Shoot the Piano Player

Starring:Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, MichÃ¨le Mercier, Serge Davri, Claude Mansard, Richard Kanayan, Albert RÃ©my, Jean-Jacques Aslanian, Daniel Boulanger, Claude Heymann, Alex JoffÃ©, Boby Lapointe, Catherine Lutz, Laure Paillette, Alice Sapritch
Director: FranÃ§ois Truffaut
Studio: Fox Lorber
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
A man runs through deserted night streets, stalked by the lights of a car. It's a definitive film noir situation, promptly sidetracked--yet curiously not undercut--by real-life slapstick: watching over his shoulder for pursuers, the running man charges smack into a lamppost. The figure that helps him to his feet is not one of the pursuers (they've oddly disappeared) but an anonymous passerby, who proceeds to escort him for a block or two, genially schmoozing about the mundane, slow-blooming glories of marriage. The Good Samaritan departs at the next turning, never to be identified and never to be seen again. And the first man--who, despite this evocative introduction, is not even destined to be the main character of the movie--immediately resumes his helter-skelter flight from an as-yet-unspecified and unseen menace.

The opening of Shoot the Piano Player, FranÃ§ois Truffaut's second feature film, is one of the signal moments of the French New Wave--an inspired intersection of grim fatality and happy accident, location shooting and lurid melodrama, movie convention and frowzy, uncontainable life. At this point in his career--right after The 400 Blows, just before his great Jules and Jim--the world seemed wide for Truffaut, as wide as the Dyaliscope screen that he and cinematographer Raoul Coutard deployed with unprecedented spontaneity and lyricism. Anything might wander into frame and become part of the flow: an oddball digression, an unexpected change of mood, a small miracle of poetic insight.

Amazon.com essential video

A man runs through deserted night streets, stalked by the lights of a car. It's a definitive film noir situation, promptly sidetracked--yet curiously not undercut--by real-life slapstick: watching over his shoulder for pursuers, the running man charges smack into a lamppost. The figure that helps him to his feet is not one of the pursuers (they've oddly disappeared) but an anonymous passerby, who proceeds to escort him for a block or two, genially schmoozing about the mundane, slow-blooming glories of marriage. The Good Samaritan departs at the next turning, never to be identified and never to be seen again. And the first man--who, despite this evocative introduction, is not even destined to be the main character of the movie--immediately resumes his helter-skelter flight from an as-yet-unspecified and unseen menace.

The opening of Shoot the Piano Player, François Truffaut's second feature film, is one of the signal moments of the French New Wave--an inspired intersection of grim fatality and happy accident, location shooting and lurid melodrama, movie convention and frowzy, uncontainable life. At this point in his career--right after The 400 Blows, just before his great Jules and Jim--the world seemed wide for Truffaut, as wide as the Dyaliscope screen that he and cinematographer Raoul Coutard deployed with unprecedented spontaneity and lyricism. Anything might wander into frame and become part of the flow: an oddball digression, an unexpected change of mood, a small miracle of poetic insight.

Description

Francois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this, his most playful, anarchic film. Part thriller, part comedy, part tragedy, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of the mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags, guns, clowns, and thugs, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague.

Customer Reviews:

Offbeat, undisciplined, sprawling, funny, sad, goofy, loving, uncategorizable.......2007-07-01

Before there was Jim Jarmusch, before there was Quentin Tarentino, before there were the Coen Brothers, there was Francois Truffaut and the whole French New Wave. Films that we consider wild and radical today are actually old hat, as this type of bold, irreverent, sassy, rule-breaking, in-your-face cinema has now been with us at least half a century. Sadly, many Americans probably think "New Wave" is a kind of bad dance music from the 80s.

Truffaut's second film, from 1960 (!), deals with a lot of Hollywood staples, but he freshens it up, even more than he appears to give himself credit for, with the very direct, very informal French style of movie-making (and, I'd also add, living). His bold confidence shows itself in the first scene. It begins in the middle of action, without explanation, and a character comes onto the scene who helps our protagonist and volunteers personal information. So he's going to be crucial to our plot, right? No, because he then exits and is never seen again. And guess what? --Our "protagonist" is actually not a very important character either. He just serves to introduce us to his brother, the *real* main character, and to get some small-time thugs on the brother's tail. (Has any other film dared to start like this, either before or since?) So you could argue he's a new twist on an old device, the maguffan. (And we all know how Truffaut loved Hitchcock.)

Structurally this film should just not work. There's a flashback in the middle that takes up half the film at least and introduces a new key character when we're halfway through the picture. Every film teacher would tell you that's "wrong." And for many critics, especially initially, the film didn't work. Reviews were lukewarm at best and for years this languished as one of Truffaut's lesser efforts. Yet it must have sunk in at least subliminally, because the irreverent tone, the loose unpredictability, the large cast, the fast pace and rapid cross-cutting, and the humorous asides (one thug swears to something on the life of his mother, and we cross-cut to his mother dropping over dead) have all found a home in the films of the Coens, Tarentino, Jarmusch, Altman and many others. Not to mention shooting outdoors at night without movie lights, shooting in real cars without projection backdrops, shooting on live locations rather than closed sets. Yes, the first thing that strikes you about this picture today is how modern it is. Watch a typical American film from 1960 for comparison.

There were a few things that left me unsatisfied. The character of the prostitute feels more like a gimmick, and we never resolve anything with her. The fight and subsequent stabbing of the bar owner also feels extraneous, as though it comes from nowhere and leads nowhere. And it's hard to imagine that our main character would still have his job in the bar after that! (He was cleared by the police awfully easily too. Or was that part supposed to make us laugh?) And somehow the ending was a *little* unsatisfying, though I'm not sure what I'd do differently. (Have him playing piano in a *different* bar perhaps?)

But these are relatively minor nitpicks. We're swept away and don't think about them too much. There's also this feeling we get from Truffaut that he's trying to wedge things in to experiment (the French New Wave was in its infancy after all), to see what can work and what can't. I'd rather have something too adventurous than dull.

What of the performances? The first thing you'll probably be struck by, especially if you're new to New Wave cinema or European film in general, is how naturalistic the acting is--it's much freer than Americans were accustomed to in 1960, free of many stage conventions we were still carrying around. In Charles Aznavour we have a Francois Truffautesque character (Truffuat in a supplementary interview, goes to great pains to point out how the main character is not typically French, but I think he's trying to distract us from how much the character is like *him.* I didn't really buy his contention, and I don't think it's evident in the film that Aznavour is Albanian and not French.) Marie Dubois and Nicole Berger are both wonderful in their roles, as Dubois in particularly is perfect as someone both pure and feisty--she is the backbone of the movie, and this part could have fallen apart if it had been miscast. Michele Mercier is charismatic and gorgeous and really really stacked, quite frankly. The two thugs are the perfect counterbalance to all the French angst we get from the main cast, and have provided inspiration to all the talky, haphazard and bumbling thugs that have graced countless American films since.

This Criterion print is extremely clean, in anamorphic widescreen. Sound is clear first-rate mono. Extras include lively commentaries from two Truffaut writers and film school professors, the original trailer, two interviews with Truffaut about the film and the book it comes from, interviews with others who worked with Truffaut, a discussion of the music scoring, and a fascinating screen test where Truffaut tries in vain to make Marie Dubois curse like a sailor (necessary for a scene in the film).

If you've never seen a Truffaut film, I'd suggest you start here--you'll be surprised by how modern it all feels. (You think post-modern irreverence in film is a recent invention, huh?) This film is a delight, and shows the tremendous artistic potential cinema had in the 1960s--potential that's been squandered in more recent times.

Shoot the Piano Player.......2007-06-28

This quirky crime film by the great Truffaut mixes sight-gag comedy with suspense, resulting in a superbly nutty homage to the 1940s film noirs he so admired. French crooner Aznavour is terrific as the timid keyboardist on the outs with the mob. Filling the screen with inventive visuals and advancing an ad-hoc plotline with plenty of false digressions, Truffaut gives this tale the exhilarating feel of a spontaneous spoof. Based on the novel by David Goodis, "Player" is a brilliant tribute to the spirit of noir and the French New Wave.

The PIANO PLAYER is music to my ears..............2007-06-15

I am a great fan of the late, great French director, Francois Truffaut. I must confess that I haven't seen nearly enough of his films. It was so great to add SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER to the list of his films that I have watched, and it is definitely a great one. PIANO PLAYER is a cross between French new wave, film noir, slapstick comedy and a tribute to American gangster movies. Based on DOWN THERE, a novel by David Goodis, this 1960 film features a piano player with a past (Charles Aznavour). Though, he plays nightly at a honky tonk, this man once packed concert halls and had a classical repertoire. We find about that later. Taking the name "Charles," he has started his life over with a new, adopted identity. What's more, he has tried to turn his back on the shadey dealings of his brothers. This doesn't go according to plan, of course. What's more, he finds romance with the beautiful Lena (Marie Dubois), a waitress at the honky tonk. Then, the plot continues to thicken.

I really don't want to spoil this for you, so, no more plot details will be revealed here. However, there is a very good reason that this masterpiece was added to the Criterion Collection of classic cinema, worthy of being preserved as part of their DVD collection. Though, initially, Parisian audiences didn't take so well to this film, it went on to earn a cult following, of sorts. The film noir (black film) inspired cinematography, that boldly deceives us with shadow, light, and obscure, angular shots, paired with broad, self-effacing humor, makes this story truly distinctive. Charlie, the piano player, is neither hero nor villain. He is a man put in the middle of a series of absurd and (ultimately) violent incidents he must make his way through. Does it help that the man must battle his timidity, as well as his lack of courage? No. Ample references are made to other films in this movie, and you can definitely see that Truffaut was paying tribute to films that had inspired him, as well as creating his own vision (he adapted the screenplay from the novel himself).

Impossible to characterize, but funny, touching and sad.......2007-01-08

Asks the interviewer, "What place would you give Shoot the Piano Player in relation to your other films?" Answers director François Truffaut, "No place. Simply the second film I made." Considering his first feature film was The Four Hundred Blows and his third was Jules et Jim, Truffaut's matter-of-factness and lack of pretense is worth a smile.

Shoot the Piano Player is worth smiles, too. It's a clever film, playful at times, even funny. More than anything, however, it defies categorization. The movie is a strange and successful amalgamation of crime and comedy, suspense and inevitability, tragedy and love, and gangsters, girl friends and violence. It's the story of Charlie Koller (Charles Aznavour), a piano player in a Paris dive, who used to be Eduoard Saroyan, a famous pianist, whose wife committed suicide. Truffaut says the movie is a film about a shy man. Charlie is the kind of shy man who cannot bring himself to touch the hand of a woman he wants. He can't go back and open the door to the room where he left his wife sobbing. He thinks about what he should do, but can't do it, and then circumstances take over. Charlie, thanks to his brothers, finds himself in a gangland underworld where double-crossing is going to lead to a shootout in the snow. Some say Shoot the Piano Player is an homage to American gangster films. Perhaps it is, but I challenge anyone to spend much time considering this possibility while watching the movie. The film is original, funny, moving and sad. It's the kind of film that people who love movies write essays about. All I know is that I was moved by Charlie. We leave him where we met him, playing piano in a Paris dive.

Charles Aznavour, a diminutive man with a hangdog look, plays Charlie perfectly. Aznavour is probably better known in the U. S. as a singer, but in France he's seen as both an actor and a singer. He's a minimalist, he says about himself. Charlie thinks too much and does too little. Aznavour lets us see into Charlie's soul with few words. It's a marvelous performance that left me saddened by Charlie, but liking him.

The Criterion DVD transfer is first-rate. Criterion gives us two discs. The first has the movie and a commentary track. The second disc contains interviews by Aznavour and Marie Dubois, who played Charlie's girlfriend, Lena, plus excerpts from documentaries featuring Truffaut, and other extras. The Criterion case contains a 28 page booklet with substantial material on the film and Truffaut.

Shoot the Piano Player.......2006-09-13

I want to start this review with this. The piano player is never shot. Having said that, this is Francois Truffaut's second film, following his masterpiece
"The 400 Blows." I saw that film (my first Truffaut movie) yesterday. While his first film was a deeply personal film about adolesence, "Shoot the Piano Player" is more of a homage to American films. This movie successfully blends almost every genre imaginable. There's comedy, drama, action, romance...There's also some great dialogue and acting by everyone involved. The movie opens with a man named Chico (Albert Remy) running from two men; After running into a pole, he meets a stranger whom he has a conversation with as they walk down the street. They don't know each other and their conversation does nothing to further the plot along, but it's none-the-less interesting. After they split up, Chico walks into a bar and begins having a conversation with the piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour). Chico and Charlie are brothers, but it's clear that Charlie really doesn't want to have anything to do with Chico. The men Chico was running from appear in the bar and once again Chico is on the run. The romance part kicks in when Charlie walks home with a woman named Lena (Marie Dubois, who is gorgeous...Even in black&white). The men following Chico, we later find out their names are Momo and Ernest, begin following Lena and Charlie...But the two outrun them. I'll stop the synopsis abruptly here. Turns out there's a lot more to Charlie then meets the eye though. Now, ask anyone almost, and they'll tell you that this film is not better than The 400 Blows...And it's not. It is, however, an interesting and entertaining film that I really enjoyed. I'm not a big fan of The Criterion Collection, but after seeing this and the other Truffaut film...The Collection and Truffaut himself are growing on me. If you enjoy entertaining foreign films or Truffaut's work...See this.

GRADE: A-

Average customer rating:

Offbeat, undisciplined, sprawling, funny, sad, goofy, loving, uncategorizable
Shoot the Piano Player
The PIANO PLAYER is music to my ears.......
Impossible to characterize, but funny, touching and sad
Shoot the Piano Player

Shoot the Piano Player
Starring: Charles Aznavour , Marie Dubois , Nicole Berger , Michèle Mercier , and Serge Davri
Director: François Truffaut
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 1572524820
Release Date: 1999-05-18

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Customer Reviews:

Offbeat, undisciplined, sprawling, funny, sad, goofy, loving, uncategorizable.......2007-07-01

Shoot the Piano Player.......2007-06-28

The PIANO PLAYER is music to my ears..............2007-06-15

Impossible to characterize, but funny, touching and sad.......2007-01-08

Shoot the Piano Player.......2006-09-13

Tirez sur le pianiste (Original French Version with English Subtitles)

Average customer rating:

A masterpiece

Tirez sur le pianiste (Original French Version with English Subtitles)
Director: Francois Truffaut
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Breathless

ASIN: B000BGN8RK

Product Description

Charlie Kohler is a piano player in a bar. The waitress Lena is in love with him. One of Charlie's brother, Chico, a crook, takes refuge in the bar because he is chased by two gangsters, Momo and Ernest. We will discover that Charlie's real name is Edouard Saroyan, once a virtuose who gives up after his wife's suicide. Charlie now has to deal wih Chico, Ernest, Momo, Fido (his youngest brother who lives with him), and Lena...

Customer Reviews:

A masterpiece.......2007-01-30

How on earth can I be the first reviewer of this movie -- one of the greatest "film noir" of all time -- in the same overall style as Grifters. It stars the enigmatic Charles Aznavour, one of France's legendary Tony Bennett singers and the lover of Edith Piaf in the late years of her melodramatic and tragic life.

Its story is sad and elegiac; the withdrawal from human interaction by Aznavour after the tragedy of -- well, watch the movie -- and his gradual reconnection, not of his choice, with the world of feelins. It is partly a thriller, sort of. It is funny. It is filmed in black and white and stylistically one of the finest films of all time. It has Truffaut's extraordinary gentleness and laconic casual style that can rise to an intensity of emotion that is devastating. There is a death scene that captures all his strengths in his handling of actors/actresses and mis-en-scene.

Truffaut seems somewhat out of fashion today. He is in the great tradition of the French humanists, most obviously Jean Renoir.

I hope a few film lovers come across my review. If you like Seventh Seal (Bergman), Les Enfants du Paradis (Carne), Jules et Jim (Truffaut) or Regle du Jeu (RenoirO then this is for you.

Shoot the Piano Player - Original French

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Shoot the Piano Player - Original French

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ASIN: B000B69PEU

Product Description

Coming between The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim, this is François Truffaut's forgotten masterpiece. Adapted from David Goodis's pulp novel Down There, it's a knowing homage to Hollywood films noirs, with Charles Aznavour excelling as the pianist whose descent from the classical stage to a seedy Parisian bar culminates in his involvement with some unforgiving gangsters. A grab bag of fond memories, both cinematic and personal, this is Truffaut at his most exuberant, with the stylistic flourishes of the nouvelle vague enhancing the romantic melancholy of this tragicomic tale. Endlessly inventive and bustling with life, it will restore your faith in film. ++++ DVD FEATURES: This officially licensed release from South Korea is NTSC Region Code 0 (works on ALL players); Wide Screen [Letterbox Format]; Original FRENCH in Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Sound with optional (removable) ENGLISH or Korean Subtitles; Interactive Menu, Scene Selection, Credits, Filmographies and Awards

Shoot The Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ]

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Tuffaut's homage to the film noir

Shoot The Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ]
Director: François Truffaut
Manufacturer: Umbrella
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B000BMWK4G

Product Description

Australia released, PAL/Region 4 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages: o English (subtitles) o French (Dolby Digital 2.0) Synopsis: Francois Truffaut's loving homage to Hollywood gangster films is less a plot-filled film noir than a free-associative meditation on the genre. Charles Aznavour stars as a one-time concert pianist who gained fame as Edouard Saroyan but has since changed his name to Charlie Kohler and plays honky-tonk in an out-of-the-way saloon. His self-imposed exile is shattered by the appearance of his mobster brother Richard Saroyan (Jacques Aslanian). Richard and his other brother, Chico (Albert Remy), are on the lam from gangsters they've double-crossed. Charlie helps Richard and Chico get away, but he now finds that his life, along with his younger brother Fido's (Richard Kanayan, has been put into jeopardy, having gotten mixed up with gangsters Momo (Claude Mansard) and Ernest (Daniel Boulanger) who are pursuing Richard and Chico. Momo and Ernest keep an eye on Charlie's apartment and, although they don't get Fido, they manage to kidnap Charlie and Lena (Marie Dubois), a co-worker with whom he has fallen in love. But when Ernest runs a red light and is pulled over, Charlie and Lena escape the gangsters' clutches. Special Features: o Filmographies o Interactive Menu o Scene Access o Trailer(s)

Customer Reviews:

Tuffaut's homage to the film noir.......2007-05-31

This is Truffaut's homage to the Film Noir and an early example of the French "New Wave" of film-making.

"Shoot the Piano Player" is a strange combination of realism and slapstick humour. It's plot - about a troubled piano player - is pretty random. Of course this being a French film the average-looking piano-playing hero is irresistable to three attractive women.

The location photography and rapidly moving camera must have been a revelation at the time but since they have been imitated many times by other film-makers the effect is a little muted. Also the calculated nature of the film-making leaves one feeling admiration but unmoved.

The sound and picture quality on this DVD are pretty good so you won't be disappointed if you love this film.

There are no extras.

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