Shoot the Piano Player

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, this delirious neo-noir delivers enough body blows to the genre to make it say whatever Truffaut wants.