Mike White is a pop-culture essayist and editor of Cashiers du Cinemart.

(Tirez sur le pianiste). Sad-eyed and slouched, Charles Aznavour plays Charlie, a honky-tonk tinkler working a low-rent dive in Paris. Broken by an earlier tragedy, he spends his time hunched over the soothing keys, coaxing tasteless tunes for the wine-soused revelers. That is until he's roused from retreat by a B-movie plot fraught with bickering thugs, a punch-drunk bouncer, a big-hearted bar girl, and a past too painful to endure. 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, and set amid a lively reimagining of Goodis's gutters, this delirious neo-noir delivers enough body blows to the genre to make it say whatever Truffaut wants. And sing like a canary it does-about the ever-captivating past, love's sad sacrifice, and one man's final ruination. This unlikely but terrific caper does have victims: the serious and the slapstick are beaten to a pulp.

Shoot the Piano Player is repeated on Tuesday, August 5.