Shoot the Piano Player

Sacrifices which destroy the prosperity they engender. Dreams for the future challenged by the threats of the past. Petty jealousies destabilizing the security of the present. A struggling artist trying his best to avoid loving and being loved. François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player presents Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour) as he makes his living playing the piano in a Parisian bar. Waitress Léna (Marie Dubois) has fallen in love with him and seeks to resurrect his dematerialized fame. Initially content to continue practising his honky-tonk, the power of love reinvigorates his pursuit of something classical. But brothers and gangsters and reflections and passions stand in his way as he psychologically rediscovers the life he once flourishingly possessed.

Shoot the Piano Player's cultivated underground jovially analyzes universal materialistic themes such as marriage and commodity acquisition, deviously situating Truffaut's observations in scenes traditionally used to establish a predetermined variety of character and mood. The resultant character and mood he establishes is therefore composed of startling insights extracted from various experiential outcomes whose histories convivially salute the unexpected. The scene where the thugs discuss their material goods with Fido (Richard Kanayan) after kidnapping him is first rate. Minor characters are given room to breathe, Raoul Coutard's cinematography illustrates the compact social nature of a bustling metropolis, and dreams synthesize with desires to produce a productive yet troubled practical theoretical posture. Its mainstream narrative is full of stipulated thoughts concerning art, careers, and gender relations, stipulated thoughts whose content is romanticized by their underground foil.

Charlie just wants to play the piano. Other people problematize his plans. Léna reminds him of the concerts he could still be performing. His community reminds him that other people still desire Léna.