François Truffaut directed Shoot the Piano Player (French: Tirez sur le pianiste; UK title: Shoot the Pianist), a noir crime drama that followed up his splashy debut, The 400 Blows.
Grade: A- (**** out of *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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Based on the novel Down There by David Goodis, the movie stars Charles Aznavour (better known as a singer) as the titular pianist, and with Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, and Michèle Mercier as the three women in his life.
In Paris, Édouard Saroyan hits rock bottom after his wife Thérèse confesses that his career as a concert pianist is s result of her sleeping with a top agent. When he fails to respond, she kills herself.
Under the assumed name of Charlie Koller, he now strokes the keys in Plyne’s bar. When she has no clients, he spends the rest of the night with Clarisse, a prostitute who cooks for his little brother Fido.
Meanwhile, the bar’s waitress Lena, secretly knowing his true identity, is falling in love with Charlie.
When his two older brothers steal the loot of some gangsters, the men abduct Charlie and Léna. They manage to escape through Léna’s initiative, and back in her room, they make love.
The gangsters then abduct Fido, who reveals his brother’s hideout. Léna realizes the gangsters traced Charlie and Fido through Plyne, who wants to sleep with her and is jealous of Charlie.
In a bar confrontation, Charlie accidentally kills Plyne and Léna then smuggles him out of Paris to a mountain hideout.
In the concluding shoot-out, the gangsters arrive with Fido, and Léna is killed.
The film shares the novel’s bleak plot about a man hiding from his shattered life by doing the only thing he knows how to do, while remaining unable to escape the past.
However, Truffaut’s work is richer in text and subtext, functioning at once as a tribute to the American genre of film noir and a reflexive meditation on the relationship between art and commerce.
Truffaut wanted to shock the audience that had loved The 400 Blows by making a film that would “please only the real film nuts.” He had several ideas for films about children, but was afraid of repeating himself. He told a reporter “I refused to be a prisoner of my own first success. I discarded temptation to renew that success by choosing a ‘great subject.’ I turned my back on what everyone waited for and I took my pleasure as my only rule of conduct.”
Truffaut wanted to keep the film loose and abstract, but co-writer Marcel Moussy disagreed and opted to leave after a few weeks. As Truffaut had considered Goodis novel to be too chaste, he decided to make the characters less heroic.
Thus, Charlie’s personality is more complex and ambivalent in the movie than in the book. Goodis’s Edward Webster Lynn (whose name Truffaut changed into Charlie) is a strong, self-confident guy who has chosen his solitude, whereas Truffaut’s Charlie lives in isolation, as a shy, withdrawn, and reclusive man. Going the opposite direction, he therefore made the protagonist weaker and all the female characters stronger.
Cast
Charles Aznavour as Charlie Koller-Edouard Saroyan
Marie Dubois as Léna
Nicole Berger as Thérèse Saroyan
Michèle Mercier as Clarisse
Serge Davri as Plyne
Claude Mansard as Momo
Richard Kanayan as Fido Saroyan
Albert Rémy as Chico Saroyan
Jean-Jacques Aslanian as Richard Saroyan
Daniel Boulanger as Ernest
Claude Heymann as Lars Schmeel
Alex Joffé as Passerby
Boby Lapointe as The Singer
Catherine Lutz as Mammy
Credits:
Directed by François Truffaut
Screenplay by Truffaut, Marcel Moussy, based on Down There
1956 book by David Goodis
Produced by Pierre Braunberger
Cinematography Raoul Coutard
Edited by Claudine Bouché, Cécile Decugis
Music by Georges Delerue
Production company: Les Films de la Pléiade
Distributed by Les Films du Carrosse
Running time: 81 Minutes
Release date: November 25, 1960 (France)
