The Pianist

(Pianista, 2002)

   Roman Polańskis celebrated Holocaust drama based on the memoirs written by Jewish Polish composer and pianist Władysław Szpilman (1911-2000) and published for the first time in 1946. This Polish, French, and British coproduction (in English) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the Golden Palm. Among numerous awards that The Pianist later received are three Academy Awards for Best Director (Polański), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ronald Harwood), and Best Actor (Adrien Brody). In addition, the film won eight Polish Film Awards "Eagles," including best film, director, cinematographer (Paweł Edelman), set designer (Allan Starski), music (Wojciech Kilar), costume designer (Anna Sheppard), and editor (Jean-Marie Blondel). The film also won three BAFTA awards, seven French Cesar Awards, and cinematographer Edelman won the European Film Award for Best Cinematography.

   The Pianist opens with brief scenes introducing the twenty-eight-year-old Szpilman playing Chopin in the final broadcast of Polish Radio in September 1939. The film narrates the linear story of Szpilman's survival in the Warsaw Ghetto, separation from his family at the Umschlagplatz, escape from the ghetto, hiding on the Aryan side, and his ordeal after the Warsaw Uprising in the city that was destroyed and desolated. The Pianist ends with postwar scenes portraying Szpilman resuming his work for Polish Radio and trying to learn about the fate of a German officer, one of many people who helped him to survive. In the film, Szpilman is not portrayed as a heroic figure; he is almost detached, overwhelmed by the reality that surrounds him. The Pianist, Polanski's second film made in Poland since his 1962 debut, Knife in the Water, also marks his first cinematic return to his own wartime childhood experiences in occupied Poland.

   Szpilman's story also provided an inspiration for Jerzy Zarzycki's postwar project titled The Warsaw Robinson (Robinson Warszawski), which focused on the last stages of his (Rafalski's in the film) survival. Mutilated by censors, Zarzycki's film appeared in 1950 as Unvanquished City (Miasto nieujarzmione), obeying the rules of socialist realist cinema.

   Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema by Marek Haltof