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 a few scenes, you can see street signs with inscriptions in Polish, for example "Ulica Lubanski" (Lubanski's Street). In fact, because Polish language retained the Old Slavic case-system with seven cases for nouns, the inscription should be "Ulica Lubanskiego" ('Lubanski' is a nominative noun, and 'Lubanskiego' is a genitive/possessive case).

More mistakes in The Pianist

Feather Woman: Excuse me, have you seen my husband, Izaak Szerman? A tall, a tall handsome man, with a little grey beard. No? Oh, excuse me. Goodbye, sleep well. But if you see him, write to me, yes? Izaak Szerman.

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Trivia: Adrian Brody insisted on learning to play the piano himself because he detested the idea of him being in a long shot pretending to play the instrument and then the camera showing someone else's hands on a close up shot actually playing. He said he hated that, not just for him, but on any other film that had such a scene. So he went and took lessons, practicing for hours on end.

Allister Cooper, 2011

More trivia for The Pianist

Question: Why does the narrator have to move to new hiding places?

Answer: In the first hideout, neighbors discovered Szpilman, forcing him to flee. His next hiding place was damaged in a bombing. He then moved from location to location finding shelter and scavenging food wherever he could until the sympathetic German officer hid him in the attic.

raywest

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