Shoot The Pianist

When the Francois Truffaut's 1960 second feature "Shoot the Pianist" begins, we expect it to be about Chico (Albert Remy), the man who starts the film running away from unseen assailants, his right eye blackened, ready to collapse at any moment. He strikes up conversation after being helped up by a passerby, who waxes lyrical about love and marriage. Chico feigns interest, but when he parts ways with the man, he runs away in the opposite direction. Marriage is the last thing on his mind. Eventually he takes refuge in a dance club; he knows the pianist, who goes and plays by the name of Charlie, but who is really called Edouard (Charles Aznavour), according to Chico. Charlie is not initially noteworthy, a little aloof and detached, until he starts playing the piano. His face composed, he does his best to dodge his brother's ceaseless monologue. We can't quite tell if he's annoyed by his brother, passively tolerant, or regards him warmly; that is, until the people chasing Chico enter the club, and Charlie upends a stack of crates to stop them from getting to his brother. Clearly, then, there's filial loyalty there.

This enigmatic aura surrounding Charlie and his motivations is really what the film is about. After this, Charlie is in just about every scene. It turns out the men chasing Chico are after some money Chico pinched from them after a robbery; the actual details are a little unclear. The film is much more interested in the inner turmoil of Charlie, and what happened to him to make him so emotionally stunted. This isn't to say he's a recluse; his voiceover/interior monologue reveals him to have a healthy interest in (and eventual relationship with) his coworker at the club, Léna (Marie Dubois), but as the film explains, things have happened to him and he's undergone many metamorphoses over his life, juggling tragedy, success, and withdrawal.

This really is a fascinating film about the inner workings of an mysterious character, with a face that is compulsively watchable. This is all down to Aznavour's performance; a legend in France, I must confess I have never encountered him before in my adventures into chansons, but here he is compelling, and the film rests on his passive, reserved performance. We may not know precisely who he is, but we want to.

The plot begins to unfold around him; the purusuers take him and Lena hostage, with guns, at one point, and the manager of the club disapproves of his and Lena's union, resulting in a brutal fight. And yet despite these lashings of film noir tropes, the film never seems to present Charlie as in any danger. The hostage-takers seem too warm and genial to be really threatening, discussing their fondness for women and other banalities.

The film eventually boils down to the statement that Charlie, despite being benign and good of heart, seems to be a magnet for trouble wherever he goes. One could argue that this is because of his family of crooks, but the extended flashback midway through, which reveals a previous tragedy, is all on him, in some way, but also not really, because he didn't mean it. The film suggests that this is perhaps Charlie's curse; he is too benign, and too happy to let things just happen to him, ultimately a little too unwilling to try and change his circumstances; although that's arguably unfair, since his circumstances seem to have a habit of catching up with him.

This central tension of his character, of a seemingly good but ultimately enigmatic man mired in bad circumstances, is what carries the film. The direction is par excellence, as was Truffaut's standard; the film has a zip and go about it that is never less than compelling. It's all in the editing; look at the way Truffaut conveys the messiness of the opening chase scene with direct violations of the 180 rule, shooting this way and that way, describing less of the mechanics of the chase but more of a sense of someone being chased. There is a palpable musicality to the film, as befits Charlie's profession, and all of the characters seem to be swaying to some kind of beat or another. The on-location shooting also conjures up a sense of place, and in a few shots we are grounded in the club, Charlie's apartment, the well-trodden streets. It runs a good line of familiarity.

This is a masterful work, no doubt a masterpiece, and shows that Truffaut arrived out of the starting gate, raring to go. It spryly explores the mysteries behind our actions and deftly examines the way our motives can be a mystery to ourselves more than anyone else. This is a simple story told with economy, and for that the wider moral implications loom larger than life. And it proves the rule that there is nothing more fascinating than the human face in the cinema.