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The Pianist
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
2002 · Directed by Roman Polanski · 150 min · Drama · War · Screenplay in the scene database · 15 frames
Tagline
Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.
Plot
In September 1939, Polish-Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman plays live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is bombed during a Nazi German air raid against Warsaw. 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 stays in Warsaw with his family. However, Poland is invaded and Warsaw falls under Nazi occupation. Jews are persecuted by the new government, heavily restricted from public life and forced to wear blue Star of David armbands. Szpilman and his family sell their belongings, including his grand piano, in order to survive.
The Szpilmans are forced to abandon their home in late 1940 and move into the overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto. Conditions are deplorable, disease and starvation are rampant. Jews are under constant threat of brutality by the SS. Szpilman gets a job performing in a café frequented by upper-class Jews, who smuggle in forbidden goods to live comfortably. Szpilman witnesses a young boy savagely beaten by a guard and left for dead while attempting to escape the ghetto. The boy dies despite Szpilman's attempt to save him. Szpilman and his family also witness an SS raid on an apartment block opposite them, during which a man who uses a wheelchair is thrown off the balcony to his death. To the horror of the Szpilmans, the rest of the men are shot.
Despite securing German work certificates, the Szpilmans are rounded up and herded, with hundreds of other Jews, onto trains. They were told they were going to labor camps, but the train is actually headed to the Treblinka extermination camp in August 1942 as part of Operation Reinhard. A member of the Jewish Ghetto Police, who Szpilman knows, separates Szpilman from his family at the railhead, allowing him to escape while his family is taken to the death camp. Szpilman wanders through the liquidated ghetto, bodies of executed Jews litter the streets, including children and an infant. Szpilman becomes a slave labourer and learns of an upcoming Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He smuggles weapons into the ghetto and goes into hiding with help from his friends Andrzej Bogucki and his wife Janina Godlewska, who are with the Polish resistance.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Ronald Harwood
- Cinematography: Paweł Edelman
- Edited by: Hervé de Luze
- Music: Wojciech Kilar
- Production design: Allan Starski
- Produced by: Alain Sarde, Robert Benmussa, Roman Polanski
Cast
- Adrien Brody as Władysław 'Władek' Szpilman
- Thomas Kretschmann as Captain Wilm Hosenfeld
- Frank Finlay as Father
- Maureen Lipman as Mother
- Emilia Fox as Dorota
- Ed Stoppard as Henryk Szpilman
- Julia Rayner as Regina Szpilman
- Jessica Kate Meyer as Halina Szpilman
- Michał Żebrowski as Jurek
- Wanja Mues as SS Slapping Father
Production
- Country: France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom
- Language: English, German, Polish, Russian
- Studios: R.P. Productions, Heritage Films, Studio Babelsberg, Runteam
- Budget: $35,000,000
- Box office: $120,098,945
- Themes: concert, nazi, resistance, warsaw ghetto, polish resistance, homeland, holocaust (shoah), hunger, world war ii, prisoner of war
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