Shoot the Piano Player

In Brief: François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960) is one of those celebrated films that I had somehow just never seen till this weekend. Oh, I’d seen clips and knew a little about it—and I’d suspected that the phony gangster-movie opening of Ken Russell’s 1966 TV film on composer Georges Delerue, Don’t Shoot the Composer, was based on the Truffaut film (which it was), but I’d just never seen it. The experience was a sheer delight of the “Why hadn’t I seen this before?” variety. I loved everything about the film, but I can’t help but think that the blurb on the DVD case errs in calling it Truffaut’s “most playful film” without elaborating on that. It’s true, but more in terms of cinematically playful than in a literal sense. (It’s occasionally the latter, too—for example, take the cutaway when one of the gangsters says that if what he’s saying isn’t true, may his mother keel over.) The film is a kind of a film-noir homage, but it’s rarely very serious about it and refuses to stay in a given genre. It’s a preposterous noir with a kind of art-film backstory in the middle of it. It’s a comedy and a romance—and it always pretends to take itself seriously in each capacity. What follows is a deliciously wild ride—and one of those rare movies that you’re sorry to see end. This excerpt was taken from a review by Ken Hanke published on Sept. 16, 2009.