Shoot the Piano Player mixes the comic and the serious, ordered and loose compositions, in a nod to the double identity of its hero, Charlie (Charles Aznavour), a pianist in a bistro, who is trying to forget his past as Edouard, a celebrated concert musician. The involved plot includes a tentative and touching love affair made difficult by an assortment of gangsters. “François Truffaut’s gleeful and ironic thriller is an homage to the American gangster film. Girded by Raoul Coutard’s forceful photography and Georges Delerue’s intentionally jovial score, this delirious neo-noir delivers enough body blows to the genre to make it say whatever Truffaut wants” (Steve Seid).