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WWII Movie
“The Pianist”3/13/2013
Stacie Castillo |

Stacie Castillo
March 4, 2013
Instructor Yates
History 221
“The Pianist” The movie The Pianist is about a Jewish man’s life during war with Germany. The movie is set in Warsaw during 1939, in Wladyslaw’s recording studio. Wladyslaw is playing the piano when an explosion occurs at his recording studio. Germany is invading the town of Warsaw. The Germans treat the Jewish people like animals. They are banned from parks, restaurants and even from sitting on the benches. The Jewish are “branded”, made to wear a band on their arms with the Star of David big enough not to be missed. That way the German Army are able to keep track of them. Jewish families were only allowed a certain amount of money in their homes. They were forced to hide any extra money that they had for fear of losing it to the Germans. They were eventually forced out of their homes and made to live in the Jewish District or the “Warsaw Ghetto” as they called it. It is such a sad sight. Jewish people lay dead in the streets from starvation, illness or from being slaughtered by the Germans. The Germans would play cat and mouse games with the Jewish, lining them up, making them run for their lives, then shooting them down. At this point in the movie I am both disgusted and angry. These Germans shot and killed those people like someone shooting cans on a fence for target practice. It made me sick to my stomach. The movie continues with Wladyslaw escaping the ghetto and going into hiding. It tells the story of what he had to endure as a Jewish man in these times. It tells how he did it all to survive. What I learned from this movie is that the Jewish people suffered and endured horrible, unimaginable cruelty. The Germans treated them so inhumanely. How any human being is able to treat another human being with so much hate is beyond me. In fact, that level of hate is unfathomable to me. I also learned that that during this time the entire population of Warsaw was basically wiped out. Every single one of them shot down or sent off to their death, from women, children and the elderly. None of them were safe. That is something so incredibly sad to think about. Having to do some research on this movie to figure out how much of it was true, I found out that most of the movie is in fact true. The movie was based on the book written by Wladyslaw himself.
"The Pianist is an extraordinary Roman Polanski directed WWII Holocaust drama. It is based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman. Szpilman, played by Adrien Brody, was a celebrated classical piano musician. He was also a Polish Jew. Like countless others in Poland, his family was mercilessly rounded up by Nazi soldiers. As an animal is stalked, he hid from his German human predators. Szpilman manages to escape his soldiering captors, but he was one of the lucky few. Eventually he shares his incredible story in a book. The memoir turned movie is by all rights a historical document. Filmed in Poland, Germany, Russia, and the UK, the movie emotionally rips the viewer from their comfort zone. The film, wastes no time in transporting us back in history to the wretchedness of what life in the Warsaw Ghetto was like. Szpilman hid out there among what the movie accurately portrays as people who were hungry, cold, and desperately trying to survive something they could not make sense of any longer. It is a startling glimpse into the grave human misfortune of war and the Holocaust. Accepting that this movie is accurately depicted is unproblematic. For accuracy sake, Polanski smartly included dates on the screen. He made sure throughout the film that precise references are made to strategic happenings in history at that time.
Put aside the film being based on the author's personal recount of his escape from Nazi persecution, the story is also a genuine extension of Roman Polanski himself. He, too, is a Holocaust survivor. In contrast to WWII movies dripping with a director's addition of bells and whistles, The Pianist comes clean in actuality because its director lived and breathed the anguish of the Holocaust nightmare as well. There is nothing in The Pianist that viewers should feel compelled to simply tolerate. Instead, take it for the history lesson it is.” (voices.yahoo.com)
“Even when the dates are not displayed on the screen, there are also references to historical events such as the declaration of war by Great Britain on Nazi Germany, September 3, 1939, and the landings by the Allies in Western France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. This places those points in the story in the context of what was going on in the larger sweep of history. Polanski also chronicles the stages of destruction of the city of Warsaw. In the opening sequence we see a statue with its arm pointing to the left, and civilians walking to and fro in the streets in the background. Every so often throughout the movie, we see the same statue, only each time the destruction in the background is more complete. Polanski also uses this same technique of showing the same scene at different times throughout the war with a row of buildings until all that is left is rubble.” (thebicyclingguitarist.net)
If asked to teach about WWII using the movie The Pianist I would agree. It is an impressive film. It is full of accurate history, lived by Szpilman and Polanski. It tells about the Germans invading Poland and what happened in that time. It shows how the Jewish people suffered and what they had to go through before eventually meeting their maker. This movie is very informative and yes I would use it.

Works Cited
"The Pianist - Historical Research." eChalk Inc.. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://www2.chccs.k12.nc.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=51676&>.
"The Pianist as a historical document." The Bicycling Guitarist. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. <http://www.thebicyclingguitarist.net/studies/the_pianist.htm>.