In 1965...

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the British director Ken Russell produced a documentary/fiction film for the BBC on Georges Delerue, entitled Don’t Shoot the Composer, an allusion to Truffaut’s film "Shoot the Piano Player" (1960).

 

Georges plays himself as a kidnapped composer, forced to compose the music for the film in which he is appearing as himself.

At times serious, at others satirically and hilariously comedic, the film gave Delerue the opportunity to employ his many talents as a musician.  
We see him improvising at the piano and coming up with pastiches of the most unlikely variations on cancan themes.

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“Offenbach would have loved all this”, declared Ken Russell, happy with the way in which Georges performed the burlesque of several scenes. Delerue had a great deal of fun throughout the shooting of the film. It was in 1962, hearing the music for Truffaut’s Jules et Jim for the first time, that Ken Russell became enchanted with the “Delerue style.”  He considered the musical theme Vacances in that film to be one of the most beautiful ever written for the screen.

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In 1964, Russell introduced Delerue to the English-speaking cinema in collaborating with him on French Dressing.  They worked together again in 1969 on Love, one of Russell’s most successful films.

With Don’t Shoot the Composer, Ken Russell rendered in film images the music of someone whose profession was to render film images in music.
 

No greater homage could have been offered to Georges Delerue.

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