Shoot the Piano Player

Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste, 1960) is François Truffaut's crime drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Charlie once filled concert halls as a classical pianist. Now he hammers out tunes in a grimy Paris bar under a new name, hiding from his own past.

That past catches up fast when his brother Chico stumbles in with two gangsters on his tail. Charlie helps his family slip away and, without meaning to, drags the waitress Léna, whom he shyly loves, and his little brother Fido into the danger. French singer Charles Aznavour carries the film as the quiet, melancholy Charlie. Truffaut keeps swerving off the crime track into comedy, tenderness, and flashback, then back again.

This was the director's second feature after The 400 Blows, adapted from a David Goodis pulp novel, and it remains one of the French New Wave's boldest statements. It's for viewers who love watching genre bent from the inside: it looks like noir, yet the tone leaps from funny to tragic with no warning. Stream Shoot the Piano Player (1960) online on iFILM.