In the film, a professional pianist learns that he owes his entire career to his wife's affair with a talent agent.
In Paris, Édouard Saroyan hits rock bottom after his wife Thérèse confesses that his career as a concert pianist is due to her having slept with a top agent, and when he fails to respond, she kills herself.
Under the assumed name of Charlie Koller, he now strokes the keys in Plyne's bar, and when she has no clients, he spends the rest of the night with Clarisse, a prostitute who cooks for his little brother Fido.
The film shares the novel's bleak plot about a man hiding from his shattered life by doing the only thing he knows how to do while remaining unable to escape the past.
However, Truffaut's work resolves itself into both a tribute to the American genre of literary and cinematic film noir and a meditation on the relationship between art and commercialism.
[4] He immediately loved the book's dialogue and poetic tone and showed it to producer Pierre Braunberger, who bought the rights.
Truffaut was influenced by French writer Jacques Audiberti while writing the film, such as in his treatment of the character Plyne.
[12] Child actor Richard Kanayan had appeared in The 400 Blows and was always making the crew laugh, so Truffaut cast him as Charlie's youngest brother.
Albert Remy had appeared in The 400 Blows and Truffaut wanted to show the actor's comedic side after his performance in the previous film.
Truffaut finally saw Dubois perform on a TV show and immediately wanted to cast her shortly before filming began.
Locations included a cafe called A la Bonne Franquette on the rue Mussard in Levallois, Le Sappey-en-Chartreuse, around Grenoble and throughout Paris.
Truffaut said that "In Shoot the Piano Player I wanted to break with the linear narrative and make a film where all the scenes would please me.
"[19] Truffaut's stylized and self-reflexive melodrama employs the hallmarks of French New Wave cinema: extended voice-overs, out-of-sequence shots, and sudden jump cuts.
The film's cinematography by Raoul Coutard was often grainy and kinetic, reflecting the emotional state of the characters, such as the scene in which Charlie hesitates before ringing a doorbell.
"[26] Like The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player was shot in Dyaliscope, a widescreen process which Truffaut described as being like an aquarium that allows the actors to move around the frame more naturally.
"[29] Film critic Marcel Martin called it a disappointment after The 400 Blows and wrote that it would "only please the true lover of movies.
"[34] Dwight Macdonald stated that the film mixes "three genres which are usually kept apart: crime melodrama, romance and slapstick...I thought the mixture didn't gel, but it was an exhilarating try.
For example, the French translation—"Ne tirez pas sur le pianiste, il fait ce qu'il peut"—appears written prominently in the wall décor of a nightclub in the 1933 Julien Duvivier detective film A Man's Neck.