a double feature so one ticket gets you into both. SIFF Cinema is at 321 Mercer St. in McCaw Hall at Seattle Center.