2nd
Neurosis in film: part one
Charlie’s (Charles Aznavour) thoughts as he walks Lena (Marie Dubois) home are conveyed to the viewer through voice-over…
…She’s laughs…
…He reacts…
… and she states the obvious…
The preceding series of frames is only a part, albeit a sizable chunk, of what is one of my favourite sequences in a film in (my) recent memory. The sequence comes from François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, which is actually the follow-up to his seminal film The 400 Blows. Anyway, even though I cut off the beginning and end of the sequence, I’m pretty sure I captured enough frames from the film to demonstrate what I enjoyed about it.
Okay so here’s where I’m supposed to eloquently explain just what is so memorable about this sequence but once I started to do so, I realized the Herculean effort it would require of myself to do it with any measure of clarity or succinctness, and so I quit.
What I will say is that the sequence is a perfect example of the “movie magic” which Truffaut was able create -something that I can’t really explain, that you’ll have to see for yourself - and is present in surfeit in Shoot the Piano Player.
