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Idle Criterion Film Club Week 5: Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

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This movie is crazy, guys.

 

The second feature of the director most recognized for his debut The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player is an erratic, meandering and frankly hilarious story about a washed up piano player sucked into a crime drama. I had wanted to see some Truffaut that wasn't 400 Blows, but this ought to be a good time to talk about both this and his first movie, as I assume many are familiar with it.

 

Shoot the Piano Player is like a collection of memorable scenes strung together to Truffaut's liking. He himself stated about the film:  "I refused to be a prisoner of my own first success. I discarded temptation to renew that success by choosing a "great subject". I turned my back on what everyone waited for and I took my pleasure as my only rule of conduct."

 

I can't say holistically whether this movie is good or not, but I surely enjoyed many of its strange interactions. The crime story seemed to appear only momentarily, taking a back seat to a couple scenes worth of goofy dialogue. The movie begins with a standard pitch-black chase through the streets, but then quickly takes a break as Charlie's brother and a stranger talk about love and marriage. 

 

The lack of actual crime in this movie is also emphasized by the fact that the sole two villains in this film are shockingly inept. Apparently their characters became increasingly more dumb as Truffaut became increasingly more intolerant of gangsters. The "swear on my mother" scene had me on the floor with a Monty Python kind of bluntness.

 

I'm not sure what to think of the extended flashback, or the murder of the bar owner, or the ending, so I'll save those thoughts for later.

 

What'd you think? Is Shoot the Piano Player a film-noir injected masterpiece, or a dull tune played over a few broken keys? (My attempt at a shitty review tagline before the pagebreak)

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I was not a fan of this film. It really felt like it didn't know what it wanted to be. I guess it's more of a dramedy but some of the humor is so over the top that it clashes heavily with the serious parts of the movie. The "swear to your mother" bit was hilarious, but felt like it had no place in a movie that was primarily about a man who has trouble openin his heart because of what happened with his wife. At least? That's what I think the movie is about because it devotes the most time to it. The crime aspect really just feels like it's there to serve no real purpose.

I really liked those inept thugs though.

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Loved this. I have only seen Truffaut's (and Godard's) A Bout de Souffle, and this is another superb flick in my book.

 

Also: hey guys! I actually managed to see this in my holiday!

 

This is, I guess, French film noir. It has the dumpy protagonist, the constant philosophizing about dames, the hint of gangster plot. But at the same time it has that unstoppable French sense of the weird, culminating in one-off goofs like the inserts to dying mothers and bosses being bribed. It all adds to the wonderful energy of this movie. It manages to cohesively tie its drama and comedy elements together, and I thought it was thoroughly entertaining.

 

But what a loathsomely cowardly main character Charles Aznavour played! It's disheartening to see him constantly running away, crippled by self-doubt, bringing ruin to all those around him. That's the noir-element, for sure, but hooleeeey shit. I just wanted to smack him on the head at some points. There were multiple times where he could've saved people or just done the right thing, but he shied away from it. The worst example is of course when he left his wife in the past and she jumped out of the window, but his attitude also cost the life of his current girlfriend and endangered his son's. Yikes!

 

The characters' preoccupation with ladies felt strange at times, and I was never sure whether this was a critique of the way crude men speak of women, or if it was just a matter-of-fact thing, or a hold-over from the literary source material... I myself had to take it as a critique, most notably the earliest scene where the two thugs start ruminating on what they want of the ladies and the kind of men they are, and Lena is just sitting there nodding along as if to appease them.

 

All in all, Shoot the Piano Player is fun and energetic, with a sometimes obnoxious lead, and a good spread of comedy and drama. Plus Truffauts great sense of editing. Loved the scenes where they're driving the car around the city, and the moment where the pianist is sitting in his wintry cottage, looking outside on watch.

 

[EDIT] The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced it's a comedy. Just the fact that he ends up in the stupid little bar at the end, it has a Coen-esque feel to it. Little timid guy gets in over his head, even with enemies as clownish as the pipe-smoking goons.

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I interpreted  his fight with the bartender as the moment where he chooses to act instead of passively withstand the things going on around him. It's actually that screenshot I put at the top of this thing: he's tempted to ignore the drama and do what he finds comfortable, and just when we're led to believe he's given up he starts fighting the bartender. 

 

I think my favorite part this movie that had a serious tone was everything in the flashback concerning the relationship between him and his late wife, simply because it all happened at once. The rest of the movie didn't feel very coherent to me at all, but the interesting thing is that the scattered nature contributed to the unique tone of the movie. It definitely was very fun to watch and frequently weaved through various ideas and moods. 

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I was a big fan of the flashback sequence as well.  It was a nice short story in the middle of a movie that otherwise missed the mark for me.  It was sad, but also real.  It was a shame that he didn't try to comfort his wife after she confessed to him and was so darkly depressed, but there was no way he knew she was going to kill herself.  It's all very tragic, but he acts like a normal person would in that situation.  Even though she needs help at that time it's quite understandable that he'd need time alone to think after learning what his wife did.

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I enjoyed the conceptually disjointed nature of Shoot the Piano Player.  I had seen the film a few years ago, and was happy to rewatch it.  It's light, well-shot, and non-linear enough that a second viewing was easy.  I like that it just happens.  The movie drifts from scene to scene, introducing and switching to new characters' points of view, switching genres and tone, and bearing no underlying conceptual burden.  Charlie's lack of agency, his determination to let things happen, has a resonance with the floaty-ness of the form.

 

The final shot is great, with Charlie determinedly staring off into space and the piano piece circling around and around.

 

I liked the film, but I don't think I'd recommend it.

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I'm actually surprised that most of the people here seem to emphasize the disjointed structure/thematics of Shoot the Piano Player, specifically because I never even noticed it to any extent.

 

By way of apology, when I think back on it, this is because it struck me as

1. rather realistic. Real life is messy and crime, I should think, even more so. The so-called banality of evil, or in this case the goofiness of evil. One moment you can happy, the next sad and depressed.

2. a fun, 'French' take on noir.

 

It makes me wonder whether there's an established discourse on the film that emphasizes this structure, that everyone seems to latch onto it here. As in, that might be the traditional way of viewing it? I went into the film knowing exactly nothing about it (except for the context of nouvelle vague), so I'm curious if you all read about it before and were influenced in your thinking by an [academic] text?

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I buy that it could be interpreted as "realistic", in that most events that happen in reality are not the only things happening to you at a certain time. The funny thing is, I'm conditioned by most movies to expect all the excess or "unrelated" content to be skipped or only mentioned briefly, where only the scenes vital to the story are present. This film began with a certain tone and implied a certain kind of story, but then took a narrative turn into his personal life, the purpose of which was not immediately clear (to me).

 

I understand that the movie is liked more by diehard film fans, so there is surely some sort of known interpretation of it. I haven't read any of it personally, save for some interviews with the cast in prep for this post.

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A little late but I finally watched this. About a minute in I realized I'd seen it before but it'd been long enough that I'd forgotten the details. I liked the movie alright, but I can't say it's going to leave much of an impression on me (again). I liked the flow of it from scene to scene (except that gag with the mom which I found really jarring) and Charlie's musings and self doubt, but I think he was just too detached for me to really get drawn in. I mean at one point he kills a man and it doesn't get much of a reaction out of him. Maybe that's why some people liked the long flashback, myself included...I felt it was a little more narratively and emotionally interesting.

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so I'm curious if you all read about it before and were influenced in your thinking by an [academic] text?

 

I didn't read anything about the movie before my viewing.  I didn't even know the film existed! 

 

 I mean at one point he kills a man and it doesn't get much of a reaction out of him.

 

I hadn't thought of this, but you're right.  He kills a man but he's more worried about the police showing up than he is about the fact he took a life.  It's the sort of thing that would make me think he killed before, but that goes so against his character.

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