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IMDbPro

Shoot the Piano Player

Original title: Tirez sur le pianiste
  • 19601960
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 32m
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
19K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
21,193
2,258
Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
Watch Bande-annonce [OV]
Play trailer1:50
2 Videos
93 Photos
CrimeDramaThriller
A pianist helps his brother escape from two gangsters, who retaliate by abducting their kid brother.A pianist helps his brother escape from two gangsters, who retaliate by abducting their kid brother.A pianist helps his brother escape from two gangsters, who retaliate by abducting their kid brother.
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
19K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
21,193
2,258
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Director
      • François Truffaut
    • Writers
      • David Goodis(novel "Down There")
      • François Truffaut(adaptation)
      • Marcel Moussy(adaptation)
    • Stars
      • Charles Aznavour
      • Marie Dubois
      • Nicole Berger
    Top credits
    • Director
      • François Truffaut
    • Writers
      • David Goodis(novel "Down There")
      • François Truffaut(adaptation)
      • Marcel Moussy(adaptation)
    • Stars
      • Charles Aznavour
      • Marie Dubois
      • Nicole Berger
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 73User reviews
    • 71Critic reviews
    • Awards
      • 1 nomination

    Videos2

    Bande-annonce [OV]
    Trailer 1:50
    Bande-annonce [OV]
    Shoot the Piano Player
    Clip 2:24
    Shoot the Piano Player

    Photos93

    Charles Aznavour and Marie Dubois in Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Charles Aznavour and Michèle Mercier in Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Charles Aznavour in Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Charles Aznavour, Serge Davri, Marie Dubois, and Catherine Lutz in Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Charles Aznavour in Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
    Charles Aznavour in Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Charles Aznavour
    Charles Aznavour
    • Charlie Koller…
    Marie Dubois
    Marie Dubois
    • Léna
    Nicole Berger
    Nicole Berger
    • Thérèse Saroyan
    Michèle Mercier
    Michèle Mercier
    • Clarisse
    Serge Davri
    • Plyne
    Claude Mansard
    • Momo
    Richard Kanayan
    • Fido Saroyan
    • (as Le jeune Richard Kanayan)
    Albert Rémy
    Albert Rémy
    • Chico Saroyan
    Jean-Jacques Aslanian
    • Richard Saroyan
    Daniel Boulanger
    • Ernest
    Claude Heymann
    • Lars Schmeel
    Alex Joffé
    • Passerby
    Boby Lapointe
    • Le chanteur
    Catherine Lutz
    Catherine Lutz
    • Mammy
    Laure Paillette
    • La mère
    • (uncredited)
    Alice Sapritch
    Alice Sapritch
    • Concierge
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • François Truffaut
    • Writers
      • David Goodis(novel "Down There")
      • François Truffaut(adaptation) (dialogue)
      • Marcel Moussy(adaptation)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Because no funding was available from any of the studios, François Truffaut and his crew shot the film on the fly on the streets of Paris, often making up the script as they went along. The ending was decided on the basis of who was available at the time of shooting.
    • Goofs
      When Lena and Charlie look at the men behind them in her compact mirror, the reflection shown is not plausible.
    • Quotes

      Momo: My old man used to say: "when you hear someone at your door, think it might be an assassin, this way, if it's a thief, you'll be glad!"

    • Connections
      Featured in Sunday Night: Don't Shoot the Composer (1966)
    • Soundtracks
      Framboise
      Music by Boby Lapointe

      Lyrics by Boby Lapointe

      Performed by Boby Lapointe

    User reviews73

    Review
    Top review
    10/10
    My favourite film.
    'Shoot the Pianist' opens with the insides of a playing piano, the inner machinations of a musical instrument. This image points to the film's ambiguity. it says that this film will similarly uncover the insides (heart, soul) of a man who gives nothing away on the surface. it will suggest that his insides are like the piano's insides, the the only way he can express what's buried inside of him is through piano-playing - this is what gives the film its emotional pull. but it also suggests that Charlie Koller's fatal emotional timidity has warped or deadened that soul, made it a mere mechanism, alive only in a technical sense. More objectively, it amounts to a manifesto for Truffaut's intentions with the film, the way he will turn the gangster genre inside out, a genre he confessed to not really liking.

    Although Truffaut would go on to make self-conscious and superficial tributes to his hero (e.g. 'La Peau Douce', 'The Bride Wore Black'), 'Shoot the Pianist' is his most Hitchcockian film. Most obviously, it is a reworking of 'Vertigo', the story of a homme fatal (Koller - black widower?) who kills two women because he couldn't say the right thing, because he behaved like a man should, rather than the way he really feels. Lena is in effect a reincarnation of his dead wife, a woman who wants to reinstate his 'original' identity. Like Scottie Ferguson, Charlie is a man paralysed by memory, shellshocked by his experiences with an elusive love that could so easily have been his.

    But, again like 'Vertigo', 'Pianist' is the study of masculine identity and its dissolution. When we first see Charlie he is literally in a scrapheap, getting dressed in front of a mirror. This mirror motif recurs throughout, and with it the question: who is Charlie Koller? The farmboy sibling of gangsters; the renowned pianist; the back-room tinkler; the father to his young brother; the man who desires but cannot ask, who keeps destructively pulling back? Throughout the real 'man' is deluged by different names, images (posters, paintings), stories etc. about himself: his own personality is divided by the talks he conducts with himself. Even the heartbreaking flashback sequence about his past is related to him by someone else. In the fear of losing his identity, of giving himself in union, Charlie loses everything.

    But 'Pianist' is also reminiscent of early, British Hitchcock films like 'The 39 Steps' and 'Young and Innocent', in its playful irreverence with genre. David Thomson has said it was a film Laurence Sterne might have made, and, like 'Tristam Shandy', like those Hitchcock movies, the main genre narrative is frequently broken off by digressions and bits of business. The film plunges us in media res in the gangster genre, a man being chased in the obscurity. He bangs into a lamppost, and is helped by a passer-by. They start talking about marriage. This is emblematic of the film as a whole - a gangster film that keeps stopping to talk about love, women, family, music, the past etc. When the genre kicks in again - Chico (gangster name, yes, but Marx Brother too) rushes into his brother's bar, the tension is somewhat undermined by the comedy bar-room singer bouncing to the cymbals. When Charlie and Lena are kidnapped by the two hoods, a fraught situation turns into an hilarious banter about women and dirty old men. the most frightening sequence - the abduction of young Fido - provokes the funniest scene, where captor and captive debate the authenticity of the former's Japanese metal scarf.

    But the film works the other way too, when the comic unexpectedly flashes into the tragic. In an early scene, Charlie agonises to himself about the proper etiquette to be used in handling Lena - this is a touching, sad scene, but full of the comedy of embarrassment. Suddenly, having dithered so long, Charlie realises she's gone. The scrunched pain on his face is devastating.

    'Pianist' is my favourite film. For Charles Aznavour's performance, the embodiment of shy timidity leading to emotional paralysis, and my altar ego. For the Godardian style, mixing abrupt, immediate, hand-held location shooting, and natural sound excitement, with a grasp of mise-en-scene worthy of the great 1950s melodramatists (the framing, cutting characters off from one another, trapping them in their decor; or the elaborate, Ophulsian camerawork, such as the 'Le Plaisir' gliding outside the bar; the circular narrative that sees continuity tragically affirmed in the shape of the new waitress). 'Pianist' couldn't have been made without Melville's 'Bob le Flambeur', and its flippancy and humanising of genre, but the influence of this on Cassavetes, Penn, Scorcese etc. was immense, for its generosity to all its characters, showing, despite Eustache, that a good woman can be a maman and putain. For the comic chutzpah, the dazzling abduction scene, the triptych revealing the boss's betrayal, the clumsy murder, the wonderfully bumbling hoods, Fido's Hawksian little dance. For Truffaut's concern with time and decay and art. For the haunting scene with the cello girl. For the music, fulfilling Noel Coward's dictum about the potency of cheap music, giving this short, strange movie its generous soul, a film that so humanely departs from genre it makes the generic climax grotesque, a DW Griffith nightmare in blinding white.
    helpful•94
    18
    • the red duchess
    • Jun 26, 2001

    FAQ1

    • Chicago Opening Happened When?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • July 23, 1962 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • France
    • Languages
      • French
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Schießen Sie auf den Pianisten
    • Filming locations
      • Garage du Dauphiné, 53 route de Lyon, Grenoble, Isère, France
    • Production company
      • Les Films de la Pléiade
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • FRF 890,063 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $21,124
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $11,206
      • Apr 25, 1999
    • Gross worldwide
      • $21,124
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 32 minutes
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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