The Pianist | 
 enlarge | Actors: Adrien Brody, Frank Finlay, Thomas Kretschmann, Maureen Lipman, Katarzyna Figura
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy Used: $2.64
You Save: $12.34 (82%)
New (29) Used (42) from $2.64
Rating:  384 reviews
Sales Rank: 1864
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 150
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 22766
ISBN: 078327856X
UPC: 025192276620
EAN: 9780783278568
ASIN: B00005JLT5
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
Release Date: May 27, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Disc only! We liquidate dvd's from a giant rentailer. Disc is in great shape and will ship in a protective sleeve. In stock and ships right now.
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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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 379 more reviews...
 Awesome Movie! Excellent Quality! August 17, 2008
This movie is freaking awesome. The way the director presents you the material makes you feel like you are experiencing what the actors are. Recommend you buy it.
Superb - must see August 12, 2008
A few weeks ago, my daughter and I watched The Pianist by Roman Polanski, on DVD. This 2002 Polish-French-German-British production, is an Academy award-winning movie was based on the life of Polish-Jewish pianist Wadysaw Szpilman, a famous pianist who recorded with Polish radio at the beginning of World War II.
the movie is based on Szpilman's book that he comprised of the journals he kept during the war; Polanski hired Ronald Harwood to write the screenplay.
Polanski, who is Jewish (his father changed the family name), was a boy in Krakow during World War II, and Polanski drew heavily on his own experiences to give this movie the incredibly realistic feel, costuming, and and setting that it has. The movie was filmed entirely in Germany and Poland. Massive sets were built in Warsaw, to recreate how Warsaw used to look, and parts of the movie were filmed in the reconstructed old town of Warsaw. (Warsaw was flattened and most of Warsaw consists of high-rise apartment buildings built in the 1950s.)
There is a scene in the movie in which a family friend selects Szpilman to leave the line, which saves his life. Szpilman's journal says "Run," but Polanski shared his own experience of a similar event in the bonus features. In Polanski's life, a Nazi officer helped save Polanski's own life when the boy was age 6 by saying, "Don't run," so that the young Polanski would not create a disturbance or to make it obvious that Polanski was a Jewish boy on the run for his life.
So Szpilman's book was changed from "Run" to "Don't run" in the movie.
Very telling, that stage direction.
In Polanski's life, he and his parents saw the erection of the wall in Krakow that separated the Jewish ghetto from the rest of Krakow. His parents were sent to concentration camps where his mother, then pregnant, died. His father eventually escaped to France, where Polanski lived as a young child before returning to Poland to begin his film career. Polanski now lives in France and is a French citizen.
This film is superb and is wholly deserving of the awards and accolades it received. It won the the Palme d'Or at Cannes, Oscars for Best Director, Best Actor (Adrien Brody), and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won seven French Cesars, including Best Actor for Brody, who became the only American actor to win a Cesar.
Even though the movie concerns the absolutely horrific events Szpilman and his family lived and died through, it is uplifting at the end, in that Szpilman survives due to help from a German officer.
Szpilman died in 2000 (1911-2000).
Adrien Brody lost weight to play the role of the waif-like Szpilman, and took months of additional piano lessons to increase his proficiency as a pianist. Polanski is nothing if not a stickler for realistic details. No trickery for Polanski's films. All scenes that show Brody playing the piano, are in fact, Brody playing the piano.
Other scenes that do not show Brody playing are played by pianist Janusz Olejniczak, who also provided the soundtrack. Featured music includes Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach.
If you do not see any other Polanski movie or any other movie about the Holocaust, you must see this one.
I have deliberately left out much of the story of how Szpilman survives against all odds, who helps him, who does not, who lives, who dies, where he goes and what he sees, because you have to witness this event first-hand. The incredible scenery, the destruction, the realistic costume design, everything about this movie is riveting without depressing the heck out of you. This is as riveting a story as that of Anne Frank.
A+. An asbolutely superb movie.
Fantastic story and picture quality/sound August 4, 2008
This is one of the best WWII films I've seen, along with Schindler's List it really has a great story and plot development.
It is a story of the horrors of nazi occupations and treatment of the Jews that needs to be told and learned, to know history is to not repeat it.
Great Service July 21, 2008
I used this video as a way to expose my students to the realities of the Holocaust. Until then most of them had never seen anything like it. THe movie came quickly and was in great condition. Thanks
Beautiful June 10, 2008
I simply loved this film. It's beautifully filmed, wonderfully acted and engrossing. This war is not easy to watch, the things that occured are difficult for any of us to fathom, but stories like this really illustrate that humans are not only capable of horrible things, but incredible things. There is a balance between beauty and ugliness in this film that is reminiscent of Shindler's List. I really feel that this film is Brody's finest work to date. This is a personal story and it feels that way, its triumphant and I enjoy triumph occuring in the eyes of a storm, it leaves us with hope.
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