(A few of Goodis’s other works had already been adapted for the screen, including Dark Passage, the 1947 film version of which was directed by Delmer Daves and starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.) Truffaut’s first feature, The 400 Blows (1959), had been a deeply personal story based on his own youth and, in his opinion, too typically French for his second, he decided to take a different route.
He doesn’t intend to get involved, but when youngest brother Fido (Richard Kanayan) is kidnapped and he becomes embroiled in a crime of his own, he no longer has a choice.ĭirector François Truffaut based his 1960 film Shoot the Piano Player on American writer David Goodis’s 1956 novel Down There. Having double-crossed two men (Claude Mansard, Daniel Boulanger) with whom they committed a robbery, Chico and another Saroyan brother, Richard (Jean-Jacques Aslanian), are in danger, and they want Charlie’s help. It comes calling for him one night in the bruised, panting form of his brother Chico (Albert Rémy). Of course, this being a noir tale, Charlie can’t escape his past forever. Although he’s popular with the clientele there, it’s a definite step (or several) down from the life he once led. “But it better be music.” It was music - Charlie may have done all he could to kill off Édouard, but he couldn’t kill off his talent - and since then, he’s been the bar’s resident piano player. “All right,” said Plyne (Serge Davri), his boss. One day, while he was sweeping out the bar where he worked as a janitor, the lure of the piano proved too strong to resist. Unfortunately, his rise to fame also led to the tragic death of his wife, Thérésa (Nicole Berger), after which he changed his name, disappeared from public view and even gave up music - at least temporarily.
He came to regard himself as an artist, and despite some early career struggles, he eventually became a well-known and respected concert pianist. As it happens, there’s much more to this reticent loner than the people around him realize for starters, he’s not actually Charlie Koller…Īt one time, not so long ago, Charlie was Édouard Saroyan, a piano prodigy who left his family (including his budding criminal brothers) at age fourteen in order to attend music school. “Who is Charlie Koller? All we know is he’s the piano man who’s raising his kid brother and who minds his own business.” So says Léna (Marie Dubois), a waitress at the seedy bar where Charlie (Charles Aznavour) pounds away at the keys every night.
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