In 1987, as the trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie unfolds on television, French businessman Victor Bastien (Hippolyte Girardot) finds a distressing “Aryan declaration” authored by his late father among family documents. His mother, Rivka (the legendary Jeanne Moreau), keeps a stubborn silence. As Victor becomes more obsessed with past secrets, he takes his family to the tiny village where Rivka’s parents were forced to hide during the war. A poignant and ultimately optimistic portrait of a family’s confrontation with the wounds of the past and their hopes for a better future.

The middle film in director Michelangelo Antonioni’s acclaimed early-1960s trilogy of alienation puts an upper-class marriage under the microscope as it disintegrates. After successful author Marcello Mastroianni and his wife (Jeanne Moreau) visit a hospital to see a dying friend, they go to a party where each meets a flirtatious guest (Giorgio Negro and Monica Vitti) and is forced to confront the emptiness of their relationship. A Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear winner (and one of Stanley Kubrick’s favorite films).

“I knew I loved you, but I thought only of myself,” murmurs gorgeous Jeanne Moreau - after setting in motion a murderous plot involving her fat-cat husband, a young intelligence officer (Maurice Ronet) and some of the darkest twists and turns in French cinema. Made when Malle was only 25 years old, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS helped jump-start the French New Wave as one of the first films to represent the new young voice in French cinema. The dazzling cinematography is by Henri Decaë (who also shot THE 400 BLOWS) and the sublime jazz score is by Miles Davis.