Shoot the Piano Player

Infobox Film
name = Shoot the Piano Player


image_size =
caption = The original theatrical poster.
director = François Truffaut
producer = Pierre Braunberger
writer = François Truffaut
Marcel Moussy
David Goodis (novel)
narrator =
starring = Charles Aznavour
Marie Dubois
Albert Rémy
music = Georges Delerue
cinematography = Raoul Coutard
editing = Claudine Bouché
Cécile Decugis
distributor = Cocinor
released = November 25, 1960
runtime = 92 minutes
country = France
language = French
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0054389

"Shoot the Piano Player" (French: "Tirez sur le pianiste", aka "Shoot the Pianist") is a 1960 French film directed by François Truffaut.

Truffaut's stylized and self-reflexive melodrama employs the hallmarks of French New Wave cinema: extended voice-overs, out-of-sequence shots, sudden jump cuts, and more.

The film is loosely based on the novel "Down There" by David Goodis. It 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 resolves itself into both a tribute to the American genre of literary and cinematic noir and a meditation on the relationship between art and commercialism.

Plot

A washed-up classical pianist, Charlie Koller/Eduard Saroyan (Charles Aznavour), bottoms out after his wife's suicide — stroking the keys in a Parisian dive bar. The waitress, Lena (Marie Dubois), is falling in love with Charlie, who it turns out is not who he says he is. When his brothers get in trouble with gangsters, Charlie inadvertently gets dragged into the chaos and is forced to rejoin the family he once fled.

External links

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* [http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=315&eid=457&section=essay Criterion Collection essay by Kent Jones]