The pianist

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Movie
German title The pianist
Original title The pianist
Country of production France , United Kingdom , Germany , Poland
original language English , German
Publishing year 2002
length 150 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Roman Polanski
script Ronald Harwood
production Robert Benmussa ,
Roman Polański,
Alain Sarde
music Wojciech Kilar
camera Paweł Edelman
cut Hervé de Luze
occupation
synchronization

The Pianist is a feature film by Roman Polański based on the autobiography The Pianist - My Wonderful Survival (original title: Śmierć miasta ) by the Polish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman, published in 1946 . The film, the actors and the film crew have been awarded various film prizes, including three Oscars in the categories of “Best Director”, “Best Actor” ( Adrien Brody ) and “Best Adapted Screenplay”.

action

The film begins with original recordings of Warsaw street life from 1939. Władysław Szpilman is an outstanding Polish-Jewish pianist who is highly regarded in Warsaw . It is September 3, 1939: Szpilman's studio work is interrupted by the bombing of Warsaw by the German Air Force. Szpilman's worried family, consisting of his father, mother, sisters Regina and Halina and brother Henryk, while sitting on the radio, hears that Great Britain has declared war on the German Reich. It is hoped that everything will soon turn out fine.

As a result of the German siege of Warsaw , life becomes unbearable, especially for the Jews. The German occupying power is constantly developing new harassment, especially for the Jews. On the street they are exposed to the arbitrariness of the occupying soldiers. After a while, the Szpilmans have to move to the Warsaw ghetto . There it will soon be a question of survival for the family. While some ghetto residents stay afloat by working illegally or in the Jewish security service, the Szpilmans are threatened with starvation because of their naivety and pride. You will witness the misery of ghetto life, the humiliation of the residents and arbitrary killings by the German soldiers. Władysław Szpilman's good relations with an influential Jewish police officer save his brother's life for the time being.

One day the residents of the ghetto are gathered at the Umschlagplatz . From there they are transported to the Treblinka extermination camp . His parents and siblings are murdered there. Thanks to the spontaneous help of a member of the Jewish security service, Szpilman escaped removal, but is now one of the forced laborers who have to work under strict surveillance in factories outside the ghetto. He uses this to smuggle pistols into the ghetto for members of the Jewish resistance movement. He later managed to escape from the ghetto.

Szpilman can observe the beginning of the uprising in the ghetto on April 19, 1943 from a hiding place. In order not to be caught, he has to change hiding place. He was hungry and fell ill, but was treated by a Polish doctor. His hiding place is shelled during a skirmish between Germans and Poles during the Warsaw Uprising . He escapes again, wanders through the completely destroyed city and hides in a house. There he hears the sounds of Beethoven's moonlight sonata . After night fell, the German officer Wilm Hosenfeld discovered him .

Hosenfeld asks Szpilman to play something for him on the piano. For several minutes the pianist plays excerpts from Ballad No. 1 in G minor (Op. 23) by Chopin and Hosenfeld listens clearly moved. From this point on until the Germans withdrew at the end of 1944, Hosenfeld supplied Szpilman with food in his hiding place. When he said goodbye, he gave the pianist his officer's coat, which almost became the doom of the pianist when the Red Army marched into Warsaw.

Hosenfeld is taken prisoner by the Soviets and meets a liberated Polish prisoner who is walking past the prison camp in a column and insulting the German prisoners. As a result, Hosenfeld learns that the Pole was a musician who knows Szpilman and asks him to intercede. But a Soviet guard cuts off the conversation so that the musician does not find out Hosenfeld's name. Szpilman is later informed of the contact, but can no longer find his helper without his name.

production

Production notes, publication

The shooting took place among others in Babelsberg place

The pianist was shot in Germany in Babelsberg , Berlin , Beelitz and Jüterbog . In Poland , the film was shot in Warsaw and Kobyłka . Most of the street scenes in Warsaw were actually shot in the Praga district , where the old buildings have been preserved. The ruins seen towards the end of the film were not backdrops, but real ruins: These scenes were filmed in abandoned Red Army barracks in Jueterbog, which were already slated to be demolished. A number of houses were demolished even more specifically for the shooting.

The filming of the film adaptation of Władysław Szpilman's life began six months after his death on February 19, 2001 and ended in July 2001. The budget was estimated at 35 million US dollars . The film premiered on May 24, 2002 at the Cannes International Film Festival . This was followed by other screenings at various international film festivals . The film was shown in Poland from September 6, 2002. It started operating in Switzerland on October 10, 2002. It was shown in Germany from October 24, 2002, and one day later in Austria. The film opened in US cinemas on January 3, 2003.

success

On the opening weekend, the film grossed a good $ 111,000 in the United States. By early June 2008, US $ 32.5 million had been raised. In Poland, up to the beginning of October 2002, over 11.5 million zlotys , the equivalent of over 3.6 million US dollars, had been earned. Worldwide revenues of over 120 million US dollars were achieved. By mid-May 2003, over 800,000 viewers were counted at the German box office. The proceeds from the Dutch premiere were donated to the Anne Frank House .

background

Director Roman Polański survived the Krakow ghetto as a child and lost his mother in Auschwitz-Birkenau . His father survived the Mauthausen concentration camp . While filming in Krakow , Polański met a man who had helped his family survive World War II.

1,400 actors auditioned for the role of Władysław Szpilman at a casting in London . Ultimately, Polanski decided against all of these actors and in favor of Adrien Brody, whom he had seen filming The Queen's Collar in Paris . Leading actor Brody learned to play the piano especially for his role and lost around 14 kg. To familiarize himself with the feeling of loss for his role, he gave up his apartment, sold his car and stopped watching TV. Adrien Brody and Thomas Kretschmann stood together again in front of the camera in King Kong in 2005 .

Axel Prahl plays a supporting role as a German soldier. Daniel Szpilman, the grandson of Władysław Szpilman, plays the boy in the ghetto, who can be seen first on the market square and later on the Umschlagplatz.

During the shooting, Rainer Schaper died on March 7, 2001 in Berlin at the age of 51 of a cerebral infarction . As a result, filming was suspended for a day and the film was dedicated to the producer.

The plot contains an anticipatory anachronism : while the Szpilman family overheard Britain's declaration of war on the German Empire on the radio, Joseph Goebbels briefly heard a speech . The excerpt comes from the Sports Palace speech that was given in 1943, not 1939.

Current research shows that the officer Wilm Hosenfeld also helped other Jews. In 2008 he was honored with the Polish order Polonia Restituta . In December 2008, Yad Vashem was recognized .

synchronization

The synchronization was carried out by the synchronization company Studio Babelsberg based on a dialogue book by Heinz Freitag , who also directed the dialogue .

role actor Voice actor
Wladyslaw Szpilman Adrien Brody Stephan Schwartz
Captain Wilm Hosenfeld Thomas Kretschmann Thomas Kretschmann
Benek Andrzej Blumenfeld Erich Rauker
Dorota Emilia Fox Bettina White
Dorota's husband Valentine Pelka Udo Schenk
Dr. Luczak Tom Strauss Werner Ehrlicher
Halina Jessica Kate Meyer Marie Bierstedt
Henryk Ed Stoppard Norman Matt
Itzak Heller Roy Smiles Bernd Vollbrecht
Janina Ruth Platt Diana Borgwardt
Janina's husband Ronan Vibert Peter Reinhardt
Jurek Michał Żebrowski Viktor Neumann
Majorek Daniel Caltagirone Peter Flechtner
Man at the intersection Anthony Milner Eberhard Prüter
Marik Gebczynski Krzysztof Pieczyński Frank-Otto Schenk
mother Maureen Lipman Regine Albrecht
Regina Julia Rayner Sabine Arnhold
Szalas Andrew Tiernan Gerald Paradise
father Frank Finlay Uli Krohm
Yehuda Paul Bradley Jörg Hengstler

Reviews

The Frankfurter Zeitung read: “The undisturbed flawlessness of Chopin's wistful sounds in Polanski's film forms the dramaturgically extremely powerful background for a film made up of sheer shocks. Music makes it bearable for us as it is for the Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, played by Adrien Brody, who survived the ghetto just as music survives barbarism: without heroic pathos, but with human tenacity. This true story - Szpilman was giving concerts in the Warsaw Ghetto when our reviewer Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote music reviews there - the film reproduces with documentary accuracy. "

Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote: "What I never dared to hope for, Roman Polanski succeeded in doing here - his film 'The Pianist' is an almost incomprehensibly authentic reproduction of our everyday life in the Warsaw ghetto." gives the humiliated artist, the tormented and harassed Jews with extreme intensity. He brings to mind [...] the terrible loneliness of him who, being hunted outside the ghetto, apparently comes close to the mental confusion. The script risks showing him in several similar situations, but Brody does not allow monotony to arise. The fleeing pianist Szpilman is completely believable in every moment. "The critic ends with the words:" And Polanski - the word used again and again - here let me allow it: he did it masterfully. "

"The authentic story also helps director Roman Polanski cope with his own past, whereby his remarkable staging, which strives to be realistic, does not always escape the stereotyped images of the Holocaust."

- Lexicon of international film

“With images that seem almost documentary, Polanski revives the dark ghetto times again in episodes. Thanks to the strong actors you can forgive one or the other dramatically drawn out scene. The Golden Palm of Cannes is also to be understood as an appreciation of Polanski's life's work, who, not least as a survivor of the Krakow ghetto, has also dealt with part of his own past. The brilliant Adrien Brody received the Oscar for best leading actor in 2003 for his role as Szpilman. "

- Prism Online

“'How beautiful can a Holocaust film be?' Doesn't mourning, symbiotic pain, pictorial sympathy become an aesthetic pleasure here? The film does not answer this question. But it is an answer. In a long chain of films that want to save the individual life from iconography, it is possibly the most beautiful because it summarizes so much of the experience and pain of cinema in the search for the lost image of man in the iconography of horror. "

- Georg Seeßlen : The time

Awards (selection)

Roman Polański, with Adrien Brody behind , Cannes 2002

The film, the actors and the film crew received various film awards.

  • Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival 2002 as best film of the festival
  • European film award for best camera to Paweł Edelman
  • Seven Césars in the categories: “Best Film of the Year”, “Best Actor”, “Best Director”, “Best Camera”, “Best Music”, “Best Production Design” ( Allan Starski ) and “Best Sound”. Three further nominations were made in the categories “Best Editing”, “Best Screenplay” and “Best Costumes”. The pianist was the first film ever to receive the award in the “Best Film” category without French being one of the original languages.
  • Nominated for the Polish Film Awards in all 13 categories with eight awards: “Best Film”, “Best Director” , “Best Cinematography” , “Best Film Music” , “Best Sound”, “Best Editing”, “Best Equipment” and Best Costumes .
  • David di Donatello in the category "Best Foreign Film"
  • Oscars in the categories “Best Director” ( Roman Polański ), “Best Actor” ( Adrien Brody ), “Best Adapted Screenplay” ( Ronald Harwood ), as well as nominations in the categories “Best Film”, “Best Cinematography”, “Best Costumes” "( Anna B. Sheppard ) and" Best Editing ". At the time, Adrien Brody was the youngest actor to receive an Oscar in this main category.
  • Golden Globe nominations for the Golden Globe Award in the “Best Film - Drama” category and for Adrien Brody in the “Best Actor in a Drama” category .
  • various other prizes in the USA from different institutions
  • DVD Champion in the Audience Award category
  • German price for dubbing, outstanding arrangement for the complete work (Studio Babelsberg, line producer: Christa Kistner)
  • The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

The National Society of Film Critics in America named Polanski's work the best film of 2002. In 2016, The Pianist came 90th in a BBC survey of the 100 most important films of the 21st century .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for The Pianist . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2003 (PDF; test number: 91 729 V).
  2. ↑ a b Internet Movie Database : Filming Locations
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Internet Movie Database : Budget and box office results
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Internet Movie Database : Start Dates
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Internet Movie Database : Background information
  6. ^ Died: Rainer Schaper . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 2001 ( online ).
  7. ↑ a b The pianist in the German dubbing index
  8. ↑ a b The Pianist was the best film of 2002 . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 7, 2003; accessed on September 6, 2017.
  9. ^ Reich-Ranicki on Polanski's 'pianist' He did it masterfully In: Spiegel Online , October 22, 2002; accessed on September 6, 2017.
  10. ↑ The pianist. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  11. ↑ The soul in the system . In: Die Zeit , No. 44/2002
  12. ↑ Internet Movie Database : Nominations and Awards