358. Tirez Sur Le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) (1960)

Directed By Francois Truffaut

Synopsis

An ex-concert pianist, who now lives by playing in a café, gets drawn into some shit one of his brothers did.

Review

My feelings about the French Nouvelle Vague are mixed at best, on the other hand my feelings about M. Truffaut are not, at least not up to now. This is another example of brilliant, innovative and free film-making.

Truffaut manages to make a film where most characters are purposefully cartoony a strangely moving piece, aided by brilliant soundtrack, editing, camerawork and performances with Aznavour playing the proto-Woody Allen as the geek who always has beautiful women interested in him for some reason.

The whole film mixes comedy, drama, tragedy and film noir in a completely organic way. It is actually pretty much a delight to watch, as an art film, as a technical achievement and just as entertainment.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

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.

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