French noir redux

Shoot the Piano Player

(Criterion, $40)

IT often happens that when directors score both a critical and commercial hit with their debut film, their second outing disappoints. But that wasn’t the case with French New Wave director Francois Truffaut.

In 1959, Truffaut, then 27, had taken the world by storm with his first feature, the haunting semi-autobiographical drama “The 400 Blows.” So the scrutiny was intense when he released “Shoot the Piano Player” in 1960.

Though some were unimpressed, Truffaut avoided the sophomore slump with this groundbreaking film noir-comedy-tragedy. “Shoot the Piano Player” has only grown in reputation over the decades and is now considered one of the major works of the New Wave.

Truffaut had a long love affair with the cinema, and his feeling of joy and exuberance for the medium jumps off the screen here as he shifts tones, styles, themes and genres with abandon.

Based on the novel “Down There” by David Goodis, “Piano Player” stars singer-actor -- and Truffaut look-alike -- Charles Aznavour as the slight, mild-mannered Charlie Kohler, who plays piano in a rundown bar. But Charlie is a man with a past, another identity: He is really famed pianist Edouard Saroyan, who gave up his concert career and his extravagant life when his wife committed suicide.

Charlie’s quiet new existence is turned upside down when his crooked brother Chico (Albert Remy, who played the father in “400 Blows”) shows up at the bar chased by two inept gangsters.

Marie Dubois stars as Lena, a beautiful young woman who works in the bar and adores the shy Charlie.

Raoul Coutard, who supervised the beautiful, newly restored, high-definition transfer, supplied the evocative black-and-white cinematography.

Extras: Informative commentary with film scholars Annette Insdorf and Peter Brunette; new interviews with the charming Aznavour and Dubois; a 2003 interview with Coutard; a 1986 interview with Suzanne Schiffman, who collaborated on several scripts with Truffaut and was the script girl on “Piano Player”; excerpts from 1965 and 1982 TV interviews with Truffaut; Dubois’ screen test; and the trailer.