In September 1939, Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist, is playing live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is bombed during Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. Hoping for a quick victory, Szpilman rejoices with his family at home when he learns that Britain and France have declared war on Germany, but the promised aid does not come. Fighting lasts for just over a month, with both the German and Soviet armies invading Poland at the same time on different fronts. Warsaw becomes part of the Nazi-controlled General Government. Jews are soon prevented from working or owning businesses, and are also made to wear blue Star of David armbands.
By November 1940, Szpilman and his family are forced from their home into the isolated and overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto, where conditions only get worse. People starve, the SS are brutal, starving children are abandoned and dead bodies are everywhere. Szpilman managed to find work by performing in a cafè frequently visited by upper-class Jews. On one occasion, Szpilman watches a young boy being beaten by an SS guard, whom he fails to rescue. On another occasion, Szpilman and his family witness the SS kill a 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 about to be transported to Treblinka extermination camp as part of Operation Reinhard. However, a friend in the Jewish Ghetto Police recognizes Władysław at the Umschlagplatz and separates him from his family. He becomes a slave labourer, and learns of a coming Jewish revolt. He helps the resistance by smuggling weapons into the ghetto, on one occasion narrowly avoiding a suspicious guard. Szpilman eventually manages to escape, and goes into hiding with help from a non-Jewish friend, Andrzej Bogucki and his wife Janina, who provided him an apartment to hide.
In April 1943, Szpilman watches from his window as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which he aided, unfolds, and then ultimately fails. After a neighbor discovers Szpilman and attempts to persecute him, he flees the apartment and meets his old friend Dorota and her husband, who provides him with another hiding place. The new apartment has a piano in it, but he is compelled to keep quiet, while beginning to starve and eventually suffers from jaundice after being abandoned by a member of the Polish resistance who previously supplied him food.
By August 1944, Szpilman recovers and witnesses the Warsaw Uprising taking place. The Home Army attacks a German police station building across the street from the apartment, while Szpilman's hideout is destroyed by a German tank shell, forcing him to flee and hide in an abandoned hospital. Over the course of the following months, Warsaw is destroyed.
Upon noticing German troops destroying the hospital with flamethrowers, Szpilman escapes and wanders through the 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". Hosenfeld lets him hide in the attic of the house, which is used as his center of operations, and regularly supplies food for him.
In January 1945, the Germans are retreating from the Red Army 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 supplies of food and his greatcoat to keep warm. After Warsaw is liberated, Szpilman narrowly survives an ambush by People's Army troops who mistook him for a German.
In Spring 1945, former Nazi concentration camp inmates pass by a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp holding captured Wehrmacht soldiers and verbally abuse them, one lamenting over his former career as a violinist. Hosenfeld, being one of the prisoners, walks up to the violinist and asks if he knows Szpilman which he confirms and he requests Szpilman to rescue him. Later, the violinist brings Szpilman back to the site but it is abandoned.
After the war, Szpilman returns to the Polish Radio, where he performs Chopin's "Grand Polonaise brillante" to a large prestigious audience. An epilogue notes that Szpilman died in 2000 at the age of 88, whereas Hosenfeld died in 1952, still in Soviet captivity.
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
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]
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 would later be 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 (b. 1952), 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 review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 185 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The website's critical 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 would later go on to say 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]
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 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 Pawel 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.
See also
Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw – Szpilman was one of the most notable persons to remain in Warsaw after its destruction by the Nazis and before its liberation by the Red Army in January 1945.
