Shoot the piano player

This film follows a piano player at a saloon be followed for reasons we know not. He went from being a highly respected and greatly applauded classical musician to finding work in saloon's and shirking off what we can only assume to be the French mob. This film was loosely based on a novel by David Goodis called Down There. It too focuses on a man that needs to escape the tragedy of his past, but fails, feeling it creep up on him all the time. He employs his talent as the only thing he knows how to do in order to get by and befriends a waitress in the process. He eventually returns to his brothers and his family to aid them in their struggles with the French mob, and is shot on a snow bank. This movie struggles with the idea of performance, as if all of life is a performance, and one chooses which part he or she must play at that time. There is also a conflict between commercialism and art in what sells and what is true within Charlie and his talent.