François Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste | Shoot the Pianist (1960)

Tirez sur le pianiste wasn't the first of the nouvelle vague films, but it was certainly one of them, if one of the most influential. And an innovation is that it, although of course influenced by American cinema (B movies and noir), it is a mixture of genres: film noir, love story, gangster, even a bit of (subdued) comedy. The main characters are Charlie Kohler/Édouard Saroyan (Charles Aznavour), Léna (Marie Dubois), Thérèse Saroyan (Nicole Berger) and Clarisse (Michèle Mercier), and the main themes in a way could be said to be women (or womanhood) and shyness.

The mood is set when Charlie's brother Chico, pursued by gangsters, runs into a lamp post and wounds his head. He then seeks out Charlie who's working as a pianist in a dive bar. And here we have the absurd blending in, with Boby Lapointe singing incomprehensible words (for those unfamiliar with him) from both his songs 'Marcelle' and 'Framboise', the second to cover up for Charlie as he deals with his brother's problems.

Charlie occasionally has a free ride with his prostitute neighbour Clarisse, who represents the sensual side of a relationship. But it's Léna (the representative of romantic love) who knows about Charlie's true identity, who is aware of his being a classical pianist previously, but who receded into anonymity after his wife tragically killed herself. She wants Charlie to go back to the true performer he was but he has problems with his timidity, and tries to overcome it by buying secondhand books on it.

Slowly they become a couple, but in a crazy twist he kills the jealous Plyne in self defence and is taken by Léna to the chalet where Chico is holed out. But the bungling gangsters come, Léna is killed in the snow in a scene pre-figuring La Sirène du Mississippi, and Charlie is again left to a fate of playing mechanically in the dive bar, his expressionless face ironically expressing a great deal. A classic haunting film with haunting music, one of Truffaut's more remarkable in spite of its underrated ranking.