The Pianist

Corrected entry: When Szpilman is walking down a sidewalk, he passes two German soldiers. One turns and addresses Szpilman as "Sie". Then he says, "Was machen Sie?" German soldiers never addressed Jews with the polite form of you (Sie), they always used the informal "du". The officer changes to "du" when he tells him to walk in the gutter.

Correction: Yes but they probably wouldn't have used 'du' either. Du is used very informally, when either talking to children or close friends.it's likely that when the Nazis addressed the 'enemy', they simply would have used the command form if commanding ie: "Komm hier" rather than "Kommen Sie hier". If asking a question, however, I would have thought using the "sie" form would have been used, simply because "du" is too friendly.

Corrected entry: When Szpilman escapes from the hospital because the German soldiers are burning the building with flamthrower, he open the window twice and the window changes between shots.

Dr Wilson

Correction: Szpilman actually opens two separate sets of windows. The first is a set of cloudy windows, the second a set of clear windows. The first camera angle is looking from the side as he opens the first set, then it moves behind Szpilman as he opens the next set. If you look closely, you can see the cloudy windows continue to swing after the camera changes.

Corrected entry: When Wladek is on the bus, he starts drumming his fingers on the barrier between him and some officers. Notice how long and skinny his fingers are. However, whenever he starts playing the piano, his fingers are short and stubby. It is obviously someone else playing.

Correction: Adrien Brody did quite a bit of his own playing on the piano, and the man who did the rest is a professional pianist, and has long skinny fingers just like Brody does. At no point in time do the fingers appear short and stubby.

Corrected entry: In reference to the scene where the Nazis on the balcony dump the old man from his wheelchair onto the street, they didn't drop the old man WITH the chair - just the old man. Two scenes later, the old man is shown dead on the street ON TOP of the wheelchair.

Correction: The Nazis dump the man WITH the weelchair.

Corrected entry: There is a scene where an old man in a wheelchair is thrown out of a window and the rest of his family is forced to run away in the street, only to be gunned down by the German soldiers. In the last shot, the German soldiers are driving away, and you can see one of the people who is suppose do be lying dead on the street slightly move out of the way of the car (to avoid being actually run over).

Correction: Given that the truck runs over one person who is obviously still alive, given that he screams, it's possible that not everyone the Germans shot was killed right away.

Krista

Factual error: In the scene where the Germans are bombing the wall, the rebels are hiding behind. You can see that the bricks which came out of the wall because of the bombing are lying on the "non-Jewish" part of the wall and not on the ghetto side as it should be.

More mistakes in The Pianist

Wladyslaw Szpilman: They bombed us, we're off the air.
Henryk Szpilman: Warsaw's not the only radio station.

More quotes from The Pianist

Trivia: When director Roman Polanski won the Oscar for "Best Director" during the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony, he did not attend because of his statutory rape conviction in 1977. If he returns to the United States, Polanski will be immediately arrested once he steps into American soil. On late 2003, actor Harrison Ford presented the Oscar that Polanski won in March during the Deauville Film Festival in France.

megamii

More trivia for The Pianist

Question: I want to know how the scene with the Nazis dumping the man in the wheelchair off the balcony was done. How did the man/stuntman manage to survive this fall?

ChitownGal

Chosen answer: In the scene, we see the old man being lifted in his wheelchair. Then, there is a cut-away to the family watching from across the street. Then we see someone being dumped from the chair and falling, but we never see him hit the ground. My guess from watching the scene is that the stunt person fell into a cushion which was removed in post-production. Generally, when confronted with a question such as this, I like to refer it to someone who would be in the know - in this case, the stunt team on the film. I looked up that team on IMDb.com, and searched for the individuals on Facebook. Of the twenty or so stunt people and coordinators, I could only find three with unique profiles that made me think I might have the correct individuals: Janusz Kadlubowski, Stella Kuczynska and Zbigniew Modej. I posed your question to them. However, given that I am not connected on Facebook to any of them, I have no idea if or when they would see my message and respond. I will update this answer if I receive further information.

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