Watch Shoot the Piano Player For Free

the audience applauded

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely the worst movie.

Everyone talks about how much of an homage this is to Hollywood film noir, but to me it seems much more like a light version of a Hollywood gangster film. Sure, there are some scenes at night and the film is black and white, but the plot is straightforward, there's not a lot of gritty drama, and the 'bad guys' are not all that menacing. That doesn't make the film bad, just miscategorized. What I found most interesting was the running theme of the nature of the relationship between men and women, the 'new wave' cinematography Truffaut includes (including cool scenes shot out of a car window at night in the winter towards the end), and the humanism of the timid piano player, sucked up into clashes with criminals as well as a love affair, and whose past is gradually revealed. It's enjoyable but relative to the gangster story there are several moments which don't seem honest or real, and the shootout scene is cheesy. On the other hand, the relationship aspects are fascinating, the film is enjoyable from start to finish, and it's cool to watch a Truffaut film from 1960 – watch it for that.

Listening to Tim Lucas's fascinating commentary on Mario Bava's superb Black Sabbath,I found out that Sabbath star Michèle Mercier had co-starred in a title by auteur film maker François Truffaut.Discovering that Artificial Eye has recently put the movie out on DVD/Blu-Ray in the UK,I decided that it was the perfect time to see the piano player play.The plot:After missing his chance to stand in the limelight, Edouard Saroyan has taken an alias, ( Charlie Kohler)and crawled into playing tunes at a seedy bar.Wanting to stay away from the outside world, Edouard has a causal relationship with prostitute Clarisse,who looks after Edouard's relative Fido.Catching a glimpse of her at the bar, Edouard finds himself suddenly getting into a serious relationship with new barmaid Léna.As he starts to get close to Léna, Edouard meets his brother Chico for the first time in 4 years,who reveals that he did a job for some gangsters who he has decided to cross.Being unable to stay out of Chico's troubles, Edouard soon discover that the gangsters want to make him play his final note. View on the film: Before I get to the title,I have to mention that Artificial Eye have given a classy transfer,with the soundtrack being clear and the subtitles being very easy to read,whilst keeping the grittiness of the Film Noir image.Wrapped in an alluring dress,the ravishingly beautiful Michèle Mercier, (who appears topless.. Yay!) gives an exquisite performance as Clarisse,who Mercier shimmers in a light,playful mood which gradually becomes sterner,as Edouard's gangster run-ins start to bleed into her life. Sparkling on the screen as a femme fatale, Marie Dubois gives a splendid performance as Léna,whose detailed facial expressions give the first footsteps in her romance with Edouard a sweet light comedy touch.Getting caught up in Charlie's Film Noir loner footsteps, Dubois gives Léna a captivating determination edge,which leads to Dubois giving Léna's final,snow-covered moments a tragic,poetic note. Displaying his sharp music skills Charles Aznavour gives gripping performance as Edouard,with Aznavour keeping up with Edouard's early piano playing by giving his early encounters with Clarisse & Léna a care-free mood.Opening up Edouard's past in flashbacks, Aznavour puts tough pressure on Edouard increasingly tough shoulders,which gives the ending a wonderfully bitter taste,as Aznavour builds the strong impression that Edouard has always expected that he would be right back where he started.Unable to film in a studio,co-writer/(along with Marcel Moussy)directing auteur François Truffaut & cinematographer Raoul Coutard give the illegal on street filming (Truffaut in da hood!) a gritty Film Noir atmosphere,which scans the title with rapid-fire tracking shots which subtly reveal the frantic Noir world that is gripping Edouard .Keeping up with the brittle tracking shots, Truffaut & Coutard pour Film Noir elegance over the movie,as Edouard & Léna's doomed Noir romance is shadowed in ultra-stylised awkward angels,which brilliantly expresses the nervous excitement that they feel for each other.Pulling David Goodis's novel from the US to France, Truffaut & Moussy's adaptation delicately uses flashbacks to cut deep into Edouard's raw wounds and uncover the events that have led to him being a Film Noir loner.Showing a real relish in going back and fourth on Edouard's life,the writers pull Edouard into a harsh Film Noir world with decaying shades,thanks to the writer's making Edouard brother gangster troubles put Edouard in a corner where the only way out is death,as the gangsters set their guns on the piano player.

"Shoot The Piano Player" is an enormously entertaining movie that utilises a variety of different styles, moods and sudden changes of pace to tell the story of a piano player whose attempts to achieve contentment in obscurity are thwarted by the actions of his criminal brother. This was Francois Truffaut's second movie and at the time of its making, he was clearly on a creative high, as what's seen on screen looks like the delirious outpourings of a mind that was totally passionate about filmmaking and also brimming over with ideas.Truffaut's love of movies started at an early age and provided him with some respite from his very troubled childhood. As a young man he, like most of the well known New Wave directors, became a contributor to the film journal "Cahiers du Cinema" and together, they advocated a more informal approach to filmmaking with greater use being made of footage that was shot outside of the studios. The type of films that had captivated the young Truffaut were predominantly American B-movies and it was because of his great respect and affection for them that he made "Shoot The Piano Player".Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour) is a pianist in a small but lively Parisian bar who finds that his regular routine is thrown into chaos when his older brother Chico (Albert Remy) seeks his help because he's being pursued by a couple of gangsters. It transpires that Chico and another brother, Richard (Jean-Jacques Aslanian), had worked together with Momo (Claude Mansard) and Ernest (Daniel Boulanger) on a heist but had double crossed them when they took off with most of the loot.Charlie leads a quiet life looking after his youngest brother Fido (Richard Kanayan) and is helped in this by his good natured neighbour Clarisse (Michelle Mercier) who's a prostitute and also occasionally, his mistress. Helping Chico leads to trouble for Charlie when he and his girlfriend Lena (Marie Dubois) get kidnapped at gunpoint by Momo and Ernest, but fortunately, they manage to escape when Ernest's bad driving leads to him being stopped by the police.Lena is a waitress at the bar where Charlie works and tells him that she knows about his past. Charlie had been a very successful concert pianist (known by his real name, Edouard Saroyan) but had given up his career after his wife Therese (Nicole Berger) had committed suicide. Tragically, she had taken her own life because she'd confessed to Charlie that the first big break in his career had come as a result of her agreeing to sleep with his impresario. Charlie's inability to come to terms with what she'd done had been more than she could bear.After Charlie kills his boss in self-defence, trouble continues to follow him until events ultimately reach a climax during a shoot-out in a countryside location.Charlie is a tragic and sensitive character who's a victim of fate. Not only had his career, which had elevated him to a new level of success, ended suddenly with the result that he'd ended up back in the type of environment that he'd originally emerged from, but also his love affairs with Therese and Lena both ended in tragedy and heartbreak.There's a great deal that's melancholic and poignant about Charlie's story but the way in which it's told is often comical, irreverent and disconcerting because of the use of unorthodox styles of editing and pacing. This juxtaposition of humour and pathos could be regarded as a reflection of the normal balance of life which often leads to humorous things happening at times of great sadness or it could simply be what happens when someone who's so intoxicated by the possibilities of his art form gives his creativity free rein.The quality of the acting in this movie is consistently good but Charles Aznavour's performance is positively exceptional. His facial expressions and body language are perfect and convey Charlie's vulnerability and innate sadness so well that it would be hard to imagine anyone else being able to improve on what he achieved in this role.

Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player is of the same experimental vein as Godard's Breathless but lacks just a little of the latter film's vitality and energy.A slightly darker work, it provides perhaps more insight into humanity with its well-executed studies of its lead characters' motivations.Nevertheless, the film is also a prime example of auteur theory and showcases many nouvelle vague techniques, such as jump cuts, on-location shooting, fluid camera work and moments on incongruous, typically French, humour. All of this serves to further undermine the traditional domination of stage-bound realist films that had dominated French cinema throughout the 1950s.Charles Aznavour performs well in the lead role of the pianist with the broken spirit. As another reviewer points out, the film begins with a close-up of the inner workings of his piano reflecting the fact that the film will attempt to show the inner-workings of his heart. Indeed, it is this that is the pre-occupation of all the long dialogues throughout the film as his psyche is explored, even by the gangsters who abduct him and in the early voice-overs.He is a character too timid to have a voice of his own; it is the piano that provides him with his boldness to entertain. Indeed, Aznavour's timid and wonderfully human anti-hero is an extremely welcome antidote to the macho posturing still found in Hollywood films to this very day. He is real and audiences can readily relate to him. Indeed, the centrepiece of the film, the flashback sequence, is moving as it details his fall from grace after his struggle to break away from his family and overcome the bad reputation of his surname.The bumbling but ultimately murderous gangsters also subvert notions that people with guns are in some way heroic - they are shown to be stupid fools, inept but brutally dangerous.As in Godard's Breathless, there are small attacks on American consumerism throughout yet, at the same time, this film embraces aspects of the noir style. Indeed, it was originally based on a pulp novel though it far transcends these genre writing origins to become a unique, high culture work of film art.Ultimately, this film along with Breathless, Band a Part and Jules et Jim firm established the nouvelle vague movement as a uniquely French phenomenon that defined the 1960s. Subversive, innovative and a thorough rejection of the now-stagnant older style of studio film-making it remains a unique, fresh vision to this day. Highly recommended.