The Pianist Blu-Ray

Product Description

Filmmaker Roman Polanski who as a boy growing up in Poland watched while the Nazis devastated his country during World War II directed this downbeat drama based on the true story of a privileged musician who spent five years struggling against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is a gifted classical pianist born to a wealthy Jewish family in Poland The Szpilmans have a large & comfortable flat in Warsaw which Wladyslaw shares with his mother & father (Maureen Lipman & Frank Finlay) his sisters Halina & Regina (Jessica Kate Meyer & Julia Rayner) & his brother Henryk (Ed Stoppard) While Wladyslaw & his family are aware of the looming presence of German forces & Hitler&s designs on Poland they&re convinced that the Nazis are a menace which will pass & that England & France will step forward to aid Poland in the event of a real crisis Wladyslaw&s navet (C) is shattered when a German bomb rips through a radio studio while he performs a recital for broadcast During the early stages of the Nazi occupation as a respected artist he still imagines himself above the danger using his pull to obtain employment papers for his father & landing a supposedly safe job playing piano in a restaurant But as the German grip tightens upon Poland Wladyslaw & his family are selected for deportation to a Nazi concentration camp Refusing to face a certain death Wladyslaw goes into hiding in a comfortable apartment provided by a friend However when his benefactor goes missing Wladyslaw is left to fend for himself & he spends the next several years dashing from one abandoned home to another desperate to avoid capture by German occupation troops The Pianist was based on the memoir of the same name by the real-life Wladyslaw Szpilman; the book was first published in 1946 as Death of a City but was banned by Polish Communist officials & went out of print until 1998 when a new edition was issued as The Pianist Mark Deming Rovi Language English Approx Run Time 149 Mins