Shoot the Piano Player




.

When you hear about the French New Wave, it's always Godard this, Godard that, Godard blah blah blah.

Charlie (Charles Aznavour) is a simple guy who plays piano in a bar for peanuts. When his trouble making brother Chico (Albert Rémy) comes to him for help, he reluctantly provides it in a pinch. Not thinking much of it, Charlie's life gets a little more complicated when the men after Chico start putting pressure on him. All the while the barmaid Léna (Marie Dubois) happens to be in love with him, and knows all about the past that Charlie keeps hidden beneath his shy exterior.

Shoot the Piano Player (or Tirez sur le pianiste) is a film that brilliantly melds complex with simple in a casual, occasionally funny kind of way. While it is a gangster movie, François Truffaut exercises his dislike for the genre and frequently pauses the narrative to look at more interesting things, like that little human element thing. That's partly what bogs Godard's celebrated films down; like in those, a lot of intellectual issues are thrown around (especially the perplexing issue of women), but here it's not forced or overly contemplative. It's natural. In fact the whole film flows so naturally, often from dramatic to incredibly humorous to tragic, all without skipping a beat in a way that's more than a couple decades ahead of its time. While it emulates the American gangster films of the 30's and 40's, Shoot the Piano Player's wide influence can be seen spread across the decades and their respective directors, from Woody Allen to Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino. While Breathless may be the more popular French New Wave film to have come out in 1960, in many ways this is the better film of the two.

Charles Aznavour's sublime performance is many things, haunting being the first adjective to spring to mind. His indecisive and withdrawn personality could be the subject of endless studies; there's no way Aznavour could have possibly played him better. The story is male-centric, though the assertive Marie Dubois as Léna does make quite an impression with her fanciful words of love and ambition.

Gritty but fun, insightful but accessible, completely honest while somehow still poignant. The opening shot of a two-bit piano playing some two-bit tune says it all.



-The Gnome