FAQ for
The Pianist (2002) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

Szpilman wrote his memoirs, originally titled Smierc miasta 1939-45 /Death of a City in 1946, right after the end of WW2, so his memory of events was still vivid. Unfortunately, the book was suppressed by the Soviets until it was finally republished in 1998 as The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945. Szpilman's book was adapted for the movie in a script by Ronald Harwood, which can be seen here.

Very closely. Director Roman Polanski appears to have kept the story intact, even though he added a few scenes based on his own memories. Many of the scenes and, sometimes, the exact conversations in the book appear in the movie. However, there are a few obvious discrepancies. For example, the Dorota (Emilia Fox) character does not appear in the book. Also, Polanski seems to have taken some liberties with the sequence of events as they happened in the apartments where Szpilman (Adrien Brody) hid. To really make note of the differences and similarities between book and movie, it's suggested that you read the book. You won't be disappointed.

Three scenes in The Pianist have been mentioned frequently as stirring particularly strong emotions. One is a scene in which the Szpilmans see German officers toss an old man in a wheelchair from a third floor balcony to the pavement below because he cannot stand up. In another scene, a young Jewish boy is beaten to death while he tries to crawl under the ghetto wall after stealing some food. The third scene is when a German officer randomly selects a number of Jews from a work detail, makes them lie face down on the pavement, and then coldly shoots a bullet into the back of each man's head. Particularly disturbing about this scene is that the officer runs out of bullets on the last man (Szpilman's friend) and has to stop and reload his gun before shooting him same as the others. There are other disturbing scenes in the movie (e.g., Szpilman getting whipped, Jews made to dance for German soldiers while waiting to cross a street, Szpilman drinking disgusting water from a washbucket, a mother wailing because she killed her own baby, a woman shot through the forehead simply for asking a German officer where they were going to take her) but the first three are the ones mentioned most often as being particularly violent.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDbs Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Pianist can be found here.

Technically there are no songs in The Pianist, because songs have lyrics. Almost all the pieces that Szpilman plays during various parts of the movie are piano works by Frederic Chopin. When Polish radio is first bombed, Szpilman is playing Nocturne in C# minor, Opus 21. When the German officer (Hosenfeld) asks Szpilman to play for him, he plays Ballad No. 1 in G minor, Opus 23. When the occupation is over and Szpilman returns to Polish radio, he plays the same music he was playing when the bombing first began: Nocturne in C# minor, Opus 21. While the ending credits are rolling, Szpilman is playing The Grande Polonaise Brilliante, Opus 22. There is one tune that Szpilman plays in the movie, in the scene when he is entertaining the customers of the bar in the ghetto, that was a popular pre-war song called Umowilem sie z nia na dziewiata, but of course it's the instrumental version.

Suite No. 1 BWV 1007 for Solo Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Adrien's father, retired history teacher Elliot Brody, is of Polish-Jewish descent. Adrien's mother, photojournalist Sylvia Plachy, was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1943 to a Catholic father and Jewish mother. When the Plachy family fled Hungary in 1956, Sylvia lived for a short time in Vienna before immigrating to the United States in 1958, where she was raised Catholic. Adrien was brought up Catholic but identifies with both religions as per an undated interview in which interviewer Emily Blunt questions Adrien about being selected to play Jack Starks in The Jacket. She quotes director John Maybury as saying Brody "got the part because you look like an Arab but you're a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx." Adrien's reply: "But John is wrong. I don't feel like I look like an Arab, nor am I from the Bronx, and I am Jewish and Catholic."

Yes and no. Brody wasn't green at playing the piano, as he had taken piano lessons as a child. He admits, however, that he had to study every day for several months to play the Chopin pieces that he was shown playing in the movie because director Roman Polanski wanted the scenes to be realistic and did not want to rely on handovers. Basically, when you see Brody playing piano, he is really playing the piece. When you see hands, it is the famous Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak. So, Brody performed Nocturne in C# minor in the opening scenes when the radio station was bombed as well as in his return to the radio after the Holocaust. [NOTE: It is said that the real Szpilman did the same; that is, he opened his return to Polish radio with Chopin's Nocturne in C# minor, the same selection he was playing during the 1939 bombing. Watch Brody's face for a wince at that actual moment.] Brody also did the first several bars when playing for the Nazi commander Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann) as well as the opening bars of Grande Polanise Brilliante, Op 22 during the closing credits.

The Oscars are the U.S. film industry's top honors given out each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Five actors were nominated in 2003 for best actor in a leading role. They included Adrien Brody for The Pianist, Nicholas Cage for Adaptation, Michael Caine for The Quiet American, Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York, and Jack Nicholson for About Schmidt. Stiff competition, but Brody was chosen over them all. The reasons for Brody's selection were not made public by the Academy, but several possibilities have been cited. Some say it was because Brody pretty much carried The Pianist by himself. Having so many scenes alone, Brody had to channel his emotions through his body language and expressions rather than through his voice and interactions with other actors. That he did it so well might have been one reason Brody stood out to the Academy. Others say it may have been because of Brody's ability to transform his character from a charming and celebrated pianist at the start of the movie into an emaciated, almost dead, corpse of a man at the end. With his well-deserved Oscar, Brody also earned acclaim as being the youngest actor to ever win the award. Brody was 29 at the time.

Better is a relative term, dependent on each individual's criteria. Both movies are about the Holocaust, of course, and both movies have won multiple Academy Awards. Schindler's List (1993) won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director (Steven Spielberg). The Pianist (2002) took three Oscars, including Best Actor (Adrien Brody) and Best Director (Roman Polanski). Schindler's List ranks ninth on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest movies (The Pianist is not on the list because it includes only movies made prior to 1997). The IMDb's Top 250 places Schindler's List at 6 and The Pianist at 52. Both great movies, similar in genre, but there are differences that make each movie unique to itself. Schindler's List is the story of how German entrepreneur Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) used his money to save over 1,000 Jews, whereas The Pianist focuses on Polish-Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman and his attempts to survive in the Warsaw ghetto. Schindler's List is a screen adaptation by a Jewish director of a novel by a non-Jewish Australian novelist (Thomas Keneally). The Pianist is an adaptation of a memoir by a Polish Jew, directed by a Polish-Jewish director who actually witnessed the Holocaust as a child. Schindler's List is in black-and-white, giving it the feel of a documentary, whereas The Pianist is in color. Contemporary composer John Williams provided the musical score in Schindler's List, whereas the music in The Pianist is mostly from the classical composer, Frederic Chopin. In discussions on this message board, both movies have been called powerful, shocking, and sentimental. Words often used to describe Schindler's List are heroic, fictional, and Hollywoodesque. Words used to characterize The Pianist include realistic and sympathetic. Both movies should be enjoyed for the differing views they portray of one of the most distressing periods in world history.

Indeed, there were two blonde women in the movie, making it confusing to tell one from the other. The blonde whom Szpilman meets during the bombing of Polish radio and with whom he seems to have a budding romance is Dorota. Dorota is not in Szpilman's book and appears to be a made-up character for the movie, probably to give a look at Szpilman's life before the occupation and to evoke audience sympathy for all that he lost during the war. The later scenes, in which Szpilman stays with pregnant Dorota and her husband, are also fabricated for the movie. Janina Godlewska (Ruth Platt) is the other blonde. The real Janina Godlewska was a Polish singer. She and her actor husband, Andrzej Bogucki (Ronan Vibert), knew Szpilman through their shared involvement in the performing arts. It was Godlewska that Szpilman saw in the marketplace and her and her husband to whom he turned when he decided to go into hiding. To read a two-page excerpt from Szpilman's book that tells how the real Janina and Andrzej helped him go into hiding, go to Google Books and do a search on "Szpilman Janina".

Yes. That person went by the name of Rubenstein (played by Popeck) and was a well-known funny man to the residents of the Warsaw ghetto. Szpilman mentions Rubenstein in his book, describing how he would make his way down the street, ragged and disheveled, making everyone laugh as he hopped and jumped, hummed and murmurred to himself, and called the German guards 'scallywags', 'bandits', and other more obscene names. Even the Germans thought he was hilarious and would toss him cigarettes and coins. Szpilman admits that he wasn't sure whether Rubenstein was a madman or simply someone who had found a way to subsist in the deplorable conditions of the ghetto.

There are a few parts in the movie that aren't in English and aren't subtitled either. When the German soldiers are forcing the "Jew dance" on the residents of the ghetto as they wait to cross the street, one of the soldiers keeps shouting "Schneller! Schneller!" [English: Faster! Faster!] to the band as well as the people they're forcing to dance. Before that one of the soldiers asks the waiting ghetto residents how they like the music and would they like to dance to it.

Another scene is when Rubenstein gets a cigarette from the German soldier. He first says (in German) "Oh, two bandits! Boom Boom!" when he pretends to shoot them with his cane. Then he says "Ah, a cigarette! Thank you very much." He finally says over and over "Alles klar" which means "All is clear"...something a soldier might say when fighting's over.

According to the Pabst plan, Warsaw's ghetto population was to be reduced in half, to 500,000. Jewish policemen were to accomplish this by delivering five people a day to the deportation area, an extremely difficult task because the unfortunates would try to hide or run away. After Henryk (Ed Stoppard) and Halina (Jessica Kate Meyer) were selected as fit to work in the ghetto, they found out that the rest of the family was taken away to the Umschlagplatz so they volunteered to join them even though they were not on the list for resettlement. The policeman was delighted because they made his job easier.

According to the movie as well as Szpilman's book, he last saw his family when they boarded the train to the Treblinka death camp. Szpilman himself assumes that they were exterminated, and no record of their fate remains.

Szalas (Andrew Tiernan) was the greedy guy who pocketed the money for Szpilman's food and left him to starve. In his book, Szpilman tells the story a bit differently from the movie. Szpilman had several people taking care of him during that time and actually moved from apartment to apartment. After Gestapo raided the apartment of his first caretaker Mr. Lewicki (in the movie he was merged with another person from the book, engineer Gebczynski), Lewicki and Gebczynski went into hiding and Lewicki's brother took over. Since Gestapo was on their trail with secret agents constantly watching the building where Szpilman lived they had to recruit someone new to look after Wladyslaw. This was a very dangerous duty because, in Nazi-occupied Poland, helping Jews was punished with death up to three family generations. In this situation the underground organization assigned one of its activists and a radio engineer, Szalas to bring food and news to Wladyslaw. So, unlike Szpilman's friends Szalas wasn't helping him out of his own choice but acted on orders. He turned out to be a greedy opportunist who took advantage of the situation and left Szpilman for dead. Fearing reprisal for his actions, he disappeared with the money he amassed on Wladyslaw's behalf so no one knows what happened to Szalas.

The scene in which Hosenfeld asks Szpilman to play the piano is often referred to by those who assume that Hosenfeld spared Szpilman because he recognized Szpilman's great talent. In reality, Szpilman was just one of many Poles and Jews that Wilm Hosenfeld saved from death until his capture by the Soviets in 1945. In Hosenfeld's diary, available at the back of Szpilman's book The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, Hosenfeld wrote about the many horrors he witnessed being committed against Jews and Poles and expressed his intention to save as many as he could. His high rank in the German army allowed him to provide working papers for Jews and Poles, even employing some of them himself in a sports stadium that was under his command. Unfortunately, Hosenfeld was treated brutally by the Soviets who thought that his claims to have saved many Poles and Jews were merely lies. He died in a Soviet detention camp in 1952.