The Pianist (2002 film)

''The Pianist'' is a 2002 biographical war drama film produced and directed by Roman Polanski, with a script by Ronald Harwood, and starring Adrien Brody. It is based on the autobiographical book ''The Pianist'' (1946), a Holocaust memoir by the Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman, a Holocaust survivor. 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. 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 would lose out 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. It was included 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 bombed during the Nazi German 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. The 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 guards are brutal, starving children are abandoned, and dead bodies are everywhere. On one occasion, the Szpilmans witness the SS kill an entire family in an apartment across the street during a round-up, including dumping an elderly man in a wheelchair out a window four stories up.

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 laborer 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.

In April 1943, Szpilman watches from his window as the first of two uprisings, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which he aided, unfolds and ultimately fails. Soon thereafter, when a neighbor discovers Szpilman hiding in the flat, he is forced to flee to a second hiding place. His new hiding location is another vacant apartment, and it has a piano in it which he feels drawn to play; but he does not as he must keep quiet to avoid discovery. While in hiding at this location, malnutrition due to very limited food supplies takes effect; he loses weight and begins to suffer from jaundice.

In August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the Home Army attacks a German building across the street from Szpilman's hideout. Tank shells hit the apartment, forcing him to flee. Over the course of the following months, Warsaw is destroyed. Szpilman is left alone to search desperately for shelter and supplies among the ruins. He eventually makes his way to a house where he finds a can of pickles. While trying to open it, he is noticed by ''Wehrmacht'' officer Wilm Hosenfeld, who learns that Szpilman is a pianist. He asks Szpilman to play on a grand piano in the house. The decrepit Szpilman manages to play Chopin's Ballade in G minor. Hosenfeld lets Szpilman hide in the attic of the empty house. While there, he is regularly supplied with food by the German officer.

In January 1945, the Germans are retreating from the Red Army. Hosenfeld meets Szpilman for the last time, promising he will listen to him on Polish Radio after the war. He gives Szpilman his greatcoat to keep warm and leaves. In Spring 1945, former inmates of a Nazi concentration camp pass by a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp holding captured German soldiers and verbally abuse them. Hosenfeld, being one of the prisoners, overhears a released inmate lamenting over his former career as a violinist. He asks him whether he knows Szpilman, which he confirms, and Hosenfeld says he helped Szpilman and begs him to tell Szpilman he is in the camp. Later, the violinist and Szpilman reach the camp but find it abandoned.

After the war, Szpilman is back at the Polish Radio, where he performs Chopin's " Grand Polonaise brillante" to a large prestigious audience. A textual epilogue states that Szpilman died on July 6, 2000, at the age of 88, and all that is known of Hosenfeld is that he died in 1952 while still in Soviet captivity.

Cast

* 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 Szalas
* 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
* Ireneusz Machnicki as SS Officer
* Cezary Krajewski as SS Officer

Production

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

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