315 Shoot the Piano Player

[Martha]

Shoot the Piano Player

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/1451/315_box_348x490_w128.jpg[/img]

François Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this, his most playful film. Part thriller, part comedy, part tragedy, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags, guns, clowns, and thugs, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:

-New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Raoul Coutard
-Audio commentary by film scholars Annette Insdorf and Peter Brunette
-Exclusive new video interviews with actors Charles Aznavour and Marie Dubois and director of photography Raoul Coutard
-Rare interview with François Truffaut collaborator Suzanne Schiffman
-Two documentary excerpts featuring Truffaut on the film and the source novel
-The Music of George Delerue, an illustrated audioessay
-Dubois’ screen test
-Theatrical trailer
-New and improved English subtitle translation
-Plus: a 28-page booklet featuring film critic Kent Jones, an interview with Truffaut, and the director on Aznavour and Dubois

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

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[Arn777]

for reference the French MK2 DVD has the following features:

Commentary track with Marie Dubois and Raoul Coutard.
Truffaut talks about the film and comments a few scenes
David Goodis : Truffaut talks about Goodis
Test shots of Marie Dubois.
Presentation by Serge Toubiana
Trailers of Truffaut films in the MK2 collection.

These should also appear on the Criterion edition. MK2 retail price is 23 euro (around $28), one would hope that for a $40 SRP, Criterion adds a few things on top of these (at least a big booklet).

[tavernier]

for reference the French MK2 DVD has the following features:

Commentary track with Marie Dubois and Raoul Coutard.

Actually it has 2 commentary tracks: one with Dubois, one with Coutard.

[ellipsis7]

The CC transfer will be a great improvement no doubt on the MK2 disc which has the contrast jacked up...

Check out the Rutgers Films in Print book on SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER for some good commentary pieces, plus the script....

[stroszeck]

Not to be off topic, since I think this isn't exactly that great a film compared to other Truffaut stuff, but couldn't CC just squeeze in the PLAYTIME re-issue for Dec. too, along with this one and Forbidden Games? I mean it's been a year or so since the other went OOP

[ellipsis7]

Sorry. This is , in my book, is one of Truffaut's 3 best movies (along with LES 400 COUPS & JULES ET JIM) made before his interest and growing fixation with Alfred Hitchcock, over influenced his filmmaking and made it more mannered and calculating...

[Cinephrenic]

Criterion sure thinks so, they are making this a 2-disc. It surprises me. I'm not sure if it is one of Truffaut's best films, but that isn't a topic I want to get into.

[analoguezombie]

Not to be off topic, since I think this isn't exactly that great a film compared to other Truffaut stuff, but couldn't CC just squeeze in the PLAYTIME re-issue for Dec. too

yes, yes, please do. I need to replace the OOP copy i just sold for $150. mwahaha

Criterion sure thinks so, they are making this a 2-disc. It surprises me. I'm not sure if it is one of Truffaut's best films, but that isn't a topic I want to get into.

I think it's more of a business decision, and the simple fact that a lot is available to use as extras. If someone is a Truffaut fan, they'll buy whatever release Criterion puts out, whether it be 1 or 2 disc. SO they may as well make a 2-discer and charge $40.

Makes me wonder why so many Godard releases are only single disc.

[ellipsis7]

For the unbelievers who doubt this is major Truffaut and major New Wave...

From the Time Out Film Guide....

Truffaut's second feature is now recognised as one of the key films of the French nouvelle vague. Based (not too loosely, except in mood) on David Goodis' novel Down There, it's a strange pastiche of gangster movie, love story, and cabaret film, with a totally and calculatedly unpredictable plot about a lonely pianist with a past. The story is by turns comic and pathetic, often flashing midstream from one mood to the other, and Aznavour's performance as the wounded hero is a masterstroke of casting. In many ways fantastic, the film is paradoxically much more realistic than most in the way it uses both character and environment. Which is, after all, what the New Wave was about.

[Cinephrenic]

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Raoul Coutard

Audio commentary by film scholars Annette Insdorf and Peter Brunette

Exclusive new video interviews with actors Charles Aznavour and Marie Dubois

Video interview with Coutard, conducted in 2003

Rare interview with François Truffaut collaborator Suzanne Schiffman, from 1986

Excerpts from a 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps dedicated to Truffaut

An excerpt from the French television program Étoiles et toiles in which Truffaut discusses his adaptation of the David Goodis novel

The Music of George Delerue, an illustrated essay

Dubois' screen test for the film

Theatrical trailer

New and improved English subtitle translation

A new essay by film critic Kent Jones

More!

Holy Shit:

Audio commentary by film scholars Annette Insdorf and Peter Brunette

[ellipsis7]

Now this really is a gilt edge release!

An interest debate to occupy idle minds is the correct form of translation of the English title.... French title is TIREZ LE PIANISTE...

However SHOOT THE PIANIST implies the concert pianist side of ther character, Edward Saroyan...

Whereas SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER suggests his cafe jazz playing alter ego, Charlie Koller...

[Simon]

Tirez can translate to many things, but in this case the translation used in the title (Shoot) is the correct one.

As for the distinction between pianist and piano player, to my knowledge, piano player (joueur de piano) is not commonly used in french, it's always pianiste.


In my opinion, this is Truffaut's second best movie after The 400 Blows. It has all the style and irreverence of Jules & Jim, but the characters in this movie are likeable, unlike Jules & Jim where I hate the guts of everyone that appears on screen.

[ellipsis7]

That's the point, there's not a single English word like the French 'pianiste'', that encompasses both the English meanings 'pianist' and 'piano player' at the same time, and indeed describes the Edward Saroyan/Charlie Koller dual personality...

[Tribe]

Nice to see David Goodis added in some way to the Collection, along with Jom Thompson (for Coup de torchon).

Goodis was something of the poet laureate of the down and out and very drunk. He had a short stint in Hollywaood, characterized by increasingly bizarre bahavior which included, it is rumoured, a penchant for getting beaten up by obese black women. Which sort makes sense since in his novels there are invariably two kinds of women: the abusive wife and the street waif waiting to be saved. If the rumours are true, he needed the abuse.

After Hollywood, he went back to Philadelphia to live with his mother and there devoted himself to writing many classic noir novels during the paperback boom of the fifties and the sixties.

Tribe

[Sanity Claus]

Did I miss something or has no one yet noticed this is a non-anamorphic transfer? Seems like the kind of thing that usually elicits much hand-wringing around here.

[peerpee]

Nah - we're just so used to Criterion always making that mistake on their website.

They do it almost every month. Both that and the spolling mistooks of the director's names on the sleeves has actually become quite endearing now.

[ando]

This is one of the strangest, yet odddly, most fulfilling movie experience I've ever had. It's also one of the funniest - especially in the way Truffaut makes dramatic events, which would certainly bring most narratives to a screeching halt, seem almost incidental. People get shot, jump out of windows, run headlong into street posts, then pick up and continue on their merry way as if they had a string of catastrophies to get through before the next train left the station.

Although I first saw it at home on a PBS broadcast, I've always wondered if some of the scenes would lose their intimacy on a fifty foot screen. It's obviously a personal film, in the sense that Truffaut gives us highly subjective glimpses of the world surrounding Charlie Kohler. Andrew Sarris, the infamous auteurist film critic (and my favorite, incidentally), in Confessions of a Cultist (1970) lauded this film as his favorite Truffaut. And, indeed, the movie can be read on several levels. Without knowing very much about Truffault's personal life, the plight of Charlie seems almost autobiographical - the incidents that occur within the film are almost embarrasingly candid. Not that self-revelation isn't ultimately universal, but the incidents are so particular that one almost suspects that much of Truffaut's own consciousness is somehow akin to that of Charlie's.

[Taketori Washizu]

I had a post here originally, now it has disappeared. What gives? Is this a conspiracy or is my paranoid nature getting the best of me.

[daniel p]

Does anyone know when this will be available for pre-order everywhere? I'm talking amazon, dvdplanet and dvdpacific in particular.
Same goes for Forbidden games.

[numediaman2]

Does anyone know when this will be available for pre-order everywhere? I'm talking amazon, dvdplanet and dvdpacific in particular.
Same goes for Forbidden games.

I've already pre-ordered through www.criteriondvd.com -- I usually order through Amazon but decided to give these guys a try. Anyone have any experience with these guys?

[Andre Jurieu]

I've already pre-ordered through www.criteriondvd.com -- I usually order through Amazon but decided to give these guys a try. Anyone have any experience with these guys?

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=154
I still don't enjoy their shipping methods to Canada.

[Gigi M.]

Does anyone know when this will be available for pre-order everywhere? I'm talking amazon, dvdplanet and dvdpacific in particular.
Same goes for Forbidden games.

I've already pre-ordered through www.criteriondvd.com -- I usually order through Amazon but decided to give these guys a try. Anyone have any experience with these guys?

Criteriondvd.com is great. I´ve bought a couple of discs from them, including the oop edition of Straw Dogs. I personally recommend them.

[blindside8zao]

is it just more, or does it seem that the further along Criterion gets, the more jampacked their 2 discs become?

[zedz]

is it just more, or does it seem that the further along Criterion gets, the more jampacked their 2 discs become?

Neither. See Divorce Italian Style and Harakiri for recent examples of airy, spacious 2-disc sets.

[souvenir]

is it just more, or does it seem that the further along Criterion gets, the more jampacked their 2 discs become?

Neither. See Divorce Italian Style and Harakiri for recent examples of airy, spacious 2-disc sets.

What about Naked as well? I've heard lots of criticism of the second discs of the two above, but Naked is a more recent film yet it still has very little on the second disc. Admittedly, the first disc does have a commentary though.