Polish musician Szpilman/Adrien Brody in The Pianist

Władysław Szpilman (1911-2000) was born in Sosnowiec Poland into a cultured family. He showed an early talent for the piano, training in Warsaw, then in the 1920s continuing in Berlin. In the most exciting art and musical environment anywhere, Weimar Germany, Szpilman studied piano and composition at the Ber­l­in Acad­emy of Arts, working with Franz Schreker. When the Nazis took power in 1933 he returned to his family in Warsaw and worked as a pianist for Polish Radio. By 1939, he had composed many popular songs and classical works, and became quite famous.

Szpilman and his parents pre-war, elegantly dressed

In Your Pocket

This promising musical career was stopped by Germany's invas­ion of Poland, Sept 1939. Szpilman & his family were driven into the War­saw ghetto, along with thousands of other local Jews. To prot­ect them from starvation, Szpilman played piano at Café Nowaczesna Sienna St, a happy gathering place for Nazis, while thous­ands outside were starv­ing. He also worked at other cafés and night­clubs, possible bec­ause Szpil­man had strong connections to many other artists in the ghetto. Ironically Café Nowaczesna had once been frequented by the Jewish elite.

Tragically in mid 1942, when packed deport­ations from the gh­etto began, Szpilman saw his relatives and friends being sent on trucks but managed to keep his immediate family safe. Alas they too were finally put on board for transport to The East, Treblinka. As they were boarding the train, an unknown hand pulled him away to safety, and he watched as his family was sent to the gas chambers.

Jewish families being deported from Warsaw Ghetto

by German soldiers, Yad Vashem

Warsaw deportees put on the cattle cars

by German soldiers, Wiki

Unable to leave the ghetto due to the constant threats, Sz­pilman relied on the kindness of colleagues to live. In the following months, Warsaw was largely destroyed; Szpilman barely survived, moving from destroyed buildings.

After months of a hungry life, it was in winter 1945 that Szpilman met the German officer who saved his life. The film’s cl­osing scenes involved Szpilman's meeting with Capt Wilm Hosenfeld who accidentally found the hiding place.

Once the war ended, Szpilman returned to Polish Radio and to composing. He also gave concert performances as a soloist and mem­ber of chamber ensembles. He stopped touring in 1986 to devote him­self to composing, and died in Warsaw in 2000. By then Szpilman was a very popular musician of post-war Poland. But until his biography was published in German and English, and espec­ially Roman Polanski’s great film, Szpilman was virtually unk­n­own in the West.

Szpilman at Polish Radio after WW2

In Your Pocket

The Pianist (2002) told the true story of acclaimed musician Wl­ad­ys­­law Szpilman, who strugg­led to keep his family alive in WW2 but failed. Directed by Roman Polanski, filmed in Poland and released in 2002, the drama was inspired by the autobiography, The Pianist: Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw 1939-45, and followed the radio station pianist as he went on a terrible journey in the Warsaw Ghetto once it was sealed off in Nov 1940.

 What music was used in The Pianist film? Polanski’s screen adaptation demanded a melancholy soundtrack to match its sombre themes, and no one suited better than Romantic composer, Frédéric Chopin. Approp­riately, Szpilman had often shared his love of Chopin with list­en­ers while working on air, so many of Chopin’s master­­pieces featured in the film, played on the soundtrack album by Polish classical pianist and Chopin Competition winner, Janusz Olejniczak.

Did young American method actor star Adrien Brody really play the piano in The Pianist? Polanski made Brody practise the piano for four hours a day, until he could master passages from some of Chopin’s finest works. Brody also made a lot of personal sacrifices to live the life of the tragic Polish pianist. To embody a man who had lost everything, Brody left his girlfriend and went on a severe diet, losing 14 ks. Despite ha­v­ing very little energy, starving himself to experience the des­per­ation that comes with hun­g­er, Brody persisted with his piano lessons. There was an empti­ness that came with starving that he hadn’t experienced.

actor Adrien Brody, playing piano in the film

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Brody also spent time self-educating on the Holocaust, even though his maternal grandmother was a Hungarian Jew. “I was depressed for a year after The Pianist. And I don’t suffer from depression generally, but this was mourning. I was very dist­urbed by what I embraced in making that film, and of the awareness that it opened up in me. I gave up my apartment, sold my car, dis­con­nected the phones and left. I took two bags and my keyboard and moved to Europe.”

The film won the Palme d’Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. At the 2003 Academy Awards, The Pianist won Oscars for Best Director (Roman Polanski), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ronald Harwood) and Best Actor (Adrien Brody), and was nominated for Best Picture.

This was called Roman Polanski’s strongest and most person­ally felt movie, given that as a child Polanski survived the Kraków ghetto and lost beloved family in the camps.