Product Details

• Actors: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox
• Directors: Roman Polanski
• Writers: Ronald Harwood, Wladyslaw Szpilman
• Producers: Alain Sarde, Daniel Champagnon, Gene Gutowski, Henning Molfenter, Lew Rywin
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English, German, Russian
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Universal Studios
• VHS Release Date: September 2, 2003
• Run Time: 150 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (396 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000094J5T
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,848 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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

From The New Yorker

Roman Polanski's drama about the survival of a real-life Polish Jew, the pianist Wladyslav Szpilman (Adrien Brody), during the grim days of the Holocaust is a movie that has been perfectly produced. The sense of scale and detail is exact, and the violence is neither exaggerated nor minimized but presented with clear-eyed accuracy. Yet this is not a work of great originality or imagination. Its protagonist lacks depth, and the theme of survival through hiding is, by its very nature, redundant. The playwright Ronald Harwood adapted the 1946 book that Szpilman wrote about his experiences without attempting to open up the hero at all. Is he ashamed, defiant, guilty? Grateful for his luck? We haven't a clue. His survival is an anomaly, a mistake, a joke-and that may be why the story appealed to Polanski. Shot largely in Warsaw. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easily one of the best films of 2002, February 6, 2003

By	Mark Lee "Peacemaker" - See all my reviews

"The Pianist" is the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew and a brilliant pianist who lived in Warsaw during World War II. Beginning soon after the Blitzkrieg, the film follows Szpilmans experience as he witnesses all the oppression from the Germans, from restricting Jewish access to executing Jews in rows. Before long, Szpilmans family is brought together to be shipped off to Nazi labor camps, but he manages to elude deportation. From then on, Szpilman tries to survive among the devastated Warsaw ghetto.

It is difficult to decide where to begin praising a film as good as this. Having also lived in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, director Roman Polanski has now created a marvelous film that unflinchingly shows the horrors of the Holocaust, yet has great moments of kindness and triumph as well. The film presents many disturbing images, and it is not for the faint of heart. However, Polanski always keeps Szpilmans survival to be the main focus throughout the film, with the cruelty of the Nazis as a secondary theme. Thus, "The Pianist" never shoves brutality in your face just for shock value. Instead, it comes off as both a thrilling tale of survival and a genuinely moving tribute to the human spirit.

The meticulous direction leaves even the shortest of individual scenes lingering in the viewers mind. For example, one scene shows a woman being shot in the back while running down the street, and Polanski had told the actress EXACTLY how to slump down and keel into a lifeless position; he said this was the way he had once seen a woman die while he was a child in Warsaw. Other equally memorable moments include images of Szpilman drinking whatever water he can find, and one of the most harrowing scenes involves a man in a wheelchair being thrown from his apartment into the street.

The technical elements are superb as well; everything is done in such an incredibly realistic way that the audience virtually becomes a first-hand witness of everything Szpilman goes through. The cinematography, costume design, and sound effects editing make Warsaw come to life with all its sounds and sights. Particularly noteworthy: the desolate snow-covered buildings, the smoke rising into the clouds from burning corpses, and the momentary loss of sound as Szpilman is temporarily deafened by a tank blast.

But the performance by lead actor Adrien Brody is what really makes the entire film so thoroughly memorable and engrossing. Brody is rarely seen off-camera, so a lot depends on him being able to tell much of the story himself. His actions and eyes speak so much without him having to say anything; I will never forget the look on his face after he accidentally broke a set of dishes. The other actors (such as Ed Stoppard, Thomas Kretschmann, and Emilia Fox) dont get nearly as much screen time, but they too do well with what theyve been given.

Finally, the denouement is unforgettable. No one will be breathing during the last half-hour of this film. It starts off remarkably tense, but the last 15 minutes progress with increasing poignancy. When the film came to its finish and the credits began to appear, no one in my local movie theater dared to move a muscle; everyone sat through all the credits and watched the film to its very end.

Recommendations dont get much higher than that.

Not easy to watch, but certainly rewarding, this independent film will leave its haunting spell in your mind for years to come. Truly amazing on all counts, "The Pianist" is one of the best films of 2002, and it will be a crying shame if it doesn't get at least a few Oscar nominations. See it now.

83 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Polanski's Paean to Poland, April 5, 2003

By	Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

After suffering through the excruciating experience of viewing "The Ninth Gate", I despaired that a once creative and vital director had lost his touch.

"The Pianist" more than compensates for that chaotic, unintended farce. Polanski has let the world know loud (and I do mean that literally and figuratively) and clear that he still possesses the artistic goods.

This is his first film since "Knife in the Water" to be set in his native Poland. His feeling for his native land rings forth in every frame. From the music of Chopin, to the scenes of the Warsaw trains on their way to Treblinka, packed to the absolute extreme with their human cargo, Polanski lets us experience, practically first hand, what it meant in the late 30s, early 40s, to be a Jew in Warsaw. It was precisely the wrong thing to be at precisely the wrong time in human history.

Whereas the other great Holocost movie of recent years "Schindler's List" relies so heavily on visual representation (though it does have a moving soundtrack), Polanski combines brutal images with high decibal sound to stun and startle us into a deeper, more visceral understanding of what the title character, Wladyslaw Szpilman, experienced as a young artist in WWII Poland. During one scene, a bomb explodes so loudly that I actually thought for a few seconds that my hearing had been damaged, as a ringing noise on the soundtrack synchronizes with Szpilman's gesture as he winces and cups his ear with his hand . That's about as visceral as I want to go in a cinema experience. It's also one aspect that wont be as effective at home, unless one is blessed with a state of the art sound system.

While this film is exceedingly stark, grim and shocking (you will understand from where the term "shock troops" derives), it also contains moments of great beauty and humanity. Even in moments of the most extreme deprivation and isolation, a human hand comes to Szpilman's assistance and helps him survive.

Oscar awards were certainly deserved for both Polanski and Adrian Brody (Best Actor). It is essentially their film. Though the supporting roles are well played, Brody is in every scene of the film, so it is his to carry. It is a bravura performance. He never overacts or overreacts. He subtly displays the gradual despair and increasing horror as Warsaw crumbles around him.

No matter how one feels about Polanski, personally, "The Pianist" proves that he remains among the top ten directors of his generation. This love letter to his native land is tinged with tears, a combination which renders it amazingly effective.

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Thing, October 3, 2002

By	* "Jake W" (Warsaw, Poland) - See all my reviews

Almost a documentary.

This movie is true to the life story of Szpilman, the pianist, and almost to the letter follows the book Szpilman wrote. The only major licencia poetica I noticed is the placement of Szpilman's hideout in the routinely destroyed and totally deserted city - a result of the two uprisings: in 1943 and most definitely that of 1944 - at the very same building that the good natured German officer selected for army offices.

Polanski wanted the true and most dramatic story to speak for itself and on purpose gave up on these well known movie tricks that make less powerful stories squeeze our tears so generously in the movie theaters. To be honest - this is a pity. A real story AND a popular touch make for the most effective works. But perhaps I understand Polanski's reasons for this and I certainly respect them. You just do not want any semblance between depiction of tragedy of such proportions and the regular every year productions. And also - Polanski was part of the drama of 1939-1945, living not further than two hundred miles from the place where the Pianist lived and survived, too.

"The Pianist" has a feel of a documentary. The movie structure - a series of glimpses of Szpilman's life, each of them grabing your total attention, because each of them is almost more than an average human being experience in a whole life, at least as most of us know life today. A word said, the timing of entering a staircase, a positioning taken in a row of forced laborers is a decision - or - a circumstance of life and death consequences.

Being from that country I will not dodge the sensitive issue. There are many bad people and some good people in this true story. There are many good Jews, and some bad Jews. There are many good Poles, and many bad Poles. There are many bad Germans and one good German. The last one stands out. Courtesy of that "national background" his decent acts - not killing Szpilman (a heroism in pure form it is not), and giving him food and a coat stand out.

I watched this movie at 9:15 a.m. in a cinema filled with youngsters sent by the schools. The silence in the room, all over those 130 minutes or so, was stunning.