Why François Truffaut turned his back on success to film a chaotic crime drama
In short: After the massive triumph of The 400 Blows, director François Truffaut defied expectations by filming a loose, abstract adaptation of a David Goodis novel. He wanted to shock his audience, blending crime melodrama, romance, and slapstick into a genre-defying experiment that polarized critics but became a cult favorite among cinephiles.
Released in 1960, Shoot the Piano Player follows Édouard Saroyan, a former concert pianist who hides from a tragic past under the pseudonym Charlie Kohler. Working in a Parisian bar, he becomes entangled in the criminal schemes of his brothers. Truffaut, who had read the source novel Down There in the mid-1950s, intentionally moved away from the structured narrative of his debut, The 400 Blows. He sought to create a film that would please only the most dedicated movie enthusiasts, refusing to be a prisoner of his initial success.
The production was marked by a constant evolution of the script and a desire to break with traditional storytelling. Truffaut, who shot the film on a budget of 890,062.95 francs, filled the work with homages to American B-movies and directors like Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller. He cast Charles Aznavour as the lead, specifically writing the role with him in mind, and utilized the widescreen Dyaliscope process to allow actors to move naturally within the frame. The film’s style is quintessentially French New Wave, featuring jump cuts, extended voice-overs, and out-of-sequence shots.
While the film was financially unsuccessful, it left a lasting mark on cinema. Critics like Bosley Crowther found the plot disjointed, but others, such as Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, praised its human elements and exhilarating ambition. The film’s title itself stems from a long-standing cultural joke, famously attributed to Oscar Wilde, about the dangers of criticizing a musician doing their best. Decades later, the film remains a touchstone for directors like Martin Scorsese, who noted that the protagonist’s tendency to hesitate until it is too late had a profound impact on his own creative development.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Shoot the Piano Player
- Also: Down There
- Also: Wikidata — Shoot the Piano Player · CC0
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