SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER
For Library Viewing on Friday 20 March 2009
IN ORDER TO schedule as many films as possible, Fritz Lang's film, M will be assigned for home viewing. For our weekly scheduled library viewing, we'll see Francois Truffaut's second feature film, Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le Pianiste) (1960).
This film has interest on several levels. Stylistically it represents the inventive freedom of France's Nouvelle Vague ("New Wave") of movie makers, including Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard among the most famous.
These filmmakers rebelled against the "prestige" or literary film," especially in France, where directors were mainly concerned with being "faithful" to a literary script and dialogue was considered more important than the image. These were, in other words, mere directors, not "auteurs," or film artists who were the real authors of their films (not the writer who wrote the novel or script).
Naturally, in the first flush of rebellion, these directors used many cinematic devices that the mainstream cinema had rejected as old-fashioned and interfering in the "invisible" narrative cinema (a cinema that faithfully recorded dialogue). These devices included rapid (sometimes jump or discontinuos) editing and dissolve sequences, iris shots (the frame is reduced to a tiny circle), voice-overs, loose plotting, mixed genres (for example, film noir and comedy), low-key lighting, and the handheld camera.
These devices were not entirely forgotten in Hollywood, but were consigned mainly to low-budget ("B") films. The prestige ("A") films mainly focused on stories and invisible narration, avoiding cinematic devices that might be "visible," hence destroy the illusion of an objective point of view (as if one were viewing life itself).
But for directors like Truffaut, every film should be a statement about life as well as about cinema as an art. Shoot the Piano Player illustrates this point, since it's a statement on life, but also on film as an art form and as a genre (Truffaut's film especially pays tribute to Hollywood's B films noirs, which US critics ignored as artistically worthless but which the French considered more worthy of cinema as an art than many of the prestige films that usually won Oscars).
Cinematographer Raoul Coutard was one of the more innovative of his generation, as can be seen in Shoot the Piano Player, with its low-key lighting and location shooting.
Composer Georges Delerue started his illustrious career with the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers and soon migrated to Hollywood, finally winning an Oscar for A Little Romance, after several other nominations. He is considered one of the giants of film music (listen to the honky tonk piano piece that starts and ends the film). He was noted for nostalgic, pensive melodies orchestrated in a Baroque style, often using staccato string or flute arrangements, ostinato (repeated motifs) and folklike melodies. In some ways he anticipated New Age music, though Shoot the Piano Player is not representative of his more typical style.
Historically, the philosophical movement known as Existentialism was especially popular and influential in France (also America) at the time. Existentialism was started in France by Jean-Paul Sartre (among others). The philosophy basically emphasized existence over essence; that there were no eternal values, and all values were created by each person as they were forced to choose in an alien universe. There was no such thing as an essential character, as if it determined us. Rather man was radically free ("Man is condemned to be free," as Sarte said).
In many ways, Charlie (also known as Edward) is an Existentialist anti-hero, confused by what to do since he no longer believes in eternal values. Yet in not choosing he is still choosing to be one person rather than another. Torn between being Charlie (the honky tonk pianist) and Edward (the sophisticated concert pianist) he still involves himself and others in conflicts. Not choosing, he becomes a victim of the choices of others (his brothers, lovers, etc.).
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