The Pianist (2003)

Winner of the prestigious Golden Palm award at the 2002 Cannes film festival, The Pianist is the film that Roman Polanski was born to direct. A childhood survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski was uniquely suited to tell the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew and concert pianist (played by Adrien Brody) who witnessed the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, miraculously eluded the Nazi death camps, and survived throughout World War II by hiding among the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. Unlike any previous dramatization of the Nazi holocaust, The Pianist steadfastly maintains its protagonist's singular point of view, allowing Polanski to create an intimate odyssey on an epic wartime scale, drawing a direct parallel between Szpilman's tenacious, primitive existence and the wholesale destruction of the city he refuses to abandon. Uncompromising in its physical and emotional authenticity, The Pianist strikes an ultimate note of hope and soulful purity. As with Schindler's List, it's one of the greatest films ever made about humanity's darkest chapter. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

Polanski comes back with a masterpiece

I'm not sure if I've submitted a review on this film but here goes. After a series of disappointing films, director Roman Polanski came back with a vengeance with this personal tale of survival during the Holocaust. Winner of several Cesars and Oscars for Best Director & Best Actor (Adrian Brody), Polanski's dispassionate tone is just right for this film, never falling into sentimentality the way Spielberg did in "Schindler's List" (the only flaw in that Oscar winner) and Brody himself is consumatively excellent in the title role (he stated that he lost weight, his apartment & his girlfriend but kissed Halle Berry!!). I am planning on acquiring the HD DVD version of this superb film which also touches on the irony of war. The episode involving a Nazi officier (Thomas Kreutzman, who later reteam with Brody in "King Kong") befriending Spilzman is touching. Recommended for all lovers of great cinema!! August 21, 2008

Awesome Movie! Excellent Quality!

This movie is freaking awesome. The way the director presents you the material makes you feel like you are experiencing what the actors are. Recommend you buy it. August 17, 2008

Superb - must see

A few weeks ago, my daughter and I watched The Pianist by Roman Polanski, on DVD. This 2002 Polish-French-German-British production, is an Academy award-winning movie was based on the life of Polish-Jewish pianist Wadysaw Szpilman, a famous pianist who recorded with Polish radio at the beginning of World War II.

the movie is based on Szpilman's book that he comprised of the journals he kept during the war; Polanski hired Ronald Harwood to write the screenplay.

Polanski, who is Jewish (his father changed the family name), was a boy in Krakow during World War II, and Polanski drew heavily on his own experiences to give this movie the incredibly realistic feel, costuming, and and setting that it has. The movie was filmed entirely in Germany and Poland. Massive sets were built in Warsaw, to recreate how Warsaw used to look, and parts of the movie were filmed in the reconstructed old town of Warsaw. (Warsaw was flattened and most of Warsaw consists of high-rise apartment buildings built in the 1950s.)


There is a scene in the movie in which a family friend selects Szpilman to leave the line, which saves his life. Szpilman's journal says "Run," but Polanski shared his own experience of a similar event in the bonus features. In Polanski's life, a Nazi officer helped save Polanski's own life when the boy was age 6 by saying, "Don't run," so that the young Polanski would not create a disturbance or to make it obvious that Polanski was a Jewish boy on the run for his life.

So Szpilman's book was changed from "Run" to "Don't run" in the movie.

Very telling, that stage direction.

In Polanski's life, he and his parents saw the erection of the wall in Krakow that separated the Jewish ghetto from the rest of Krakow. His parents were sent to concentration camps where his mother, then pregnant, died. His father eventually escaped to France, where Polanski lived as a young child before returning to Poland to begin his film career. Polanski now lives in France and is a French citizen.

This film is superb and is wholly deserving of the awards and accolades it received. It won the the Palme d'Or at Cannes, Oscars for Best Director, Best Actor (Adrien Brody), and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won seven French Cesars, including Best Actor for Brody, who became the only American actor to win a Cesar.

Even though the movie concerns the absolutely horrific events Szpilman and his family lived and died through, it is uplifting at the end, in that Szpilman survives due to help from a German officer.

Szpilman died in 2000 (1911-2000).

Adrien Brody lost weight to play the role of the waif-like Szpilman, and took months of additional piano lessons to increase his proficiency as a pianist. Polanski is nothing if not a stickler for realistic details. No trickery for Polanski's films. All scenes that show Brody playing the piano, are in fact, Brody playing the piano.

Other scenes that do not show Brody playing are played by pianist Janusz Olejniczak, who also provided the soundtrack. Featured music includes Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach.

If you do not see any other Polanski movie or any other movie about the Holocaust, you must see this one.

I have deliberately left out much of the story of how Szpilman survives against all odds, who helps him, who does not, who lives, who dies, where he goes and what he sees, because you have to witness this event first-hand. The incredible scenery, the destruction, the realistic costume design, everything about this movie is riveting without depressing the heck out of you. This is as riveting a story as that of Anne Frank.


A+. An asbolutely superb movie. August 12, 2008

Fantastic story and picture quality/sound

This is one of the best WWII films I've seen, along with Schindler's List it really has a great story and plot development.

It is a story of the horrors of nazi occupations and treatment of the Jews that needs to be told and learned, to know history is to not repeat it. August 4, 2008

Great Service

I used this video as a way to expose my students to the realities of the Holocaust. Until then most of them had never seen anything like it. THe movie came quickly and was in great condition. Thanks July 21, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...