Described as "eclectic" and "a filmmaker difficult to pin down", Malle made documentaries, romances, period dramas, and thrillers.

Malle worked as co-director and cameraman with Jacques Cousteau on the documentary The Silent World (1956), which won an Oscar and the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival, respectively.

He assisted Robert Bresson on A Man Escaped (Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, 1956) before making his first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud in 1957 (released in the U.K. as Lift to the Scaffold and in the U.S. originally as Frantic, later as Elevator to the Gallows).

A taut thriller featuring an original score by Miles Davis, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud made an international film star of Jeanne Moreau, at the time a leading stage actress of the Comédie-Française.

Malle's The Lovers (Les Amants, 1958), which also starred Moreau, caused major controversy due to its sexual content, leading to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case about the legal definition of obscenity.

Other films also tackled taboo subjects: The Fire Within centers on a man about to commit suicide, Le souffle au cœur (1971) deals with an incestuous relationship between mother and son, and Lacombe, Lucien (1974), co-written with Patrick Modiano, is about collaboration with the Nazis in Vichy France during World War II.

His later films include Pretty Baby (1978), Atlantic City (1980), My Dinner with Andre (1981), Crackers (1984), Alamo Bay (1985), Damage (1992) and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya) in English; and Au revoir les enfants (1987) and Milou en Mai (May Fools in the U.S., 1990) in French.

Towards the end of his life, cultural correspondent Melinda Camber Porter interviewed Malle extensively for The Times.