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The musician's dilemma is that of the critic turned star-auteur, fame and a concert career or nervy shenanigans at the honky tonk. The starting point is Bob le flambeur, the loner by the piano (Charles Aznavour) is owlish, compact, rather timid. He gets the bistro jumping at night, his estranged brother has thugs on his trail ("If jackasses could fly, he'd be squadron commander"). Reach out and retreat, story of his life, the underworld whirl drags him out of the haven of anonymity. A dolorous past with the suicidal wife (Nicole Berger), a dizzy present with the vivacious waitress (Marie Dubois). (As the hooker next door, Michèle Mercier lounges in bed topless until Aznavour wraps the sheets around her, "this is how it's done in the movies.") François Truffaut has a thousand tricks, the one he plays closest to his vest is the way film noir slapstick turns into lyrical poignancy. The squashed Bogart is so lost in nervous thought that the fox in the matching trenchcoat vanishes by the time he decides to ask her out, a string of rapid overlap dissolves later commemorates their union. Gangsters are clowns, clad in fedoras and foiled by tykes, one expounds on his romantic philosophy and carries a cigarette lighter with an Ophüls tinkle. "Une question de liberté, peut-être?" Moods continuously jumbled, sketches merrily tossed off—the nocturnal chase that yields to a chummy chat about marriage, the camera that decides to ditch the protagonist at the impresario's office and follow instead a doleful young violinist. The comedy of les frères Saroyan (complete with a Chico), the tenderness of bullets amid snow (cf. Ray's On Dangerous Ground). "It'd make a good poem. A comic one, of course." A confessional kaleidoscope, a dialogue with À bout de souffle answered by Bande à part. Cinematography by Raoul Coutard. With Serge Davri, Albert Rémy, Claude Mansard, Daniel Boulanger, Richard Kanayan, and Claude Heymann. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |