Introduction

The Pianist is a 2002 biographical film produced and directed by Roman Polanski, with a script by Ronald Harwood, and starring Adrien Brody.[6] It is based on the autobiographical book The Pianist (1946), a memoir by the Polish-Jewish pianist, composer and Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman.[7] The film was a co-production by France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland.

The Pianist premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival on 24 May 2002, where it won the Palme d'Or, and went into wide release that September; the film received widespread critical acclaim, with critics lauding Polanski's direction, Brody's performance and Harwood's screenplay.[8] At the 75th Academy Awards, the film won for Best Director (Polanski), Best Adapted Screenplay (Harwood), and Best Actor (Brody), and was nominated for four others, including Best Picture (it lost to Chicago). It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film and BAFTA Award for Best Direction in 2003, and seven French Césars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Brody.[9] It appeared in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century in 2016.

Plot

In September 1939, Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist, is playing live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is besieged during the Nazi Germany's bombing of Warsaw. After escaping alive, Szpilman and his family prepare to leave the city when they learn that Britain and France have declared war on Germany. Relieved at the news, Szpilman and his family choose to stay in the city and celebrate. Their celebrations are short lived as Warsaw becomes part of the Nazi-controlled General Government. Jews are soon prevented from working or owning businesses, and are also forced to wear blue Star of David armbands. Szpilman and his family sell many of their material belongings including his piano in order to make enough zlotys to survive.

By November 1940, Szpilman and his family are forced from their home into the overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto. They struggle under the ghetto's squalid conditions with disease and starvation rampant. Szpilman finds work by performing in a cafè frequented by upper-class Jews, who smuggle in forbidden goods in order to live comfortably. On one occasion, he sees a young boy being savagely beaten by a guard while trying to crawl through a gap in the ghetto wall; the boy is dead by the time Szpilman can pull him through. During dinner one evening, Szpilman and his family witness the SS murder an entire family in an apartment across the street during a round-up, including throwing an elderly wheelchair-bound man from the window.

On 16 August 1942, Szpilman and his family are to be transported to Treblinka extermination camp as part of Operation Reinhard. At the Umschlagplatz, Szpilman is about to board the train, when a friend from the Jewish Ghetto Police separates him away from his family and allows him to escape. Szpliman is unable to save the rest of his family, and they are sent away to the camps. He later becomes a slave labourer, and learns of an upcoming Jewish revolt. He helps the resistance by smuggling weapons into the ghetto hidden inside bags of food, on one occasion narrowly avoiding a suspicious guard. Szpilman eventually manages to escape, and goes into hiding with help from a non-Jewish friend, actor Andrzej Bogucki and his wife Janina Godlewska, who provided him an apartment to hide.

In April 1943, Szpilman watches from his apartment as the ghetto uprising unfolds and then ultimately fails. A neighbor discovers Szpilman and attempts to report him, but he manages to escape and meets his old friend Dorota, whose husband provides him with another hiding place in the middle of the German quarter. The new apartment has a piano in it, but he is compelled to keep quiet in order to not get discovered. Szpilman begins to starve and eventually suffers from jaundice. Dorota and her husband visits Szpilman the last time, providing him with a doctor to treat his illness.

By August 1944, Szpilman recovers and the Warsaw Uprising begins. The Home Army attacks the Schutzpolizei Hospital across the street from the apartment, while Szpilman's apartment building is destroyed in the fighting, forcing him to flee and hide in the now abandoned hospital. Over the course of the following months, Warsaw is destroyed.

Upon noticing German troops burning the hospital with flamethrowers, Szpilman flees and wanders through the city's ruins. He reaches an empty house where he finds a can of pickled cucumbers. While trying to open the can, Szpilman is discovered by Wehrmacht captain Wilm Hosenfeld, who learns that he is a pianist. He asks Szpilman to play on a grand piano in the house. The decrepit Szpilman manages to play Chopin's "Ballade No. 1 in G minor". Hosenfeld lets him hide in the attic of the house, which is used as his center of operations, and supplies food for him.

In January 1945, the Germans are retreating from the Soviet offensive. Hosenfeld meets Szpilman for the last time, promising he will listen to him on Polish Radio after the war. Hosenfeld leaves Szpilman with a large supply of food and his greatcoat to keep warm. After Warsaw is liberated, Szpilman narrowly survives an ambush by several People's Army troops who mistake him for a German because of the coat.

In Spring 1945, surviving concentration camp inmates pass by a Soviet POW camp holding captured German soldiers and verbally abuse them; one lamenting over his former career as a violinist. Hosenfeld, one of the prisoners, approaches the violinist and asks if he knows Szpilman, which he confirms. Hosenfeld asks the violinist if Szpilman can help rescue him. The violinist later brings Szpilman back to the site but it is abandoned.

After the war, Szpilman resumes his career at the Polish Radio, where he performs Chopin's "Grand Polonaise" with an orchestra to a large prestigious audience. An epilogue notes that Szpilman died in 2000 at the age of 88, while Hosenfeld died in Soviet captivity in 1952.

CastAdrien Brody portrays Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist.

Adrien Brody as Władysław Szpilman
Thomas Kretschmann as Captain Wilm Hosenfeld
Frank Finlay as Samuel Szpilman
Maureen Lipman as Edwarda Szpilman
Emilia Fox as Dorota
Ed Stoppard as Henryk Szpilman
Julia Rayner as Regina Szpilman
Jessica Kate Meyer as Halina Szpilman
Ronan Vibert as Andrzej Bogucki
Ruth Platt as Janina Bogucki
Andrew Tiernan as Szałas
Michał Żebrowski as Jurek
Roy Smiles as Itzhak Heller
Richard Ridings as Mr. Lipa
Daniel Caltagirone as Majorek
Valentine Pelka as Dorota's Husband
Zbigniew Zamachowski as Customer with Coins
Krzysztof Pieczyński as Marek Gębczyński
Ireneusz Machnicki as SS Officer
Cezary Krajewski as SS Officer
Paul Bradley as Yehuda
Katarzyna Figura as Neighbor
Morgane Polanski as Girl #1
Detlev von Wangenheim as SS Officer #1
Katarzyna Bargielowska as Wailing Woman
Lech Mackiewicz as Fellow Worker
Zofia Czerwinska as Woman with Soup
Maja Ostaszewska as Woman with Child
Peter Rappengluck as SS Making a Sperm
Joanna Brodzik as Woman Shot in tie
Darian Wawer as Child at the Wall
Cezary Kosinski as Lednicki
Wojciech Smolarz as Boy With Sweets
Thomas Lawinky as Schutzpolizei #1
Joachim Paul Assbock as Schutzpolizei #2
John Benneth as Dr. Ehrlich
Udo Kroschwald as Schultz
Popeck as Rubenstein
Cyril Shaps as Mr. Grun
Torsten Flach as Zig Zag
Ben Harlan as Street Musician #3
Anthony Milner as Man Waiting to Cost
Lucie Skeaping as Street Musician #1
Andrzej Blumenfeld as Benek
Wanja Mues as SS Slapping Father
Nomi Sharon as Feather Woman
Roddy Skeaping as Street Musician #2

Production

Development and casting

Photograph of Władysław Szpilman

The story had deep connections with director Roman Polanski because he escaped from the Kraków Ghetto as a child after the death of his mother. He ended up living in a Polish farmer's barn until the war's end. His father almost died in the camps, but they reunited after the end of World War II.[10]

Joseph Fiennes was Polanski's first choice for the lead role, but he turned it down due to a previous commitment to a theatrical role.[11] Over 1,400 actors auditioned for the role of Szpilman at a casting call in London, but Polanski was unsatisfied with all who tried. Eventually, Polanski watched Harrison's Flowers (2000), and then Polanski decided to offer Adrien Brody the leading role during their first meeting in Paris.[12][13]

Filming

Mała Street in Warsaw's Praga-Północ district used for filming of The Pianist

Principal photography on The Pianist began on 9 February 2001 in Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam, Germany. The Warsaw Ghetto and the surrounding city were recreated on the backlot of Babelsberg Studio as they would have looked during the war. Old Soviet Army barracks were used to create the ruined city, as they were going to be destroyed anyway.[14]

The first scenes of the film were shot at the old army barracks. Soon after, the film crew moved to a villa in Potsdam, which served as the house where Szpilman meets Hosenfeld. On 2 March 2001, filming then moved to an abandoned Soviet military hospital in Beelitz, Germany. The scenes that featured German soldiers destroying a Warsaw hospital with flamethrowers were filmed there. On 15 March, filming finally moved to Babelsberg Studios. The first scene shot at the studio was the complex and technically demanding scene in which Szpilman witnesses the ghetto uprising.[14]

Filming at the studios ended on 26 March, and moved to Warsaw on 29 March. The rundown district of Praga was chosen for filming because of its abundance of original buildings. The art department built onto these original buildings, re-creating World War II-era Poland with signs and posters from the period. Additional filming also took place around Warsaw. The Umschlagplatz scene where Szpilman, his family, and hundreds of other Jews wait to be taken to the extermination camps was filmed at the National Defence University of Warsaw.[15]

Principal photography ended in July 2001, and was followed by months of post-production in Paris.[13]

Music

The piano piece heard at the beginning of the film is Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Lento con gran espressione, Op. posth.
The piano piece that is heard being played by a next door neighbour while Szpilman was in hiding at an apartment is also an arrangement of "Umówiłem się z nią na dziewiątą".
The piano music heard in the abandoned house when Szpilman had just discovered a hiding place in the attic is the Piano Sonata No. 14 (Moonlight Sonata) by Beethoven. It was later revealed that German officer Hosenfeld was the pianist. The German composition juxtaposed with the mainly Polish/Chopin selection of Szpilman.
The piano piece played when Szpilman is confronted by Hosenfeld is Chopin's Ballade in G minor, Op. 23, but the version played in the movie was shortened (the entire piece lasts about 10 minutes).
The cello piece heard at the middle of the film, played by Dorota, is the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1.
The piano piece heard at the end of the film, played with an orchestra, is Chopin's Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22.
Shots of Szpilman's hands playing the piano in close-up were performed by Polish classical pianist Janusz Olejniczak, who also performed on the soundtrack.
Since Polanski wanted the film to be as realistic as possible, any scene showing Brody playing was actually his playing, overdubbed by recordings performed by Olejniczak. In order for Brody's playing to look like it was at the level of Szpilman's, he spent many months prior to and during the filming practising so that his keystrokes on the piano would convince viewers that Brody himself was playing.[16]

Reception

Critical response

The Pianist was widely acclaimed by critics, with Brody's performance, Harwood's screenplay, and Polanski's direction receiving special praise. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 190 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Well-acted and dramatically moving, The Pianist is Polanski's best work in years."[17] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 85 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[18]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four, noting that, "perhaps that impassive quality reflects what [director Roman] Polanski wants to say. ... By showing Szpilman as a survivor, but not a fighter or a hero—as a man who does all he can to save himself, but would have died without enormous good luck and the kindness of a few non-Jews—Polanski is reflecting ... his own deepest feelings: that he survived, but need not have, and that his mother died and left a wound that had never healed."[19]

Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune said that the film "is the best dramatic feature I've seen on the Holocaust experience, so powerful a statement on war, inhumanity, and art's redemption that it may signal Polanski's artistic redemption". He later said that the film "illustrates that theme and proves that Polanski's own art has survived the chaos of his life—and the hell that war and bigotry once made of it".[20]

Richard Schickel of Time magazine called it a "raw, unblinkable film", and said that "we admire this film for its harsh objectivity and refusal to seek our tears, our sympathies."[21]

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the film "contains moments of irony, of ambiguity, and of strange beauty, as when we finally get a look at Warsaw and see a panorama of destruction, a world of color bombed into black-and-white devastation". He also said that, "in the course of showing us a struggle for survival, in all its animal simplicity, Polanski also gives us humanity, in all its complexity."[22]

A.O. Scott of The New York Times said that Szpilman "comes to resemble one of Samuel Beckett's gaunt existential clowns, shambling through a barren, bombed-out landscape clutching a jar of pickles. He is like the walking punchline to a cosmic jest of unfathomable cruelty." He also felt that Szpilman's encounter, in the war's last days, with a music-loving German officer, "courted sentimentality by associating the love of art with moral decency, an equation the Nazis themselves, steeped in Beethoven and Wagner, definitively refuted".[23]

Accolades

Home media

The Pianist was released by Universal Studios Home Entertainment on DVD in the US on 27 May 2003 in a double-sided disc Special Edition, with the film on one side and the featurette "A Story of Survival" on the other. The making-of featurette included interviews with Brody, Polanski, and Harwood, and clips of Szpilman playing the piano.[24] The Polish DVD included an audio commentary track by production designer Starski and director of photography Edelman.

Universal released the film on HD-DVD on 8 January 2008 with the featurette "A Story of Survival".[25]

Optimum Home Entertainment released The Pianist to the European market on Blu-ray as part of their StudioCanal Collection on 13 September 2010,[26] the film's second release on Blu-ray. The first release was troublesome due to issues with subtitles; the initial BD lacked subtitles for spoken German dialogue. Optimum later rectified this,[27] but the initial release also lacked notable special features. The StudioCanal Collection version includes the featurette "A Story of Survival", as well as several interviews with the makers of the film and Szpilman's relatives.[28]

Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray in the US for the first time on 13 July 2021.[29]

The film was completely restored in 2023 from the original negative by StudioCanal and DI Factory, with the assistance of the film's cinematographer Paweł Edelman.[30] It was released on 4K UHD by StudioCanal in Germany on 21 September 2023, in France on 27 September 2023 and in the UK on 2 October 2023.