The Pianist, a biographical drama directed by Roman Polanski, is an award-winning film that tells the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman. The story revolves around Szpilman’s survival after losing his family at the ghettos in Warsaw as he moves from multiple residences and receives aid from multiple non-Jewish parties. The film is highly acclaimed for many reasons, as the film packs massive amounts of raw emotion and provides immense information on the Holocaust and Szpillman himself. This is not done conventionally, however. The film is full of sound, the gorgeous renditions of many famous piano pieces, the horrific sounds of war, and the screams of terrified citizens. However, the film feels almost empty and lonely. This juxtaposition is cleverly cultivated, and the answer to this juxtaposition lies as the film delves into Szpilman’s survival in a dead, war-stricken world. With minimal dialogue, the film captures its magic through effective screenplay. Visual storytelling, in The Pianist, allows the audience to truly understand Szpilman’s character and the horrors of the Holocaust.

Szpilman’s story progresses through various settings, either by the Nazi’s orders or his escape to different residences. The first transition for Szpilman during the Holocaust was the Warsaw ghetto. Poignant visuals are used to describe the horrendous conditions of the ghetto and the cruelty of the Nazis. One of the first scenes that displays the cruelty of the ghetto is when the German officers ask an elderly man to dance, hinting at the dehumanization of the Jewish people. Visually, this is a very clever scene that gets the point across: the Germans do not see the Jewish people as equal. The striking contrast between the stricken faces of the Jewish people and the jeering laughs of the Nazis tells the viewer there is something very not right about the treatment of the Jewish people. Additionally, the fall of the crippled man while dancing and the crying child also add to the morally dubious sense the audience feels. The Nazis do not do anything to assist the crippled man or the crying child; they only continue to enjoy the dancing. Thus, the uncomfortable tension when watching this scene comes from the visual storytelling of the Nazis’ actions and the Jewish people’s reactions. Another scene that describes the conditions of the ghetto consists of a woman bringing soup home and a man fighting for the bowl. The man drops the bowl, hesitates, and licks the remnants of the soup on the ground while the woman beats him with a hat, confused and hurt. She walks away, sobbing. Visually, the audience can observe a few details. The brief hesitation of the man, then the quick gulping of the soup on the ground demonstrates the hunger of all the Jewish people in the ghetto. It also conveys the unsanitary conditions, and that the Jewish people are so deprived of basic needs that they are willing to steal and lick soup off the ground. The woman fruitlessly beating the man and sobbing shows the weakness of not only the woman, but of the defeated and abused spirit of the Jewish people. Thus, visual storytelling serves an essential role in educating the audience about the horrors of the ghetto and the cruelty of the Nazis.

Szpilman’s journey only worsens as he loses his family in the ghetto and begins his survival story on his own. Visual storytelling plays a great role in telling the audience about the difficulty of his survival. For example, Szpilman’s appearance gets increasingly more emaciated and dirty. At first, he was a clean-shaven, well-kept, and well-dressed young man. Once he leaves the ghetto, his appearance declines. By the last act, his hair reaches his chin; he later bears an unkempt beard. He loses weight, and his face grows red and sickly. This change in appearance, although seeming like a blatant detail, is integral in telling the audience of the state of Szpilman. As his appearance grows more poor, the audience can tell Szpilman is slowly losing his mind. He is slowly growing more desperate. He has less time to care for himself and only time to care about food, water, and shelter. His appearance signifies that, although not literally, Szpilman is essentially a prisoner of war, and his journey of survival is treacherous and takes a toll on his selfhood. Moreover, the setting of the film changes significantly. The film slowly loses color, similar to how Szpilman slowly changes appearance. The first residence in which Szpilman lives after the ghetto still contains greens, browns, and other hues.  By the last hour of the film, the setting is a very bleak gray. There is almost no color in the surroundings and even on the character’s faces. This, along with Szpilman’s appearance, is an obvious detail. However, the audience subconsciously absorbs vital information from the change in setting. The dull colors emulate the death and darkness surrounding Szpilman. It can also represent how close Szpilman is to death or losing his mind. As Szpilman becomes more hopeless and weak, the scene gets more bleak. An example of this is when he is opening the cucumbers, the scene is almost monotone with a bluish-gray. Thus, Szpilman’s appearance and the increasing dullness of the setting are both essential parts of the visual storytelling that crafts Szpilman’s story vividly.

Finally, visual storytelling crafts the deeply profound climax of the film. In the climax, Szpilman encounters a German soldier with the surname Hosenfeld. The soldier discovers Szpilman was a pianist. The soldier asks Szpilman to play a piece on a piano. Szpilman, delicately opening the piano, begins to play. Delicately at first, as he plays the beginning of Chopin’s Ballad in G minor. Gradually, Szpilman’s face fills with emotion and he plays more aggressively. He closes his eyes and almost attacks the piano as if he is pouring his emotions, sorrows, regrets, and pain into the instrument. Hosenfeld says nothing and only listens with an introspective face, seeming to contemplate his role as a Nazi. There is no color in this scene, except for a beaming light onto Szpilman’s playing hands, and a subtle bit of red in Szpilman’s face, and white light reflecting off his hair. Simply the raw emotion on Szpilman’s face, the fluidity and passion in his hands reveal the hopelessness, the sadness, the sorrow he has been feeling during the Holocaust, and the almost painful relief it brings him to pour it all out with Chopin on the piano. The subtle rim light on Szpilman’s reveals a subtle hope however, as if this is not the end for Szpilman because the world is recognizing his talents. This scene is argumentatively one of the most powerful in the film, and visual storytelling plays such an essential role in the emotion and cleverness of the scene. 

The Pianist is highly acclaimed for many reasons: the score, the actors, and the attention to historical detail. However, the visual storytelling creates such a unique, haunting tone and tells a striking and important narrative for the audience. With visual storytelling, Szpilman’s tale of survival is simply captivating, with his story of survival, the cruelty of the Nazis, and the horrors of the Holocaust all conveyed to the viewer through the actions, visible emotions, colors, and appearances of the characters and setting. The Pianist is a beautiful, horrifying movie, with beautiful and horrifying, deeply effective screenplay.

Works Cited

Polanski, Roman T., director. The Pianist. 2002. Canal+, 2002. Pluto TV, pluto.tv/us/on-demand/movies/64f8d4a8020c540013f3d88c.

“The Pianist (2002 Film).” Wikipedia, 6 July 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pianist_(2002_film)#:~:text=The%20piano%20piece%20heard%20at. Accessed 13 July 2024.