Elevators and the movies

= Elevators and the movies

3D"Elevators

Elisha Otis knew elevators were safe, but = that was before Stanley Kubrick filled one with blood.

The Shining’s= final elevator scene scared people silly and even turned some of them into stair climbers for a few days. But Kubrick was merely following in the well-worn footsteps of directors worldwide who had made elevators, some of = them built by Otis, integral parts of their movies for generations.

When elevators are turned into tiny soundstages they become perfect dramatic settings for the creative director. The doors close and elevators become moving crucibles in which to ignite all kinds of human reactions. Love, hate, laughter, violence, nonsense = 212; all ride the elevator.

Even horses ride the elevator. In the Arnold Schwarzenegger farce, True Lies, a motorcycle-riding villain rides into a glass-wal= led elevator and is chased to the roof by Schwarzenegger on horseback in an adjacent elevator. In the establishing shot, a real horse is ridden into a = real elevator. From that point on, a mechanical horse and dummy elevator are use= d.

Elevators are too often portrayed in ways the industry would just as soon forget as they jerk to terrifying stops or plunge down the sha= ft in suspense films like Speed. Or, as in Alien, take on an evil personality of their own.

But elevators also preserve and deliver us. Think of all the heroines that have been saved as elevator doors close at the last second to foil a villain’s desperate attempts to pry them open with his fingernails. And just as often those same heroines reach the ground floor o= nly to be surprised by the villain’s henchmen as the doors open. And, who= did not gasp a little when the doors of Mel Gibson’s private penthouse elevator opened and admitted a murder-minded kidnapper in Ransom?

And elevators do wonderful things in the movies that they don’t do on the job — like staying open for several minutes as lovers say goodbye — without ringing alarms or closing the doors. But they also can close quickly enough to pinch the dweeby= office boy’s nose, despite the safeties designed to prevent such entrapment.

The fact is that most movie elevators are not elevators at a= ll. To keep costs down and also to give camera operators space in which to shoo= t, the studios, sometimes using parts from Otis or other manufacturers, build = most movie elevators from scratch. If you’re watching some old classics, O= tis parts and advice were included in The Lady Gambles, An Act of Mur= der and Sleeping City.

The memorable scene in Harvey, in which Elwood P. Dowd, played by Jimmy Stewart, is yanked off his feet and into an elevator headed to the second floor of the Chu= mley Rest Sanitarium, also contains Otis equipment. Even though Harvey was released in 1950, the device that operates the iron gates at the Chumley Rest looks suspiciously like an Otis K-type car switch from the early 1900s= .

Otis has not always been in front of the camera. Back in 1929 with the advent of "talkies," Otis built and sold a "loud speaker elevator" that raised a set of four speakers from below stage level.

"In order to make it appear the sound emanates from the picture, it is necessary to place loud speakers directly in back of the scr= een, and elevators of this type bring these speakers into the proper position automatically and without loss of time," a = Otis brochure promised.

The curtain may have closed on the era of loudspeaker elevat= ors, but you can bet that Otis and elevators will continue to be part of film's future whenever directors want to scare us out of our wits or provide a pri= vate nook for a quick kiss between floors. =