Shoot the Piano Player: How the Past Beats Inside Us All

Shoot the Pianist

Fancy trying a bit of film noir mediated through the distinctive lens of the French New Wave? Then look no further. François Truffaut’s Shoot the Pianist (Tirez sur le pianist) is an excellent place to start.

It combines the cynicism, menace and fatalism of American film noir with the creative ferment of French nouvelle vague; where French filmmakers rejected traditional cinematic conventions, embraced experimentation and created new, more personal perspectives.

Dark themes, new opportunities

Before taking a closer look at the film itself, let’s consider briefly the cinematic phenomenon that was ‘film noir’. The term (literally 'black film’) was coined by French film critics in the 1940s. It reflected the fast black & white film stock used, which enabled night-time shooting, and the distinctive aesthetic, influenced by German Expressionism, which was characterised by stark lighting and unusual angles.

But it was also a reference to the claustrophobic mood and dark, violent themes that underpinned the narratives, reflecting the alienation, pessimism and anxieties of the period. The protagonists in film noir were often struggling to escape from a criminal or violent past. And were condemned by their mistakes or moral failings to lose the battle for survival.

The French New Wave emerged somewhat later, in the 1950s. It was an art form born of circumstance. Rejecting the dead hand of the big studios put control in the hands of film directors. This offered creative freedom but also meant working with limited resources. So, they found new ways of making films, shooting on location using smaller, handheld cameras and relying on natural lighting.

Long takes, improvisation and fragmented editing became commonplace. A new realism and subjectivity developed. This was accompanied by a studied ambiguity in characters’ motivations, a departure from the strong narratives favoured by the Hollywood studio system and an existential take on life (unsurprising in the context!)

It’s always fascinating to watch the intersection of different genres as the cross-fertilisation of ideas and styles creates new creative opportunities. Shoot the Pianist was no exception.

The past is never dead…

Truffaut based the film on a novel by crime writer David Goodis. He was keen to take a new direction, which showcased his love of American films, after the success of his first film, The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups).

The film stars singer Charles Aznavour as a classical pianist down on his luck after the tragic suicide of his wife. He gets a job in a seedy Parisian bar. And spends his spare time with Clarisse, a prostitute who also cooks for his little brother Fido, who he looks after.

Things seem to be looking up when he starts a promising new relationship with Léna, the bar’s waitress, played to perfection by Marie Dubois. But then he suddenly finds himself mired in trouble when his older brother falls out with some small-time but violent gangsters, who go on to abduct Fido.

As we’ve already seen, trying to escape one’s past is a major film noir trope. And at the film’s heart is the haunting line spoken by his former partner Thérèse, ‘What you did yesterday stays with you forever.’

The film has a dark tone. And ends in the sad death of his girlfriend in a violent shootout with the gangsters. An astonishing final scene of her body sliding across a snowy slope lingers in the mind long after the film ends. (The cinematography by Raoul Coutard is an absolute triumph.)

But the film also features moments of pure comedy. What holds it together is the genuine power of Aznavour’s very human and sensitive performance as he wrestles with his inner demons. And the creative force that Truffaut gives the film as he switches effortlessly between scenes of violence and scenes of domesticity; and deploys the contrast between the narrative’s dark themes and the frequent, seemingly anarchic changes of tone to create something entirely new. Offering a pastiche of film noir conventions which becomes a homage to those very conventions.

There is no passion without struggle

Ultimately, the film is a story about our individual pasts, which we never really escape. But also, in his words, a film about, ‘love and the relations between men and women.’ Where the redemptive power of the relationships we form with people as we go through life always offers hope.

As philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’