- Location: The AFI Silver Theatre
- The plot of Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player sounds like that of a typical gangster film. A man going by the alias Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour) is trying to escape his old life. Part of what he's running from is his set of thieving brothers, Chico (Albert Remy) and Richard (Jean-Jacques Aslanian). He's also fleeing painful memories of the tragic suicide of his late wife, Therese (Nicole Berger). One evening, Richard stumbles into the bar where Charlie plays the piano and begs his brother's help in evading some thugs (Serge Davri and Claude Mansard). Charlie reluctantly helps, so the thugs decide to target their attention on him, his girlfriend Lena (Marie Dubois), and his younger brother Fido (Richard Kanayan). When Charlie accidentally kills a man, however, he is forced to flee to his brothers' farm for protection. There, a final shootout has tragic consequences.
- Upon reading this description, you probably formed mental images of the characters and scenes. For instance, you might have pictured the gangsters as a pair of ruthless professionals. Nothing could be further from the truth. The two are a couple of comically incompetent buffoons. In multiple instances, they kidnap people, subject them to idiotic conversations, and accidentally allow them to achieve fairly obvious escapes. And what about Charlie? Well, he's not exactly a buffoon--certainly he's the brains of his family--but he hardly evokes the sort of confidence you'd expect from a leading man. In one hilarious scene, Charlie's voice-over informs us exactly how nervous he is about putting the moves on Lena. In another oddly amusing scene, he does everything in his power to avoid fighting Lena's boss only to stab him accidentally. Fate sometimes has a sense of humor.
- Shoot the Piano Player is easily the most unique gangster film I've ever seen. Its tone is completely mercurial, shifting wildly from comedy to tragedy from one scene to the next. It that sense, the film's tone is exemplified by Charlie himself, a talented classical musician who spends his nights banging out bawdy songs in a piano bar. All of the usual ingredients of film noir are present, including an extended flashback, but they are mixed into a completely original confection. Here, the stereotypical person lingering in a dark alley is more likely to complain about his marriage than to pull a gun. When a gangster swears on his mother's life, the camera cuts to a shot of his mom falling over. It would be unbearable if every gangster film was like this, but I'm certainly glad this one was.
