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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0037429212721
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Astor Pictures Corporation
Manufacturer: Astor Pictures Corporation
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Astor Pictures Corporation
Region Code: 1
Release Date: December 06, 2005
Running Time: 92 minutes
Sales Rank: 15822
Studio: Astor Pictures Corporation
Theatrical Release Date: July 23, 1962
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Editorial Review:
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.
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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.
The official agenda of the movie is adapting a noirish story by American writer David Goodis, about a celebrated concert musician (Charles Aznavour) hiding out as a piano player in a saloon. He's on the run as much as the guy--his older brother--in the first scene. But whereas the brother is worried about a couple of buffoonish gangsters, Charlie Koller is ducking out on life, love, and the possibility that he might be hurt, or cause hurt, again. Decades after its original release, Shoot the Piano Player remains as fresh, exhilarating, and heartbreaking--as open to the magic of movies and life--as ever. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Greatest Film of the French New Wave (Truffaut's Masterpiece)
The crown jewel of the French New Wave and Truffaut's underrated masterpiece--this bittersweet, melancholy film is a comic gangster B-movie, a tragic romance, an innocent drama of the human condition which the absurd hero Charlie can only make sense of through the music of his piano.
Rating: - Offbeat, undisciplined, sprawling, funny, sad, goofy, loving, uncategorizable
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Shoot the Piano Player
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.
Rating: - The PIANO PLAYER is music to my ears.......
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Impossible to characterize, but funny, touching and sad
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 ... Read More
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