[archielc]

Norton Commander - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander. Not sure how elegant on the inside, but it comes from the era when software development was not so fast paced. And the fact that it inspired so many spin-offs (just to mention few that I personally used: Volkov Commander, Midnight Commander, FAR Manager, and my favourite - DOS Navigator (it had spreadsheet!)).

[Tao332]

Pretty much everything I can think of as elegant either runs in the shell (k9s, nano) or is the shell (fish).

[anthk]

MC is unvaluable with directories full of docs.