ABSTRACT
Clearly stairs are not going to disappear any time soon shows that there are a lot fewer stair scenes in film, in particular in the more recent decades, especially in American movies. This chapter is in two parts: the first considers specifically the position of stairs, the central spine of the house which entrances, landings, corridors and doors feed from and into. The second part is a case study of a sequence in Godard's Le Mépris (1963), where all the elements are thrown together in joining even more dots. The staircase, which controls all the vertical movements, is the most important organ of a block of flats. Staircases have indeed become an endangered species and have been replaced by lifts and elevators, although they survive mainly as escape staircases. The lift provides the crucial link that joins entrance, two doors and the upper-floor corridor.
