Tirez sur le pianiste
François Truffaut (1960)
The way it looks and moves is fresh and inventive without ever seeming flashy. There’s a lovely score by Georges Delerue: its lilting melancholy complements the two kinds of piano music in evidence – the tunes played by the eponymous pianist Charlie Koller in the bar where he now works, and the classical pieces performed by the man he used be, the renowned concert pianist Edouard Saroyan. (The bar’s proprietor also sings an extraordinary, rapid comedy piece – ‘Framboises et mamelles’ – and there are love songs heard on a car radio. In their different ways, these seem to anticipate ‘Le Tourbillon’ in Jules et Jim.) There’s a brilliant opening sequence, in which one of Charlie’s brothers, escaping from a bunch of other criminals, gets into conversation with a man who talks about his married life. We never see that man again but his relative contentment reverberates. Truffaut’s naturally generous humanism is palpable: none of the characters – even the stupid hoods in pursuit of Charlie and his family – seems negligible. The emotional variety and unpredictability of the story is unforced but at the same time resonates with the visual style. (Raoul Coutard photographed the film. One particular moment also brings to mind Jules et Jim. When Charlie’s girl is shot and she tumbles down a snowy incline, it evokes the moment in the later film when Henri Serre as Jim rolls down a hillside with the little daughter of Jules and Catherine. The contrast between the two sequences – tragic here, idyllic in Jules et Jim – makes the connection between them all the stronger.) The actresses playing the three women in the pianist’s life – Nicole Berger, Marie Dubois and Michèle Mercier – are delicately individuated. At the same time they seem to have an indefinable kinship which convinces you that he would be drawn to each one of them, and they to him.
But I struggled to engage with the film – perhaps because I’d seen Diary of a Country Priest and Breathless on the two previous evenings and Shoot the Pianist seems a minor work in comparison. Charles Aznavour certainly holds the screen but I found his Edouard/Charlie a compelling presence rather than an interesting character. Until I read Pauline Kael’s brilliantly persuasive piece when we got home, I didn’t even really get that the pianist was hiding from life because it was proving to be so unkind. Shoot the Pianist is based on an American novel Down There by David Goodis (Truffaut did the adaptation with Marcel Moussy) and it’s recognised as one of the nouvelle vague pictures that reflect most strongly the influence of, and an affection for, the tropes and themes of American crime films. (The split between the pianistic lives of Edouard and Charlie, and the latter’s involvement in a crime plot, have to be seen now as inspirations for Fingers and, therefore, for The Beat That My Heart Skipped.) The humour is of a kind that enables you to perceive the wit without feeling the urge to laugh. That’s how I experienced the whole picture: I could see that it was good but I felt removed from it.
29 April 2009
