Search - The Pianist [Fullscreen] on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language, Watch With Your Teen Movie Release: 2002 DVD Release: 05/27/2003 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Audio Tracks: English, French, Spanish Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 30 mins Studio: Universal Studios Members Wishing: 0 Genres: Drama, War Drama See Also: The Pianist [Widescreen], The Pianist [Limited Soundtrack Edition], Le Pianiste, The Pianist [Widescreen], The Pianist [HD DVD], The Pianist [Widescreen] [Limited Edition], The Pianist [Blu-ray]

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 and comfortable flat in Warsaw which Wladyslaw shares with his mother and father (Maureen Lipman and Frank Finlay), his sisters Halina and Regina (Jessica Kate Meyer and Julia Rayner), and his brother, Henryk (Ed Stoppard). While Wladyslaw and his family are aware of the looming presence of German forces and Hitler's designs on Poland, they're convinced that the Nazis are a menace which will pass, and that England and France will step forward to aid Poland in the event of a real crisis. Wladyslaw's naïveté 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 and landing a supposedly safe job playing piano in a restaurant. But as the German grip tightens upon Poland, Wladyslaw and 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 and 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 and went out of print until 1998, when a new edition was issued as -The Pianist. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Adrien Brody - Wladyslaw Szpilman
Thomas Kretschmann - Captain Wilm Hosenfeld
Frank Finlay - The father
Maureen Lipman - The mother
Emilia Fox - Dorota

Roman Polanski's multiple-Oscar-winning drama The Pianist is presented on this disc in a standard full-frame transfer that fails to preserve the original theatrical aspect of the film. English soundtracks are rendered in DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1, a French soundtrack has also been recorded in Dolby Digital 5.1, and a Spanish soundtrack is available in Dolby Digital Surround. Supplemental materials include interviews with the cast and crew, a documentary about Polanski's experience during the Holocaust, and footage of the real Wladyslaw Szpilman. This is a fine disc for what it is, but the same extras are available on a different disc that also offers a widescreen transfer of the film. That version is preferable to this one. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide