Wed 3 Oct 2018
A Book! Movie!! Review by Dan Stumpf: DAVID GOODIS – Down There / THE PIANO PLAYER (1960).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[8] Comments
DAVID GOODIS – Down There. Gold Medal #623, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1956. Also published as: Shoot the Piano Player, Black Cat, 1962. Reprinted several times under both titles.
SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER. Les Films de la Pléiade, France, 1960, as Tirez sur le pianiste. Astor Pictures Corporation, US, 1962 (subtitled). Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger and Serge Davri. Adapted by Francois Truffaut from the novel Down There by David Goodis. Directed by Francois Truffaut.
In substance, Down There is pretty typical Gold Medal stuff, what with fist-fights, chases, mobsters, broads, and other rugged manly stuff –- the story is something about a threadbare piano player (Eddie in the book, Charlie in the film) at a seedy bar getting involved with gangs and a waitress — but flavored here with the boozy poetry unique to David Goodis. Goodis could hear the circular logic of a drunk and find in it the awesome redundancy of a Beethoven composition. His characters keep trying to grapple with the meaning of it all, keep losing, keep grappling….
Oftentimes they succeed in resolving whatever the plot is – they catch the killer, foil the criminal, rescue the damsel – only to lose some more important objective, stuck in whatever personal swamp they started out the book in. So the final lesson of Down There is not just that You Can Go Home Again: your destiny was to never really leave.
Shoot the Piano Player takes the fatalism of the novel and infuses it with director Francois Truffaut’s soft heart and Charles Aznavour’s masterful sang-froid.o The circular story is still there, faithfully filmed from the novel down to small detail, but it seems somehow more human, as if it isn’t fate so much as the characters themselves that leads them to their predestined ends.
Aznavour dominates the film, but along the way there are plenty of pauses for the bit players to get out and stretch their legs a bit –- stock characters in Goodis novels and Truffaut films simply refuse to behave like stock characters -– so when Charlie (Aznavour) and Lena (Marie Dubois) are kidnapped by gangsters early on, their captors end up swapping jokes with them. And later on, a thuggish bartender muses aloud about his bad luck with women as he’s trying to choke Charlie to death.
The point, if there is one (it’s never quite safe to go looking for a moral lesson in Truffaut films or Goodis novels) may be that no one is really ordinary: not in pulp novels, B-movies or what we call Real Life; skid-row bums might be heroes, goons can feel tenderness, and a spear-carrier in the back row of Aida may actually be singing an aria, if we listen closely.
“Charlie old buddy – may I be familiar? – Charlie old buddy, I’m going to kill you.â€
October 3rd, 2018 at 9:13 pm
While the film and the book differ, the remarkable thing is that each reaches the same overall humanistic view of people in general, good an bad, spear carrier and diva.
It’s a shame all of Aznavour’s best roles are in French films (his few American films aren’t that great) so we don’t always see just how good he could be as an actor and not one of the great French singers and entertainers of the period.
October 3rd, 2018 at 9:28 pm
I have not seen the movie nor, alas, nor in fact any of the films Aznavour made. He was one of my wife’s favorite singers, though, and the night she was able to take my son Jon to see one of his live performances in New York City was a night she never forgot.
He was indeed one of the great entertainers of all time.
October 3rd, 2018 at 11:04 pm
My favourite Truffaut film, and one of my favourite films of all time. Now I will try to find the book.
October 4th, 2018 at 2:56 pm
Steve, I think you used the the plural of “singer” in your comment when you should have left it singular.
October 4th, 2018 at 3:27 pm
Your suggestion would work, Randy, but I’ve changed to what I think I intended to say. Thanks!
October 4th, 2018 at 5:08 pm
Believe it or not, I considered that might work as well and I agree with you that it is better.
October 6th, 2018 at 11:52 pm
Steve,
you have not seen this film? You must, it is absolutely essential. A true gem of cinema. I should have the DVD. Just tell me you will watch it and I shall gladly loan it.
October 8th, 2018 at 3:17 am
Thanks for the offer, Rob. I’m sure I have a copy on DVD myself. After reading Dan’s review I promised myself to look for it when I get home. Am in L.A. at the moment, but if I can’t find it, I’ll definitely take you up on it!