Tirez sur le pianiste [Shoot the Piano Player] (1960)

(On Cable TV, May 2020) Many cinephiles think the world of François Truffault’s debut feature Les 400 coups, but for me he starts hitting his marks with Tirez sur le pianiste, where (having said what he had about his childhood in his first film), he starts playing with the topics that he would then revisit over and over in his career—Hollywood homage to crime films with gangster subplots and a murder somewhere in the narrative; complex unglamorous relationships between his protagonist and women; the stylistic hallmarks (jump cuts, guerilla-style shooting, voiceovers, nonlinear storytelling) that would mark the French cinema for the next two decades. Tirez sur le pianiste explicitly looks at the United States for inspiration (film noir for style, an English-language novel for the plot) and blends it into its own execution. The mixture of crime thriller and talky French romantic drama is in line with the entirety of French cinema, from poetic realism to the impending nouvelle vague. A young Charles Aznavour (yes, him) is remarkable as the protagonist, a piano player trying to escape his dark past. Amazingly enough for French Canadian viewers, the soundtrack features some Felix Leclerc! While not flawless (it’s long, sometimes dull), Tirez sur le pianiste is generally better than many similar examples of French cinema at that time, and clearly announces Truffaut as the director he wanted to be.