This François Truffaut circus, by turns comic, pathetic, and acrobatic, reveals what is most self-indulgent in this director's output and in the French New Wave's as a whole. In telling the tale of a deadpan pianist (Charles Aznavour) sliding downhill from concert halls to honky-tonks, Truffaut shows supreme confidence in individual moments, each one invested with a special wink or heart-tug: a cinema buff's in-joke, an entertaining cigarette trick, a bit of technical razzle-dazzle, an outburst of lyricism. These overvalued moments are held high above the head like trophies or held close to the breast like kittens, and the overall impression is of slapdashery or schizophrenia. (1961) — Duncan Shepherd
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