The film begins in classic gangster movie mode, with a man running breathlessly through the streets, obviously trying to escape from someone who is chasing him. Almost as quickly, though, the film shows the first signs of unconventional narrative when the man is helped by a complete stranger with whom he engages in a conversation about love and marriage that would seem to have no narrative function outside of mere digression (there are thematic links that become apparent later, but at this point there seems to be no point). The man on the run is Chico (Albert Rémy), and he eventually makes his way to a well-populated bar where his brother, Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour), is banging out honky-tonk tunes on the piano.

Charlie reluctantly helps Chico escape from the two men who are following him, at which point it becomes clear that this is Charlie’s story. Charlie is a slight, introverted man (a significant change from the hero of Goodis’ source novel, who is much more physically strapping). He walks Léna (Marie Dubois), one of the waitresses, home and agonizes over how to hold her hand or talk to her so he doesn’t seem awkward. At home, he cares for his kid brother Fido (Richard Kanayan) and occasionally sleeps with Clarisse (Michèle Mercier), a friendly prostitute who lives down the hall.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Truffaut is less interested in the simple genre dynamics of the story than he is in the character of Charlie. In the most simple of terms, Charlie is a divided character (not how often we see him reflected in mirrors), a man who is running away from a haunted past just as surely as he is now running from the two gangsters who were trying to catch his brother. Charlie’s past involves tragedy and misfortune, and the lengthy flashback sequence in the middle of the film in which we see where he came from and how he lost his wife (Nicole Berger) is genuinely heartbreaking. We see why Charlie would want to change his name and disappear into the anonymity of playing piano at a corner bar, rather than living up to his potentials as a famous musician, a sentiment that Truffaut possible felt after the runaway success of his debut film, The 400 Blows (1959).

As Charlie, Charles Aznavour, who was known primarily as a singer-composer at the time, creates an indelible portrait of a man at war with himself and hiding from the world. He doesn’t speak much, but we see his inner turmoil in his face and in his actions. He wants to be reborn, yet at the same time is deathly afraid to emerge from the cocoon he has built for himself. His path to salvation is, not surprisingly, a woman, in this case the good-hearted waitress Léna, who has had her eye on him for a long time, but hasn’t had a way to approach him. Their getting caught up in Chico’s criminal affairs proves to be the glue that brings them together, thus allowing Truffaut to mix genres at their base.

For Truffaut, Shoot the Piano Player was an explosion of the gangster genre. He freely admitted that the film played like four or five different films, which was his intention from the outset. His goal was pastiche--to glue together various disparate cinematic elements to make something new and unexpected. The film has twists and turns and unexpected developments, but rather than being plot-directed, the twists are tonal. You never know when the film is going to veer from gangster to comedy to romance to mystery-suspense. Truffaut’s effective incorporation of physical comedy, sweet romance, and heightened melodrama plays off the obvious gangster conventions (borrowed primarily from film noir of the 1940s), which makes Shoot the Piano Player one of the first postmodern cinematic masterpieces, a film that holds together even though its constituent parts would seem to clash to the point of canceling each other out.

Copyright ©2005 James Kendrick

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