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With singer/actor Charles Aznavour in the lead (his expressive face is priceless), "Shoot the Piano Player" is one of Truffaut's most charming and inventive works. Aznavour plays Charlie/Edouard -- a former concert pianist who becomes an anonymous piano player in a dive bar in order to escape his past. After his brother (Remy, who Truffaut also used wonderfully in "The 400 Blows") gets in trouble with some borderline inept gangsters, chaos ensues.

Truffaut's winsome camera and editing techniques blend perfectly with Aznavour's performance. A must for fans of the French New Wave.

'Shoot the Pianist' opens with the insides of a playing piano, the inner machinations of a musical instrument. This image points to the film's ambiguity. it says that this film will similarly uncover the insides (heart, soul) of a man who gives nothing away on the surface. it will suggest that his insides are like the piano's insides, the the only way he can express what's buried inside of him is through piano-playing - this is what gives the film its emotional pull. but it also suggests that Charlie Koller's fatal emotional timidity has warped or deadened that soul, made it a mere mechanism, alive only in a technical sense. More objectively, it amounts to a manifesto for Truffaut's intentions with the film, the way he will turn the gangster genre inside out, a genre he confessed to not really liking.

Although Truffaut would go on to make self-conscious and superficial tributes to his hero (e.g. 'La Peau Douce', 'The Bride Wore Black'), 'Shoot the Pianist' is his most Hitchcockian film. Most obviously, it is a reworking of 'Vertigo', the story of a homme fatal (Koller - black widower?) who kills two women because he couldn't say the right thing, because he behaved like a man should, rather than the way he really feels. Lena is in effect a reincarnation of his dead wife, a woman who wants to reinstate his 'original' identity. Like Scottie Ferguson, Charlie is a man paralysed by memory, shellshocked by his experiences with an elusive love that could so easily have been his.

But, again like 'Vertigo', 'Pianist' is the study of masculine identity and its dissolution. When we first see Charlie he is literally in a scrapheap, getting dressed in front of a mirror. This mirror motif recurs throughout, and with it the question: who is Charlie Koller? The farmboy sibling of gangsters; the renowned pianist; the back-room tinkler; the father to his young brother; the man who desires but cannot ask, who keeps destructively pulling back? Throughout the real 'man' is deluged by different names, images (posters, paintings), stories etc. about himself: his own personality is divided by the talks he conducts with himself. Even the heartbreaking flashback sequence about his past is related to him by someone else. In the fear of losing his identity, of giving himself in union, Charlie loses everything.

But 'Pianist' is also reminiscent of early, British Hitchcock films like 'The 39 Steps' and 'Young and Innocent', in its playful irreverence with genre. David Thomson has said it was a film Laurence Sterne might have made, and, like 'Tristam Shandy', like those Hitchcock movies, the main genre narrative is frequently broken off by digressions and bits of business. The film plunges us in media res in the gangster genre, a man being chased in the obscurity. He bangs into a lamppost, and is helped by a passer-by. They start talking about marriage. This is emblematic of the film as a whole - a gangster film that keeps stopping to talk about love, women, family, music, the past etc. When the genre kicks in again - Chico (gangster name, yes, but Marx Brother too) rushes into his brother's bar, the tension is somewhat undermined by the comedy bar-room singer bouncing to the cymbals. When Charlie and Lena are kidnapped by the two hoods, a fraught situation turns into an hilarious banter about women and dirty old men. the most frightening sequence - the abduction of young Fido - provokes the funniest scene, where captor and captive debate the authenticity of the former's Japanese metal scarf.

But the film works the other way too, when the comic unexpectedly flashes into the tragic. In an early scene, Charlie agonises to himself about the proper etiquette to be used in handling Lena - this is a touching, sad scene, but full of the comedy of embarrassment. Suddenly, having dithered so long, Charlie realises she's gone. The scrunched pain on his face is devastating.

'Pianist' is my favourite film. For Charles Aznavour's performance, the embodiment of shy timidity leading to emotional paralysis, and my altar ego. For the Godardian style, mixing abrupt, immediate, hand-held location shooting, and natural sound excitement, with a grasp of mise-en-scene worthy of the great 1950s melodramatists (the framing, cutting characters off from one another, trapping them in their decor; or the elaborate, Ophulsian camerawork, such as the 'Le Plaisir' gliding outside the bar; the circular narrative that sees continuity tragically affirmed in the shape of the new waitress). 'Pianist' couldn't have been made without Melville's 'Bob le Flambeur', and its flippancy and humanising of genre, but the influence of this on Cassavetes, Penn, Scorcese etc. was immense, for its generosity to all its characters, showing, despite Eustache, that a good woman can be a maman and putain. For the comic chutzpah, the dazzling abduction scene, the triptych revealing the boss's betrayal, the clumsy murder, the wonderfully bumbling hoods, Fido's Hawksian little dance. For Truffaut's concern with time and decay and art. For the haunting scene with the cello girl. For the music, fulfilling Noel Coward's dictum about the potency of cheap music, giving this short, strange movie its generous soul, a film that so humanely departs from genre it makes the generic climax grotesque, a DW Griffith nightmare in blinding white.

You're a humble pianist inside a bar, when your brother barges in to pay regards, he's pursued by two tough villains, but your able to contain them, give him time to make escape, and go afar. But these rogues have found a way to track you down, and they know where you reside, which part of town, so they'll take something that's close, means your brother is exposed, and the place where he's escaped, is now well known.

The tale of how Charlie Koller went from obscurity to fame and back again, before all hell breaks loose when his brother, under pursuit, walks back into his life. Great performances, original in its presentation for the time, by a truly great, visionary director.

Shoot the Pianist is Francois Truffaut's attempt at mirroring the greatness of the classic gangster films. And suffice to say; it is a very nice attempt indeed. The film follows Charlie Kohler, a simple bar-side piano player. Charlie's life takes a turn for the more exciting one day when his brother turns up at the bar, telling his brother that a couple of gangsters that he and his other brother cheated out of their side of the loot from a job that the four did together are after him. Charlie also has a secret admirer; Lena, a barmaid at the bar he works in. Now this once simple piano player has gone from a quiet life at a piano to having to deal with gangsters, his brothers and a new love interest. But wait...there's more; is Charlie all that he seems? Is he merely a simple piano player? That's what makes this film great; it's never black and white (if you'll excuse the pun), and it is always ready to throw in another plot turn to keep you guessing.

After the universally acclaimed "The 400 Blows", Francois Truffaut had his work cut out for his next movie. Many will disagree, but I actually think he surpassed it. The 400 Blows is undoubtedly a more important work; but this film hits more of the right notes and is very much more enjoyable. The cast is absolutely flawless throughout; Charles Aznavour stars in the lead role. He gets his characterization spot on; his melancholy comes naturally and is believable throughout. Marie Debois and Nicole Berger star alongside Aznavour, and although they are more in the background; they still manage to impress. There is also a role here for Michèle Mercier, whom you may remember from the Mario Bava masterpiece; Black Sabbath. Truffaut's cinematography is clean and crisp and the film is an aesthetic treat throughout. Despite being nearly 45 years old, the film also manages to retain a feeling of freshness, and that's something that not all crime thrillers of today can do after 4 years, let alone 45. Truffaut has also very obviously got an astute sense of humour - there's one part of the film involving one of the gangster's mother's dropping dead that made me laugh out loud. Let it never be said that the French can't be funny

The film features many anecdotes that ring true. My personal favourite is when Lena says that what you do today becomes a part of you tomorrow. It's simple, but very astute. Another good one is when one of the gangsters talks about all the lovely gadgets he has, and after listing them all he finishes with; "I'm bored". Truffaut obviously knows that material goods aren't what make people happy, and this film presents a rather amusing way of showing that. However, despite these and several other anecdotes; the film doesn't appear to have a defining point, which lessens its impact somewhat. Overall, however, Shoot the Pianist is a lovely little film that shouldn't be missed by anyone that professes to like gangster movies. It's amusing, has some points to make and its flawlessly acted and directed. Highest recommendations for this one.

Sometimes you watch a classic for the first time and you don't understand the hype. This time I was more than pleasantly surprised. Wonderful, whimsical and sad little film noir. This movie completely plays with the audience, but in a loving way. The actors and actresses are almost uniformly great. Some incredible faces. Aznavour in particular has an amazingly distinctive look. Be warned, it takes about ten minutes to have an idea of what is going on. Just hang in there and go with it. Highly recommend.