If chanteur Charles Aznavour is thought about at all outside France it’s for the song “She”, sung with Aznavourian brio by Elvis Costello over the closing of the film ‘Notting Hill’. But he is also an understated actor with 60 films to his credit. In Francois Truffaut’s film ‘Shoot The Pianist’ he plays a concert pianist whose guilt over a life-changing accident does just that - giving up his career to become part of a dance trio in a low-class bar. I won’t give away plot points because you should see this film. (It will be a good test for the depth of your DVD rental company’s catalogue.)
Its confidence seduces from the first second, though nothing much happens for the first 30 minutes. There are no car crashes and no-one gets shot. The biggest event is someone banging their knee against a lamp post while running. It doesn’t matter. The confidence! The exhilaration of handling celluloid! Truffaut was a critic for the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinema, enthusiastically praising underrated Hollywood directors like Howard Hawks and the fatalistic vision of film noir (the term was invented by the Cahier critics). Truffaut takes the energy of Hawks and both the high-contrast emotions and visual shading of film noir and impressively makes it his own. By the end of the film there’s been lust, deception, betrayal and a body count, told in long tracking shots, jump cuts, silent film comedy and passers-by staring curiously at the camera.
Aznavour pulls off the impressive trick of appearing to do nothing. The reason he’s playing bad piano in a crappy bar isn’t revealed for a long time but you accept the enigma he presents and happily wait to know more. Unlike Yves Montand, another song and dance man of the period who became a film star, he doesn’t bask in his own narcissism. Maybe because, unlike Yves, you couldn’t call Aznavour beautiful.
‘Shoot The Pianist’ was Truffaut’s second film, coming between the raw energy of ‘The 400 Blows’ and ‘Jules and Jim’, the cinematic ménage a trois that cemented his career as a world-class director. As a result it’s been largely forgotten. To me ‘Jules and Jim’ is a smug, self-satisfied film, despite the luminous Jeanne Moreau. Give the ‘Pianist’ your attention instead.
There was an illuminating article in last week’s New Yorker detailing the friction that built over the years between Truffaut and the other great New Wave director Jean Luc Godard. Partners as film critics, they grew apart as directors. While Godard has become an obscure, difficult taste, they both started in the same place. His first film ‘Breathless’ is just that, a sizzling tour de force amazed at its own vitality. Like Truffaut he took the then radical step of reminding you that you’re watching a film, in his case having the petty criminal hero muse on the nature of Humphrey Bogart while staring at a cinema poster. Truffaut is more direct. Aznavour’s character is in bed with a girl, who is sitting up, naked. He says that in a Hollywood film the girl would sit like this and covers her breasts with a sheet. The girl just laughs.
PS: The film clip is the theatrical trailer and frustratingly doesn’t convey any of the film’s rhythm and atmosphere – art film triumphing over film noir. But it shows all the characters and the themes.
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Damn fine review here. I must look for this one. I love the French new wave, and finally just saw "400 Blows" about 1/2 a year ago.
Is Godard still seen as obscure? I still find his films have so much vitality even though some of the elements are aged. I love the roughness and low budget of films like "Alphaville". They always make me want to make my own movie.
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What I meant was Godard's current output - well, since the 80s really. He is now so uncommercial that his films don't even get a 1 week British arthouse release. The first two decades are wonderful films - 'Weekend' is both stylish and very funny, which is a rare quality in a Marxist. :- )
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I agree with contrabandwidth; you're a very good writer. I haven't seen the film in forty years but now of course have to see it again. The 1956 novel it's from,Down There by David Goodis, is well worth reading.
Godard's films from the 1960's are not all THAT difficult.
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??The radio upon the floor Is stupid It plays Aznavour?? --The Psychedelic Furs, "Sister Europe"
For my 2 centimes, Truffaut made decent but largely overrated films, and his work as a critic was disastrous for French cinema (but paradoxically beneficial to American cinema in a few subtle ways). The auteur theory was so utterly preposterous, and served the purposes of the resentful creative failures of this world (who vastly outnumber the creative successes, after all) so perfectly, that to this very day going to a French film is almost synonymous with taking a two-hour nap. The cruel part is that Truffaut was (not like I knew the guy, but to read his stuff and see him in interviews and whatnot) so guileless and sweet - like a French Tom Hanks - that he couldn't say anything you'd disagree with unless you put effort into it.
Actually, looking at this, it's the beginning of a huge sprawling comment, so I should maybe just stop there and say, on the subject of your post, that it's as smart, funny, sophisticated and well written ("Aznavourian brio"!) as I'm sure I'm not alone in having come to expect from you, providing fodder for discussion too rich, if anything, for your fellow man's own good.
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Thanks for this, Jonh. I spent most of my college years in revival houses and writing papers on nouvelle vague theory, so this was a treat to read. I think this Aznavour performance fits in nicely with other Truffaut men, who tend to be rather passive, diffident, shy, and slightly melancholy. ... I'd still champion Jules and Jim, though. Yes, it's a young cineaste's work (the fervent narration, the many visual tricks) but I would chalk that up to-- as you say-- the exhilaration of handling celluloid! Those first three films are all gold, so I'd call it an "also" rather than an "instead." But my heart belongs to Two English Girls, though, not least because of that gorgeous Delerue music. Also Adele H. and Day for Night.
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deedee - you had me at 'Day For Night'. I haven't seen it for a long time and when I saw it on TV it seemed insubstantial. But in the cinema...whew! A main point in the New Yorker article was Godard's inability to accept that Truffaut could make films that were simple entertainment - The Last Metro, for instance, as well as Day For Night. The other thing about Truffaut's men - they all have "boys" jobs. In one of them - forget which - JP Leaud is an aircraft designer literally playing with model planes.
Spike -- Trust you to have an image of the book. I gather it's very different from the film.
Zarpex - I spent many a film school session arguing back and forth over exactly this point. But if the 'Nouvelle Vague' saved Howard Hawks and film noir from obscurity, that's ok with me. 'The Big Sleep', which combines both, is possibly my favourite film. I like your description of "a French Tom Hanks"... very good.
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Netflix has it listed as "Shoot the Piano Player" in English...
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That's English and American for you. Two cultures separated by a common language.
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LOL!!! So true... sometimes the size of the pond we cross is big, and sometimes very very small...
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I'll have to re-read the book to know how different it is. MOG Brain email might not let me.
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A friend once said, "Truffaut is Paul, and Godard is John." He wasn't entirely full of shit.....My own preference is for Truffaut's "less substantial" movies like "Stolen Kisses" and the original "The Man Who Loved Women." (A remake with Burt Reynolds? What coked-up Hollywood jerkball dreamed up that one? Oh, Blake Edwards...)
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ohhh I love this film very very good
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Is Didier Geslain one of your aliases, Jonh? And what is this "Neptune" about? -- Seriously, a swell and enthusiastic review. Like many respondents, it's been a while since I watched "Tirez sur le pianiste."
Watching the trailer, I've just remembered another "chansonnier" played in that film: Boby Lapointe whose quirky songwriting can seen heard in the film.
Boby Lapointe Framboise
Regarding the many things written and said about the "Nouvelle vague," I think it is best summed up by one of its main protagonists, Claude Chabrol: "La nouvelle vague is a critic's invention. All the jump-cuts, short edits etc were out of necessity. We just didn't have the money. "A bout de soufle" was edited the way it was because Jean-Luc was penniless. François did the same on "Jules et Jim." [...] Jean-Luc would have made a whole different film if there'd been money."
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Didier Gislian? Never heard of him. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I couldn't decide at the time if the subtitles to this chanson was an intended joke, but of course it is.
Re M. Chabrol, isn't that a circular argument? The directors creating the new wave were the critics as well. Isn't it disingenuous to say that it was all of necessity? In 'Shoot The Pianist' when the crim says 'I'm telling the truth, may my mother die if I'm not,' and it cuts to a silent shot of a lady keeling over, why would that be different if there was more money? It's a good joke, tells a lot in a few seconds, and is just the kind of new-wave invention that hadn't been thought of before then. Though I agree with his bigger point. In The New Yorker piece there's quite a lot about the necessities brought by lack of budget. Jean Luc may have made a different movie, but would it have been better? There's a debate for the Oxford Union!
Grumpy directors generally say this sort of thing so they won't be classified as part of a group. I've just remembered that MacLaren based some of his theorising on wanting to copy the Nouvelle Vague, but the bands themselves would have none of it - they all hated each other and disavowed any 'new wave' camaraderie.
And Claude Chabrol is a brilliant director.
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Well, Chabrol is a wry personage indeed especially at interview with critics and journalists. So trust him for turning things around and keel over heads, so speak.
The fact remains that he did a series of radio program a while back on France Culture between memoirs and musings. From what I remember, he said that the group which included himself, Jean-Luc and François and others (he financially backed both Godard and Truffaut, being a chemists' son he was somewhat richer) dreamt about making American Hollywood films. He concluded one of that series by saying: "All in all, we failed as directors."
So what would the "Nouvelle Vague" have been if those were given the same budget as Hawks or Ford? -- It's a conjecture I'm not interested in. All I know is I like their output as it is.
Re Boby Lapointe's lyrics, it's almost impossible to translate and keep the witty pun and surrealist quality viz: "Et tout en étant Française, L'était tout de même Antibaise : Et bien qu'elle soit Française, Et, malgré ses yeux de braise, Ça ne me mettait pas à l'aise De la savoir Antibaise, Moi qui serais plutôt pour..."
The word-play is "antibaise" which could a denizen of Antibes but also "anti-baise" i.e. "anti-shag." Which makes him ill at ease as he's rather pro...