Pursesnatchers Mimic French New Wave Cinema in 'Wet Cement' -- Video Premiere

Posted on Jul 15th 2011 11:00AM by Marina Galperina
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Brooklyn-based Pursesnatchers collective have adorned their fuzzy, pleasant dream of a track 'Wet Cement' with a loving French New Wave-style video homage to 1960's film 'Shoot the Piano Player.' Funny gangsters! Stumbly chase scenes! Awkward love! You don't have to be a film geek to fall in love with its noir-ish cinematic quirk, premiering today exclusively on Spinner.

"It's a perfectly self-contained little set piece, about two and a half minutes long," Doug Marvin of the Pursesnatchers tells Spinner. "The scene is so charming and romantic as we see all the frenzied, nervous thoughts of the narrator as he attempts to make a connection with the girl he's walking home. It fit really well with the lyrics of 'Wet Cement,' which is all about the first flush of meeting someone and instantly fantasizing an entire life together."

Director Shahin Izadi's remake of the François Truffaut's classic scene stays close to the original script. "The song is longer than the scene in the film by about a minute, so we made like it was a Michael Bay film and padded it with chase scenes," Marvin elaborates. Hardly! Subtler than that, the emotionally-tinged, black and white close ups of new parents Doug Marvin, formerly of Dirty on Purpose, and Pursesnatchers bandmate -- and wife -- Annie Hart of Au Revoir Simone ring authentic as New York City nightscape bounces behind their backs.

"The night we filmed was quite cold and we were drinking whiskey to stay warm, which maybe accounts for why we all look so ridiculous in the action sequences," Marvin explains. Meanwhile, pretend-gangsters Jared Barron and Harold Liu were "really hamming it up with the fake French accents." We hope you have as much fun watching the clip as the band had making it.

The band is dropping its first album, 'A Pattern Language,' through the Uninhabitable Mansion art collective on July 19 and will play a celebratory show at Union Hall in Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 22. Doug Marvin assures us that "It's gonna be bonkers."

Watch Pursesnatchers' Video for 'Wet Cement'

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