“I don’t want to get involved, you hear?”

Plot Summary: An emotionally detached honky-tonk piano player with a tragic past reluctantly gets involved in his brother’s troubles with gangsters, which puts him and his new girlfriend in mortal danger.

Review:

The protagonist of Francois Truffaut’s sophomore feature is a genuine existential antihero: once a famous concert pianist named Edouard, he now tinkles ivory as Charlie at a dingy honky-tonk bar, after having withdrawn from the world following his wife’s suicide.  His efforts to remain emotionally detached from those around him - a defense mechanism formed in the wake of his wife’s tragic death - fail when he not only reluctantly gets mixed up in his brother’s underworld activities, but also hesitantly falls in love with a beautiful girl, Lena, from the honky-tonk - a waitress, just like his wife was.  As fate would have it, however, his attempt to help his brother only results in tragedy, driving him right back to the anonymity of the honky-tonk, as detached as ever. 

Torn between cutting himself off from the world and reconnecting with humanity, Charlie often vacillates between two opposing desires, and his conflicted, ambivalent nature often manifests itself in his tendency to think one thing, only to do another.  This contradiction between his thoughts and his actions can be humorous, such as when he talks himself into kissing Lena but doesn’t actually attempt it until after she’s gone, or painfully sad, such as when, in a flashback, he tells himself to forgive his wife, who had just confessed to being unfaithful, but leaves her instead, a decision which indirectly causes her suicide. Truffaut further reinforces the tragic duality of Charlie/Edouard by giving him two different identities; by having him repeatedly look into mirrors; by having him fall in love with two different waitresses; and by placing him a circular narrative in which his tragic past repeats itself.

Yet for all its downbeat fatalism, the film is also bursting with humor, romance, and cinematic razzmatazz - the kind associated with talented young filmmakers giddily exploring the medium’s rich visual possibilities.  Truffaut fills the screen with humorous, offbeat visual touches - an absurd shot in which gangsters trailing Charlie and Lena from a discrete distance suddenly look impossibly close to the couple when Lena spots them in her compact mirror; an amusing shot of irises at the left, center and right of the screen which all contain the same character saying different things; a hilarious cut from a character saying “may my mother drop dead if I’m not telling the truth” to an old lady keeling over - which in true French New Wave fashion deliberately remind us that we’re watching a movie. Amusing moments like these, however, tend to immediately precede or follow scenes of violent action, wistful romanticism or heartbreaking tragedy, resulting in bold shifts of tone.  It’s a risky, audacious approach, especially for a fledgling filmmaker, but Truffaut skillfully pulls it off, balancing all the disparate elements with the style and assurance of a master.  Indeed, Shoot the Piano Player, a delirious blend of genres, styles and tones which stunningly juxtaposes playful comedy, moving romance, winking reflexivity and dark existential tragedy, may be Truffaut’s masterpiece.

Posted on March 30th, 2008 by Mat Viola
Filed under: Reviews