Based on a classic of noir fiction, François Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste (US: Shoot the Piano Player) introduces Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour), a down-and-out pianist at a cheap neighborhood bar who discarded his identity as a world-renowned concert pianist after his wife’s suicide. Charlie’s no Brando, but he somehow attracts beautiful women, both Clarisse, the prostitute next door (Michèle Mercier, too stunning for the role), and Léna (Marie Dubois), the waitress at work, all the while taking care of his kid brother, Fido (Richard Kanayan), in their bare, dingy apartment. When another of Charlie’s brothers, Chico (Albert Rémy), cheats a few shady gangsters the same week Charlie kills his bartender in a fight over Léna, he finds himself running from both the mob and the cops toward the comfort of his criminal family home on a snowy mountainside. (“Now you’re just like us,” says Chico.) Truffaut adapts and stylizes the brilliant source novel, Down There by David Goodis, for a French audience with aesthetic aplomb and total confidence.