Shoot the Piano Player (1960) has quite the generic pedigree, spitting in the face of genre altogether: it is part gangster movie, part slapstick comedy, part melancholic romance. I suppose this bizarre hybridity is partially responsible for the movie's poor performance critically and commercially upon its original release. Yet none of these contrasting elements clash, making for one of the most unique and wildly entertaining movies of the French New Wave. I'll applaud any movie which can make me laugh my head off one minutes and then leave me contemplative and sad the next. It must be seen to be believed. The director Francois Truffaut was a true treasure and it saddens me to this day that we lost him too soon.

Tragic, unconventional, non-chronological told love story in which the protagonist Charlie loses two girlfriends under fateful circumstances, partly caused by him. The occasionally funny and always entertaining film transform the American novel Down There and it's noir atmosphere into a french masterpiece that exposes the "romance and beauty between the lines" (Kael in a different context). It centers around the titular piano player who's shyness, love for women and art, as well as his final powerlessness reflect not only the writer and director Truffaut, but also our own lives. It's his second picture and maybe with the, partly failed, exception of Jules and Jim his last real attempt at the Godard-esque deconstruction of film and his genres, after which he leaned more, and sometimes too much so, to the classical approach of his great idol Hitchcock. Nevertheless do I admire Truffauts more grounded style, which fits his striving for succession of Renoirs humanistic legacy. In Shoot the Piano Player the combination between youthful experimenting with genre and form, and the not quite polished attempt at an effective emotional drama, perfectly fit the story to create a masterpiece.

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.

Charlie Kohler, a pianist at a Parisian dive, lives in obscurity. As the story begins, he is visited by one of his brothers, Chico, who is being followed by two gangsters that want to talk to him about the money he took from them. Naturally, Charlie becomes also a target for these characters who figure they can get to Chico through his brother.A loner, Charlie lives alone with his younger brother Fido. His neighbor is an attractive prostitute, Clarissa, that hangs around in the place where Charlie plays. Lena, a shy woman that also works there, likes Charlie. The attraction is there but neither Charlie or Lena make the right move to consummate what they feel for one another. We watch them go into the empty Parisian streets late at night but nothing happens between them, until Clarissa points to her friend that Lena cares for him.As Charlie and Lena begin to get intimate, Charlie thinks about another life he had with Therese. He was an aspiring the classic concert Edoard Saroyan, an artist with a fine future. What he is not aware of is the sacrifice Therese underwent in order to get him into the spotlight. The impresario Lars Schmeel, he learns, knew Therese in more intimate ways. Her sacrifice was what took Edoard to a fame that was, in part, due not to his talent, but as someone's desire to possess something that was his. Therese pays dearly for her actions.The gangsters finally get to Charlie by kidnapping Fido after school and taking him to the place where Chico and Richard Saroyan are hiding. Knowing that Clint, the bar tender's betrayal proves fatal as Charlie wants to avenge his telling his brother's chasers about their whereabouts. Lena, borrows the landlady's car to go after the criminals; in the end, Charlie stands alone as Lena is killed during a shootout.The second film by Francois Truffaut was a memorable one. Not having seen it for quite some time, we took a chance to do so when it showed up on a classic film channel recently. The film appears to have been restored with care. We loved Raoul Coutard's brilliant black and white cinematography. Taking the camera to the streets was a trade mark of the New Wave filmmakers, Truffaut accomplishes an incredible atmosphere by the tour he gives us of those out of the way places of Paris where he sets the action. The film is based on a novel by David Goodis. A lot of French creators saw in this native American pulp writing a good source in which to base their work.Charles Aznavour plays the double role of Charlie/Edoard with an economy of gestures. Yet, both men being portrayed in the film show this man could have been a natural for the cinema, had he decided to take more roles instead of a splendid career as a singer. Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, and Michelle Mercier are seen as Lena, Therese and Clarissa, respectively. Albert Remy was excellent as Chico.