On 2010-03-19 Mr. Mambo, Burnsville, MN USA wrote: I went to college from 1967-1972. As film students we were told that the French ´Nouvelle Vague´, or New Wave, was the most revolutionary and most significant movement in cinema. These guys--Truffaut, Godard, Melville, Chabrol, et. al., were film enthusiasts and critics who, in their publication Cahiers du Cinema, called the shots and seemed to be the arbiters of what was hot and what was not, particularly in regard to American cinema. They held up as their ideal the ´auteur´: the director who, despite working in the confines of a studio system, could still create individual films with a stamp of originality and mastery. For example: Hitchcock, Hawks, Ford, Fuller, Nick Ray. We lapped up everything these French guys dished out, and thought it was all perfect.
I first saw this as a college student in the ´60´s. Back then it made a huge impact on me. I loved the informality, the spontaneity, the iconoclastic nature of the movie. It was obvious that Francois Truffault, the director, was a man deeply in love with movies himself. He paid homage to a wide range of American movie genres, yet he also could not be confined or contained by the so-called ´rules´ of filmmaking. His films seemed much more fun and loose than most of the other guys working in the New Wave.
Though it could be considered a ´small´ movie in the sense that it was inexpensive to make and was shot in B & W mostly on the streets of Paris, it is a much more expansive film. Part gangster/pulp, part crime noir, part love story, with all kinds of funny people, places and situations thrown--literally--together. Somehow it all works. There has never been another movie quite like it.
The movie can be appreciated on many levels. Edouard/Charlie: the same man, but two sides of the same coin. It´s a great character study of a loner, a fascinating man with a singular talent who has been inevitably, inexorably drawn to trouble. We are enchanted by the beautiful prostitute who lives in his apartment and who shares his bed; the blonde wife of Edouard´s successful classical piano years, who tragically commits suicide, the lovely young waitress who works at the bar where Edouard--now calling himself Charlie-- plays rinky-tink piano.
There are many memorable scenes: the night chase on foot which opens the movie, one man running into a lamppost and then engaging in a philosophical discussion with a passerby; the gangsters talking about wearing women´s underwear and underwater fountain pens; the band at the bar, with the smiling, effervescent bass player; Charlie and the young waitress, in their Bogart-type trenchcoats, walking arm-in-arm down a rain-drenched Paris street, with Charlie, as nervous as a teenager on his first date, wondering to himself what his next move should be; the many interesting conversations and observations made while walking and riding around the streets of Paris.
This is a free-flowing pastiche of a movie which I found to be completely new and refreshing forty years ago as a young man. Since that time I´ve seen the movie countless times and I feel the same way about it now. It truly stands the test of time. This Criterion remaster is worth every penny.. And summed up by saying Indescribable Crazy Quilt Classic. Currently Shoot the Piano Player - Criterion Collection has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
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Raoul Coutard claimed 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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