Countries & Movies: France

 French cinema is represented in the Golden Thousand by 86 movies. Topping this list is Roman Polanski's war drama "The Pianist".

In my school years, when I was in grade 5-6, the song "Portrait by Pablo Picasso" was wildly popular with us. At all school evenings it sounded "Again I have a dream, One and the same dream ..." Who wants to remember this song - you can watch this clip. To be honest, then we did not think about the authorship of this song and its first performer. Much later, I found out that the first performer of this song was the Polish pop star Irena Santor. The original performance of this song is here. And only in old age I learned that the author of this song is Władysław Szpilman. The one about which the film "The Pianist" by Roman Polanski was filmed.

The literary basis for the script for the film "The Pianist" was the memoirs of Władysław Szpilman, edited by Jerzy Waldorff and published in Poland in 1946 in the form of the book "Śmierć miasta (The Death of the City)". The composer's own memoirs can be found here.

Roman Polanski turned to the memoirs of Władysław Szpilman for a reason: he himself had to endure during the war much of what Shpilman had to do. Perhaps that is why Andrzej Wajda, who intended to film Szpilman's memories, ceded this right to Roman Polanski.

16 film companies representing 5 countries took part in the creation of the film. But the main role among these companies fell to the share of the French film company R.P. Productions, on the basis of which the decision was made to classify the film "The Pianist" as a work of French cinema.

The premiere of Roman Polanski's film "The Pianist" took place on May 24, 2002 at the Cannes International Film Festival. The festival's jury, chaired by David Lynch, awarded Roman Polanski's film the Palme d'Or. In the same 2002 the film "The Pianist" and its director were nominated for the European Film Awards in the nominations for Best European Film and Best European Director, but lost in both nominations to Pedro Almodovar's "Hable con ella (Talk to Her)".

In 2003, "The Pianist" continued its triumphal march through the festival venues around the world. True, at first the film by Roman Polanski suffered a relative failure in the struggle for the Golden Globe. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association preferred Stephen Daldry's "The Hours" to this film. In the company of relative losers, along with "The Pianist" were, in particular, the "Gangs of New York" by Martin Scorsese and "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" by Peter Jackson. But the American Film Academy nominated "The Pianist" in 7 categories and recognized him as the winner in 3 of them, including the Best Director nomination. For natural reasons (prosecution) Roman Polanski could not receive a gold statuette at the ceremony. This was done by his friend Harrison Ford, who later brought this award to Europe. But the nomination for Best Film "The Pianist" lost to the musical "Chicago" by Martin Richards. Once again, Polanski's film found itself in the company of "Gangs of New York and "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", as well as the aforementioned film "The Hours".

In the same year 2003, "The Pianist" received 7 nominations for the British BAFTA Award and won two of them, including the most important ones - Best Film and Best Director. Then "The Pianist" received 10 nominations for the French Cesar Award and won seven of them, including the most important ones: Best Film and Best Director. It is interesting that "The Pianist" became the first film in the history of this award in which not a single word is spoken in French. Then the film of Roman Polanski received the David di Donatello Award from the Italian Film Academy as the Best Foreign Film, ahead of the mentioned films "Chicago", "The Hours", as well as the picture of Pedro Almodovar "Talk to her" in the dispute for this award. And back in 2003, "The Pianist" received the Spanish Goya Award in the Best European Film category. It goes without saying that the Polish Film Academy nominated Roman Polanski's film in 13 categories and awarded the victory in 10 of them, including the most important ones.

In 2004, the victories of "The Pianist" continued. The Japanese Film Academy awarded him its award in the Best Foreign Film category, giving him its preference over the same "The Hours", "Chicago" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers". The jury of the Russian film festival "Golden Eagle" awarded the film of Roman Polanski its prize, preferring "The Pianist" to the films "Dogville" by Lars von Trier and "Goodbye, Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker.

As for the reviews of professional film critics, the overwhelming majority of them were benevolent, although not absolutely enthusiastic. For example, Roger Ebert rated the film three and a half stars out of 4 possible. In his review, Ebert noted that "This is not a thriller, and avoids any temptation to crank up suspense or sentiment; it is the pianist's witness to what he saw and what happened to him. That he survived was not a victory when all whom he loved died;" In addition, Ebert drew attention to the fact that "His autobiography was published soon after the war, but was suppressed by Communist authorities because it did not hew to the party line (some Jews were flawed and a German was kind). Republished in the 1990s, it caught Polanski's attention and resulted in this film, which refuses to turn Szpilman's survival into a triumph and records it primarily as the story of a witness who was there, saw, and remembers."   By the way, the "good German" - Hauptmann Wilhelm Hosenfeld, who helped Władysław Szpilman, died in a Soviet prisoner of war camp in 1952.

Another authoritative American film critic James Berardinelli also rated the film three and a half stars out of 4 and wrote in his review: "To lump The Pianist in with all of the other Holocaust stories brought to the screen does a great disservice to this powerful, compelling motion picture. Crafted without a whiff of melodrama, this motion picture takes a steady, unflinching look at the plight of Jews in Warsaw during the years when Poland was occupied by the Nazis. For director Roman Polanski, this represents his most effective film in nearly three decades. Not since 1974's Chinatown has Polanski reached such dramatic heights."  And Roman Polanski himself considers "The Pianist" his best and most favorite film.

One of the most authoritative Russian film critics, Sergey Kudryavtsev, rated the film "The Pianist" with 8.5 points on a 10-point system, which can be considered a manifestation of solidarity with the assessments of Ebert and Berardinelli. In his review, Kudryavtsev noted: "To some, this movie of Roman Polanski seems cold and dispassionate, although these definitions are unfair. Rather, we can say that his picture is as objective as a person who has personally experienced the horrors of war and the Holocaust can be non-subjective. And this applies not only to the main character, the Polish musician Władysław Szpilman, who miraculously managed to survive in a terrible era and died at the age of 88 on the eve of the filming of "The Pianist" based on his memoirs. After all, Roman Polanski is perhaps the first of the world-class directors who only at the end of the seventh decade of his life decided to turn to what he knew firsthand and experienced, as they say, on his own skin....It is sometimes difficult and almost impossible to remain a tenant in this world if a person did not have a different mission, which is for him in creativity. This is how a person lives. So Roman Polanski made a film not about the "art of survival", but about survival through art. In the end, fate miraculously preserved him himself in order to maximize this talent in the field of cinema." 

But, as it has been repeatedly emphasized, for FilmGourmand, the opinion of the audience, not the film critics, is decisive. After all, cinema is made for the audience, not for critics. Critics only earn money from it. The evaluation of Roman Polanski's film "The Pianist" by moviegoers is characterized by the following figures. First, with a total cost of $ 45 million for the production and marketing of the picture, its box office exceeded $ 120 million. The Russian film distribution also contributed its "five kopecks", or rather $ 178,606, to these fees. Of course! This is not the "Pledge This!", which collected more than 8 times more in Russia than "The Pianist"! Bravo to the Russian film distribution!

Secondly, 83% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave Roman Polanski's film ratings from 8 to 10. And 25% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten".

With that said, the rating of Roman Polanski's film "The Pianist" according to FilmGourmand was 11,482, and thanks to this, it took 2nd place in the Golden Thousand.