Shoot the Piano Player

When it was first screened in 1960, the fun of Truffaut's "Tirez sur le Pianiste" shocked and delighted critics and audiences around the world. Its sudden shifts in mood and tone, its wilful playing with genre stereotypes and its subtle on-screen jokes signalled that Truffaut was a leader in a new style - New Wave. "Shoot the Piano Player" and Goddard's "Breathless" had an insistence on low-budget, on-location shooting and, above all, on cinema as the personal statement of the author. Brunette's introduction to "Shoot the Piano Player" gives insight into the film, based in part on revisualizing it in terms of recent postmodern and post-structuralist thinking. It contains: a complete and accurate continuity script; a series of interviews with Truffaut; a range of reviews and essays; and a filmography and selected bibliography.