“The Pianist” movie begins in Warsaw, Poland in September, 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, very first introducing Wladyslaw (Wladek) Szpilman, who works as a pianist for the regional radio.
The Polish Army has actually been defeated in 3 weeks by the German Army and Szpilman’s radio station is bombed while he plays live on the air. While evacuating the building he finds a pal of his who introduces him to his sibling, Dorota. Szpilman is instantly drawn in to her.
Wladyslaw returns home to discover his parents and his brother and two sis, packing to leave Poland. The family goes over the possibility of leaving Poland successfully and they choose to remain. That night, they listen to the BBC and hear that Britain and France have actually stated war on Germany. The household commemorates, believing the war will end quickly once the Allies have the ability to engage Germany.
Conditions for Jews in Warsaw rapidly deteriorate. Wladek meets Dorota, who accompanies him around Warsaw to find out of the injustice Jewish people need to deal with under the brand-new Nazi program. Once friendly to them now won’t permit their patronage, companies that were. Wladek’s father is roughly prohibited to stroll on the walkway in the city by two German officers; when he begins to object, among the officers strikes him in the face. The household soon needs to relocate to the Jewish ghetto developed by Nazi guideline. The Holocaust is beginning, and the family, though well-to-do before the war, is lowered to subsistence level, although they are still much better off than much of their fellow Jews in the overcrowded, starving, disease-ridden ghetto.
Wladyslaw takes a job playing piano at a dining establishment in the ghetto, declining a deal from a family friend to work for the Jewish Police, and the family makes it through, however living conditions in the ghetto continue to intensify and ratings of Jews die every day from disease, starvation, and random acts of violence by German soldiers. One night the household sees the SS march into a home throughout the street and jail a family. Since he is restricted to the ss and a wheelchair officers throw him over the terrace to his death, the eldest male is unable to stand when purchased. The other member of the family are gunned down in the street and run over by the SS truck if they endured.
By 1942, the aged dad must make an application for working documents through a pal of Wladek’s, so that he can take a task in a German clothier. The day comes when the household is picked to be shipped to their deaths at the Treblinka concentration camp. Henryk and Halina are picked and removed and the rest of the household is sent to the Umschlagplatz to wait for transportation. They are later reunited. As the household sits under the blazing sun with numerous other Jews awaiting the trains, the daddy utilizes the household’s last 20 zlotys to purchase a piece of candy from a boy (who apparently isn’t familiar with his own approaching doom). Each member of the family consumes a small morsel of candy, their last meal together.
As they are going to the trains, Wladyslaw is suddenly pulled from the lines by Itzak Heller, a Jewish man working as an authorities guard. Wladyslaw views the rest of his household board the train, never ever to be seen again. He hides for a few days in the coffee shop he played piano in with his old manager there. He later blends in with the 10 percent approximately of the Jews that the Nazis kept alive in the ghetto to utilize for servant labor, taking down the brick walls restoring and separating the ghetto home houses for new, non-Jewish citizens. He is put to work, under grueling, violent conditions, reconstructing a bombed-out building. He believes he sees an old buddy Janina Godlewska (a vocalist), however she passes quickly. He discovers that a few of the Jews are planning an uprising, and assists them by smuggling weapons into the ghetto. While bring bricks, he drops a load of them, is viciously whipped by an SS officer and is given a new task providing the employees with structure products. He likewise helps smuggle guns in potato sacks– the weapons will be offered to the resistance fighters on the other side of the wall for the uprising. At one point, he is almost caught by a German officer, who thinks that Wladek is concealing something in a sack of beans. After this close call, he chooses he must leave and take his possibilities in the larger city. With the assistance of friend, Majorek (who was the friend that got his dad working papers a few years prior to), he discovers and escapes Janina and her partner.
They take Wladyslaw to his caretaker Gebczynski (a guy with the Polish resistance), who hides him for one night. The next day Gebczynski takes him to a vacant home near the ghetto wall, where he can live forever on smuggled food; he needs to be quiet nevertheless, because several non-Jews also live in the structure and believe the house is empty. There, Wladek views part of the Jewish Ghetto Uprising of April-May 1943, for which he helped smuggle the weapons, and sees weeks later as the uprising is finally crushed and its participants eliminated. Later, Gebczynski wishes to move Wladek as the Nazis have actually discovered the weapons of the Polish resistance, requiring Gebczynski to be on the run likewise. Gebczynski states it’s only a matter of time before the Nazis find the apartment Wladek is hiding in. Wladek chooses to remain put, feeling more secure where he is. His friend gives him an address to go to in case of an emergency, and leaves, gravely warning Wladek not to be caught alive by the Nazis. Wladyslaw remains in the apartment a couple of more months up until he has an accident, breaking some dishes. The noise has blown his cover, and he has to scoot out of the structure, being chased by a mad German lady who thinks him of being Jewish.
Wladek goes to the emergency address he was given, where he surprisingly fulfills Dorota, who is now wed, pregnant, and her brother dead. Dorota and her other half conceal Wladek in another uninhabited home, where there is a piano that his silence keeps him from playing, but his new caretaker, Szalas, is extremely slack about smuggling in food, and Wladyslaw once again faces hunger, and at one point practically dies of jaundice. Dorota and her other half visit him, discovering him gravely ill. They report that Szalas had been collecting cash from unwitting and generous donors and had swiped all of it, leaving Wladek to die in seclusion.
Wladek recuperates in time to see the larger 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Poles tried to retake control of their city. Quickly the Germans begin assaulting the structure and he has to run away. The Poles had actually expected the advancing Soviet Red Army to help them, however the Russians did not come, rather permitting the Germans to put down the revolt, and drive the entire staying population of Warsaw out of the city. Wladyslaw hides in the abandoned health center that had been across the street from his 2nd hideout. The Germans had actually already decided to burn Warsaw to ashes, so Wladyslaw flees the hospital and leaps back over the wall into the ghetto, now a deserted, desolate wasteland of bricks and debris.
He remains there, searching through burned-out structures to discover something to eat, and continues to hide, up until one night a Nazi officer, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, discovers him. To show to Hosenfeld that he is a pianist, he plays a mournful and brief rendition of Chopin’s “Ballade in G Minor”, the first time he has played because he worked in the Jewish ghetto years before.
Hosenfeld, moved by Szpilman’s playing, assists him make it through, allowing him to continue concealing in the attic even after the home is developed as the Captain’s head office. When the Russian army draws closer to Warsaw, hosenfeld ultimately abandons the house with his staff. Hosenfeld gives Wladek a last parcel of food and his topcoat. He asks Wladek his surname, which sounds precisely like “spielmann”, the German word for pianist. Hosenfeld promises to listen for Wladek on the radio. Hosenfeld likewise tells him that he only needs to endure for a couple of more days; the Russian army will liberate Warsaw soon. Soon later, Wladyslaw sees Polish partisans, and, gotten rid of with delight, goes outside to satisfy his compatriots. Seeing his coat provided to him by Hosenfeld, they believe he is a German and try to eliminate him, prior to he can encourage them he is Polish.
In the Spring, newly released Poles walk past an improvised Russian prisoner of war camp, and Hosenfeld is amongst the detainees. The Poles toss insults at the Germans through the fence, however when Hosenfeld hears that a person of the Poles is an artist, he goes to the fence and tells him that he assisted Wladyslaw, and asks him to ask Wladyslaw to return the favor, before a Russian soldier throws him pull back on the ground. The Polish artist does certainly bring Wladyslaw back to the website to petition the Russians, but they have left without a trace by the time he arrives. Wladyslaw is not able to help Hosenfeld, however he returns to playing piano for the radio station.
Closing title cards tell us that Hosenfeld died in a Soviet gulag in 1952. Wladyslaw lived to be an old male, dying in Poland in 2000 at the age of 88. The cards are intercut with footage of Wladek triumphantly playing Chopin’s Grand Polonaise Brilliante in performance with a complete orchestra accompanying him.