Film Forum

France/Poland/Germany/UK, 2002
Directed by Roman Polanski
Starring Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the memoir by Władysław Szpilman
Cinematography by Pawel Edelman
Music by Wojciech Kilar
Approx. 149 min. 4K DCP restoration

The true story of celebrated Jewish composer and concert pianist Władysław Szpilman (Adrien Brody), detailing his odyssey of survival in the Warsaw Ghetto, the horrors of war, and the German officer (Thomas Kretschmann) who saves his life. Polanski, six years old when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, was a survivor of the Kraków Ghetto and witnessed his father being taken away to a Nazi death camp. His mother would die in Auschwitz. As Manohla Dargis wrote, “Polanski has spent his entire filmmaking career making movies that, steeped in alienation and paranoia, carry traces of the Holocaust. This time, faced with the historical event, he tempers his style, and the alienation and paranoia creep in from the outside, unescorted and relentless. With THE PIANIST, Polanski’s strange genius serves Szpilman’s remembrance.”

Restored in 4K from the original camera negative by StudioCanal in collaboration with DI Factory at DI Factory and reKino laboratory. Funding provided by StudioCanal and the Polish Film Institute.

Presented with Support from The Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Films, donated by Leon Constantiner and Family.

A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE

Reviews

“A tour de force of claustrophobia and surreal desperation… One of the very few non documentary movies about Jewish life and death under the Nazis that can be called definitive."
– A.O.Scott, The New York Times

“Polanski’s cinematic return to the ravaged world of his childhood starts inauspiciously… Once Szpilman is left behind, however…his struggle simply to survive is rendered with increasing subtlety, and Brody’s [Oscar®-winning] lead performance steadily comes into its own. Old-fashioned in both visual and narrative style and in its overall restraint, the film clearly benefits from the director’s first-hand knowledge of the territory.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)