Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

 Francois Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player"

When reading about Francois Truffaut's 1960 film "Shoot the Piano Player," I came to learn how the film was shot and made. Primarily, Truffaut chose an improvisational style to both write and film the sequences. This was very apparent to me, as I noticed myself completely unsure of what was going to happen at any given moment throughout the film.

The film centers on a pianist whose brothers get him in some trouble with some local gangsters. As the story progresses, the pianist must circumvent the gangsters, along with the recruitment of the bar maid who works along side him. Through the twists and turns of the story, we learn more about the pianist and his extensive past. 

After the film, I remembered Quentin Tarantino once attributing the French New Wave movement to early films of his, like 1994's "Pulp Fiction." After watching "Shoot the Piano Player," this became even more apparent to me. The film completely shifts from drama, to comedy, to tragedy, to anything in between from scene to scene. There are scenes of gangsters kidnapping a young child, all the while mundanely discussing the fabric they're wearing. The plot drifts around in time, place, and story. Suddenly, the action stops and the succeeding 20 minutes takes place in the past following the origins of how the pianist got to where he was. Narration comes and goes, sometimes the narrator seems like the pianist himself, other times he comes across as a third party observer with the protagonist speaking directly to him. 

All these creatively manic ways to tell the story create a atmosphere like someone putting you inside a bottle and shaking you. I suppose this is meant to parallel exactly how the pianist feels as he is fleeing for his life from gangsters. Either way, the film is a perfect encapsulation of the French New Wave movement and make for a entertaining story.