Shoot the Piano Player

(1960)

★ 7.2 IMDb · 453 votes

Genres: Drama, Thriller, Crime

Year: 1960

Runtime: 85 мин

Country: France

Director: François Truffaut

Cast: Шарль Азнавур, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, Мишель Мерсье, Серж Даври, Claude Mansard, Richard Kanayan, Albert Rémy, Jean-Jacques Aslanian, Daniel Boulanger

Plot

Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.

Once a successful concert pianist under his birth name Edouard Saroyan, Charlie Koller is now a pianist playing honky-tonk music in a sleazy Paris bar owned and operated by Plyne, and most in Charlie's current life are unaware of his concert-pianist past. This new life, in which he is caring for his youngest brother, minor Fido Saroyan, is to escape the pain associated with his past life, which included a marriage to waitress Thérèse Saroyan. Charlie has always been a shy, reserved man, coming out of that concert pianist life which has made him retreat further into his shell where he only feels comfortable behind the keyboard. Besides Fido, the only person of any meaning in Charlie's life is his prostitute neighbor Clarisse, who looks after Fido when needed and is Charlie's paid bed partner when he needs human connection. Charlie's life becomes more complex with two developments. First, he is attracted to Léna, a waitress at Plyne's--who is also admired by Plyne himself although he doubts that she would ever be attracted to him. Second: Charlie's eldest brother, not-so-adept criminal Chico Saroyan, solicits his help in eluding two criminal associates, Momo and Ernest, whom he and their last brother Richard Saroyan bilked in what was their only job together.