The determined jollity of Georges Delerue’s saloon-piano score, which later opens up to encompass a wide world of romanticism, sets the tone for Francois Truffaut’s audacious second feature, made in 1960.
The French title, “Tirez sur le Pianiste,” is translatable as “Shoot the Pianist.”
It stars popular vocalist Charles Aznavour as a bistro musician torn between memories of lost love, the demands of a shifty, dangerous family business and the women trying to figure out what’s behind that doleful face of his. It’s based on a minor pulp novel called “Down There.”
French audiences (as well as other ones) had trouble getting a fix on the emotional fluctuations of this story, which came after Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows.”
It features musical numbers, restless, self-questioning voice-overs, and a couple of philosophically gabby thugs who predate Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” by a generation. Truffaut also deploys a remarkable array of narrative devices on the fly.
Truffaut shot many sorts of pictures, but he rarely matched this one for casual magic. In bed with his prostitute neighbor (the memorable Michèle Mercier), Aznavour playfully pulls a sheet up over her breasts, noting: “This is how it’s done in the movies.”
Truffaut’s key work of the French New Wave showed there’s more than one way to do it.
“Shoot the Piano Player”
Not rated. Adult situations. 1 hour, 21 minutes. Black and white, 1960. In French with English subtitles. Directed by Francois Truffaut; written by Truffaut from a novel by David Goodis; starring Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, Michèle Mercier, Albert Remy. Opens today at Starz FilmCenter.
