Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8434 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-01-05
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, German, Russian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 143 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Synopsis
Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish gifted classical pianist living Poland during the Nazi occupation manages to escape deportation to a concentration camp and goes into hiding. For the next few years Wladyslaw eludes capture and lives in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto.

Customer Reviews

Stunning
Incredibly gripping film based on a true story. Goes to great lengths to show the horrors of the Holocaust. Brilliantly directed and brilliantly acted, it's a rare Hollywood film that doesn't get all sentimental like the other war films.

Harwood is a genius !



When I first saw this in the cinema when it first came out, it was empty. For whatever reason no one went to see it.

Then it won Oscars and people now think it a great film. I sometimes wonder if they are affected by the awards. I don't think it was that well reviewed on first release.

I saw Ronald Harwood recently in Bradford. I have his screenwriting book. He said that he was chosen by the director to write it because he, Harwood had just written Taking Sides which is set in WWII and it about music. And you only thought actors were typecast.

I do wonder if the book on which it is based is any good.

The film really should be watched in all schools, now and at all times in the future. So few children these days know anything about history - before 1990, that films like this are an important tool to help them understand the horrors of mankind and how to prevent them in the future.

Surviving destruction and genocide
The Pianist is the true story of the struggle to survive the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto of Polish Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman.

It tells how he survived against the odds , hiding in various parts of the city , before his life was saved by a German officer , who despised the Nazis brutality and genocide , a true righteous gentile , Captain Wilm Hosenfeld.
Unlike many personal holocaust accounts , which are of concentration and death camps , this one is an account of life and death in the Warsaw ghetto.

The movie portrays life and death in the ghetto : the disease , the starvation and the Nazi mass murders of hundreds of thousands of men , women and children. The imagery of the ghetto is brough to life, with heartrending scenes of the Jews being herded into and out of the ghetto and of Nazi brutality. REcreated scenes, will stay with the viewer, like a young woman being shot in the head for asking the Nazi guard where the Nazis are taking them, a mother holding a small boy who is dying of thirst, and begging for water for her child.
A little girl, holding an empty bird cage, and crying because she cannot find her family.
Roman Polanski has showed his flare for directing once again, and brilliant acting by Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw Szpilman, Emilia Fox as his gentile female friend Dorota, and Thomas Kretschmann as Captain Wilm Hosenfeld.
A story of one man's quest for survival, among the cruel genocide of millions.