Documentary, music film (in plural) and real political thriller, They Shot the Piano Player is simply unclassifiable. Let's take advantage of its physical output at Blaq Out to touch a word...
Melody without return
Francisco Tenório Junior haunts the spirit of New York journalist Jeff Harris (the voice of Jeff Goldblum in person) since he heard some notes from this missing artist. He will then throw himself body and soul in the wake of the Brazilian pianist, fainted in nature in more than troublesome circumstances. An ideal opportunity to dive into Latin America of the 60s and 70s, carried away in a creative whirlwind between jazz and Bossa Nova.
The film comes from a challenge: Fernando Trueba – One of the two directors with Javier Mariscal – wants to find the traces of this mysterious Brazilian pianist. Little known to the general public and having recorded only one solo album – Embalo – it is nevertheless known as the white wolf in the world of South American music, and the few notes that the director hears suffice to make him want to know what happened to this pianist, disappeared just before the 1976 coup d'état in Argentina.
At first, the documentary should have taken a classical form, then something happened in Fernando Trueba's artistic life: he co-directed the animated feature film Chico & Rita with Javier Mariscal. Already music. Already that South American tie. The germs of They Shot the Piano Player There, and the evidence quickly imposed itself on Trueba's eyes: animation allowed him to revive, within his documentary, at the artistic boiling of Latin America of those years.
« Thanks to Javi's drawings and colours, we were able to "open" the bars in Rio de Janeiro where Bossa Nova was born in the 1960s. »
A particularly bold choice, but above all paying for many aspects. In addition to the pure beauty of the plan – its clear lines, its bright and contrasting colours, the accumulation of details that fill the frame, its saccaded appearance bringing it closer to the graphic novel – animation breathes an inescapable life into the feature film. The memories told by a speaker thus come to life, the rich life of these cafés then jump to the face, the effervescence of this era splashes the screen.. They Shot the Piano Player could hardly have existed so strongly as thanks to its animated medium.
Shoot the pianist!
His title is the antithesis of that of Truffaut, Shoot the pianist. This thriller that plays in Charles Aznavour is not the only reference to the New Wave that seems to irrigate They Shot the Piano Player. Apart from the director's passion for Truffaut, whom he cites as the very reason for his vocation as a cinema, it is the simultaneous emergence of Bossa Nova and this new way of making films that makes this theoretical convergence logical (and indispensable).
On one side a team of happy lurons gathered in Paris – Agnes Varda, Truffaut, Godard To name but a few – who dusted Dad's cinema with great blows. And on the other side of the Atlantic, Brazilian musicians who organize to add samba elements in jazz then, beautifully illustrated in They Shot the Piano Player. There as here is born a new genre, but above all a jubilatory and new artistic expression that revolutionizes the world of cinema and music.
You will understand, They Shot the Piano Player is a separate work, which will certainly appeal to music lovers. A documentary mixing fiction and real, exploring the life of a genius musician (and yet so little known) shaken by the fascinating torpedoes thrown away by the totalitarian powers successively seizing from the various countries represented. Mysterious and exciting, a work of forces that can now be discovered in physical format!
And as supplements, the DVD offers:
> Making of (34 min.)
> The truth of the fake: documentary & fiction (18 min.)
> Behind the scenes of animation (14 min.)
> A beer with Tenório (2 min.)
> A music clip from a Tenório title in photos (3 min.)
> Leg Tenório (5 min.)
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 99 min
Release Date: September 17, 2024
Video format : 576p/25 - 2.39
Soundtrack Spanish, English, Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
Subtitles French
Subscribe
Connection
0 Remarks
oldest
