By choosing Korczak as a protagonist, Wajda “sought to reconcile Poles and Jews by demonstrating their compatibility in one character.” Moreover, Wajda intended Korczak to be a good-will gesture towards Polish Jewry.  Korczak, whose real name was Henryk Goldszmit, remains one of the rare wartime figures revered by Polish Gentiles and Jews alike.  To the former, he spoke and wrote in Polish, achieved international fame as an educator, and enjoyed a national following for his prewar radio show The Old Doctor.  To the latter, he had contemplated immigrating to Palestine, sheltered 200 Jewish orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto, and sacrificed his life by remaining with them instead of going into hiding.       

When Korczak premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990, it received a standing ovation from the audience, but a cold shoulder from several French reviewers. The latter castigated Wajda for minimizing Korczak’s Jewishness, exculpating the Poles of anti-Semitism, perpetuating Polish stereotypes of Jews, and sugarcoating the deportation of Korczak’s orphans by ending the movie with their train car decoupling, allowing them to disembark into a heavenly mist.  Never one to stifle his opinion about Polish anti-Semitism, Claude Lanzmann created a “scandal” at the screening of Korczak by walking out after its presentation and declaring, “You do not know how evil this is!”   

Viewing the movie 15 years later, I found it remarkably realistic in its black and white documentary-look that seamlessly segues several times into newsreel footage originally shot by German camera crews.  When Korzcak leaves the orphanage, he walks through overcrowded streets into dilapidated buildings populated by the dying, the dead, and the starving.  Wajda probes Korczak’s bifurcated Polish-Jewish identity, his incessant efforts to provide a normal existence for his orphans, the extremes of privilege and poverty in the ghetto, and the stoic march of Korczak and his wards to the deportation transport.  

The prologue reveals that Korczak possessed multiple allegiances. In his role as the “Old Doctor,” he advised his radio audience about compassionate childrearing. Korczak humbly confesses, “Me, I love children. This is not a sacrifice; the need is mine.”  Upon completion of his broadcast, Korczak learns that his program has been cancelled because it has become too controversial to permit a Jew to have his own show.  Korczak wonders if he had misled people by not using his Jewish name.  In a subsequent scene, two orphans debate whether Korczak is the world’s greatest Jew or the world’s greatest Pole. 

Rather than denying the extent of Polish anti-Semitism, Wajda presents several instances of it.  Korczak’s firing by the radio station establishes that anti-Jewish discrimination existed among Poles before the Germany invasion. Though some Polish critics wondered why Wajda included this incident, others recognized it as a protest against anti-Semitic elements within the Solidarity movement.  Before the outbreak of the war, Korczak escorts his orphans to the river for a swim.  Former students rebuke him for promoting harmonious relations between Jews and Poles and tell him that Poles have beaten them and smashed their windows. Korczak hoped resistance to German rule would unite Poles and Jews, but despaired that this would never happen.

Though Wajda shows instances of Polish sympathy for the Jews, he offsets these with vignettes about Polish abandonment or hatred of Jews.  Korczak’s Polish colleague Maryna Falska shelters a Jewish girl of “suitable appearance” and urges her long-time associate to go into hiding.  While Wajda does not cite every anti-Semitic incident recorded in Korczak’s diary, what he does include is more damning than Spielberg’s sparse references to Polish anti-Semitism in Schindler’s List.

Wajda’s portrayal of the ghetto’s Jewish Council and black marketers incensed some critics who charged that such characterizations confirmed Polish stereotypes of Jews collaborating with Germany or profiting from the suffering of their co-religionists. If directors should be more concerned about political correctness than historical accuracy, these criticisms might have merit, but anyone familiar with the history of the ghettos will not be shocked to see Jewish Councils following German orders and Jewish gangsters amassing wealth through smuggling. 

Wajda exhibits a genuine understanding of the terrible alternatives faced by Jewish leaders.  Korczak approaches Adam Czerniakow, the Chairman of Warsaw’s Jewish Council, to procure rations for his orphans.  Czerniakow summarizes the predicament the Jewish Council faced:  "The choice is not between good and evil, but of the lesser evil. ...I am fully aware of the fact that the majority have little chance of seeing the end of the war. I know the poor and the deported will die first. We will try to save as many as we can. Save the elite, save the children.”  Korczak denounces this strategy as a betrayal of Jewish solidarity, but accepts the food the Council donates.  He later witnesses the Germans beat Czerniakow when he refuses to sign the first deportation order. The real Korczak eulogized Czerniakow for fulfilling “his task of protecting the dignity of the Jews.”
     
Korczak had no compunctions about consorting with disreputable elements in the ghetto if he can raise money from them.  In the movie, he visits a notorious nightclub where Jewish racketeers congregated.  A boy from the orphanage censures Korczak later that evening for mingling with the “dregs” of Jewish society.  Korczak obstinately replies, “I will see the Devil himself to save my children.  I have no dignity. I have 200 children.” Wajda’s image of ghetto nightlife is not a malicious fabrication, but is based on passages from Korczak's diary.  
 
French critic Daniéle Heymann denounced the movie’s final scene for glossing over the wretched fate that awaited Korczak’s minions:  “And the doors swing open –a coda to a sleepy, disgusting dream on the edge of revisionism – and we see how the how the little victims, energetic and joyful, merge in slow-motion from the train of death.  Treblinka as the salvation of murdered Jewish children.  No!” 

Korczak biographer Betty Jean Lifton has suggested that Wajda had revived a Polish legend that the “Old Doctor” and his children were spared when “the carriage with the transport became miraculously unlinked from the train” to preserve their vision of Korczak as “indestructible.”  She felt that the charges leveled against the movie subverted Wajda’s intention for making it:  “Instead of stirring up Polish-Jewish antagonisms, we should rather be thankful for the sincere sympathy with which Wajda attempts to recreate this modern Jewish hero who died -like he lived – for his children.”

Indeed, the final scene follows an unforgettable shot of Korczak and his orphans waving a banner with a Star of David on one side and the emblem of his fictional hero King Matt on the other as they walk to the Umschlagplatz.  The ponderous beat of a dirge intensifies the impact of what has been perceived as a “mute protest” against Nazi genocide.  Indeed, it is one of the few scenes in the movie that has any background music.  The closing caption informing viewers that Korczak and his children were gassed at Treblinka destroys the illusion of a happy ending, as does the return of the dirge as the background music played over the closing credits. 
     
Korczak deserved more acclaim and exposure than it initially received.  It became the casualty of Jewish-Polish polemics, Claude Lanzmann’s vendetta against it, and the timing of its Cannes premier which coincided with a rash of Jewish grave desecrations in Carpentras.  Ironically, the movie received positive receptions in Germany and Israel, prompting the latter to mandate that it be shown as part of the country’s school curriculum.  The controversy surrounding the movie subsided by the late Nineties when the American and French Academies of Motion Pictures recognized Wajda’s cinematic career.  Nominating Wajda for the lifetime achievement Oscar, Steven Spielberg called Korczak “one of the most important European pictures about the Holocaust.”

The controversy surrounding Wajda’s Korczak did not end Polish efforts to improve relations with Jews after the fall of communism.  In accordance with Pope John Paul II’s denunciations of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the Bishops of Poland issued a pastoral letter in 1991 beseeching Jews to forgive Polish indifference towards, or complicity in, Germany’s wartime slaughter of Jews.  In 1997 the Jewish Historical Institute reported in 1997 that the textbooks commonly used in the nation’s classrooms either omitted, minimized, or distorted the role of Jews in Polish history.  In 2000 Poland signed the Stockholm Declaration obligating Polish public schools to teach about the Holocaust.

In the same year, the publication of Jan Gross’ book Neighbors challenged the presumption that Poles never instigated violence against Jews during the German occupation of their country. As might be expected, the Jedwabne revelation elicited a mixed reaction from Polish leaders and citizens. In the midst of the Jedwabne controversy, Poles hailed Roman Polanski’s decision to film The Pianist in Poland as an opportunity to revive the Polish movie industry which had been in a slump since the fall of the Soviet Union. 

Several factors fostered the expectation that the picture would enjoy international success: the popular fascination with Polanski’s notoriety, his taut directorial style, the influx of funding from British, French, and German studios which co-produced the picture, the multinational appeal of a film cast with international stars, and, above all, the compelling tale of a gifted classical musician who perseveres to play his instrument once again.  Moreover, Polanski’s survival as a boy hiding from the Germans in occupied Poland after being separated from his mother, who died at Auschwitz, and his father, who was incarcerated at Mauthausen, gave him excellent credentials to cinematically recreate Jewish life within and outside theWarsaw ghetto.  
       
The Pianist borrows liberally from familiar images from Nazi newsreel footage, wartime photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto, and previous documentaries and feature films. The DVD version of the film features a stunning sequence of crosscuts between actual movies and photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto and Polanski’s recreations of these scenes.  His shots of Jews carrying their belongings in suitcases or on carts, nude corpses strewn on the pavement, the bricking of the ghetto wall, German cameramen filming Jews herded into the ghetto, and Jews crossing the bridge connecting the two parts of the ghetto lend historical authenticity to Polanski’s representation of the ghetto

Polanski devotes many scenes to the deteriorating conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto and the varied Jewish responses to Nazi policies. The idyllic footage of prewar Warsaw precedes the bombardment of the city while Szpilman performs at a Polish radio station until an artillery shell explodes and topples him off his stool.  
After German troops march into the city, Szpilman earns his living playing piano in a café frequented by Jewish black-marketers and prostitutes who seem inured to the starving and dying Jews littering the streets outside the establishment.  Two of the profiteers request that Szpilman halt his performance to enable them to hear whether the sound of their gold coins clinking on the marble tabletop sounds right.  In his autobiography, Szpilman tersely observed, “I lost two illusions here: my beliefs in our general solidarity and in the musicality of the Jews.”       

Polanski combed Szpilman’s memoir for graphic incidents to visualize the ubiquitous danger and deprivation Jews confronted in the ghetto.  Audiences may have seen the Nazi newsreel of a Jewish boy frisked by German guards for concealed food that tumbles into a mound around his feet.  Polanski subjects them to witnessing a young smuggler caught by his feet and beaten so brutally by his captors on the Aryan side of the wall that he is dead by the time Szpilman pulls him over to the Jewish side.  Another haunting scene shows a character nicknamed the “grabber” trying to snatch a can of soup from a woman.  When it spills on the ground, he voraciously licks the liquid off the pavement.  The Szpilmans witness the Gestapo push an elderly man in a wheelchair over his balcony and execute the Jews who gather around his corpse.                       

Amid the anguish, panic, or resignation of Jews awaiting deportation at the Umschlagplatz, Polanski interjects his childhood memories into the story.  Determined to stay with his family, Szpilman is unexpectedly yanked out of line by a Jewish policeman who prevents him from joining them. In the memoir, Szpilman darts away as quickly as he can.  In Polanski’s case, he asked a Polish guard if he could fetch some food for the journey.  The guard warned him not to run, but to walk slowly so he wouldn’t attract attention.  Polanski retains Szpilman’s rescue by a Jewish policeman, but adds the advice from the Polish guard about not running.  Szpilman sobs as he walks through a boulevard covered with cadavers, furniture, suitcases, and falling feathers from ripped-open comforters and pillows.

True to Szpilman’s memoir, Polanski portrays Polish Gentiles as both friends and foes.  About to enter a restaurant with a Polish woman he is courting, Szpilman stops when he reads a sign barring Jews from dining there. Following the deportation of most of the Jews from the ghetto, a Polish couple from the underground arranges for Szpilman to hide in a vacant apartment in the Aryan sector of Warsaw.  When he accidentally knocks dishes off a cupboard shelf, the Polish woman in the adjacent apartment alerts her neighbors to the presence of the Jew fleeing the building. The Polish woman he had courted earlier in the film and her new husband locate another hiding place for Szpilman.  The Pole assigned to bring food to Szpilman absconds with the money he raised to aid the famed musician and fails to feed him frequently enough to stave off severe malnutrition.  Consequently, Szpilman contracts a severe case of jaundice and is nursed back to health by the Polish couple. 

Polanski refuses to romanticize either the Jewish or Polish resistance to the Germans.  By angling the camera down upon the action at street level and shooting through the curtains and windows of Szpilman’s hiding places, he reduces Szpilman and the audience to passive spectators of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the Polish Revolt of 1944.  This visual distancing diminishes these armed struggles of the heroic stature posterity has conferred upon them.  In comparison Jon Avnet’s Uprising (2001) glorifies Jewish resisters with close-up, straight-on, or low angle camera shots as they plan and mount their rebellion.

When the German troops crush the Polish Revolt, Szpilman is at the epicenter of their assault.  Suddenly, he must dodge the blasts from flamethrowers, bazookas, or machine guns that seem to divine his location although they are fired at Polish resisters. Staying one step ahead of spectacular explosions creates a segment that looks and feels more like an action movie.  Polanski changes the tone of The Pianist by tracking Szpilman’s perilous close calls into the cavernous ruins of the ghetto.  Polanski replicated this barren landscape by razing an abandoned Soviet army base in the former East Germany.

The upbeat ending of The Pianist undercuts the gloomy mood pervading the rest of the movie. When Szpilman clumsily tries to open a can of pickles, the container falls from of his hands and rolls to the feet of an on-looking Wehrmacht Captain.  In a curt exchange, the German officer whose name was Wilm Hosenfeld learns that the scraggly scavenger had been a pianist before the war.  He asks him to play something on a piano in the next room.  Szpilman plays a Chopin nocturne.  His bony fingers stiffly strike the keys at first, but as they regain dexterity, the music flows expressively with the camera alternating between close-ups of Szpilman’s hands and the transfigured faces of the two men.  Instead of arresting him, the Captain brings him bread and jam.  Retreating with his troops, the Captain makes one final gesture of kindness by giving Szpilman his coat.

Wearing a Wehrmacht coat, Szpilman narrowly escapes execution by Russian soldiers who at first mistake him for a German soldier. Interned by the Russians, Hosenfeld tries to contact Szpilman to vouch for his act of mercy. The closing scene juxtaposes Szpilman’s resumption of his musical career with a postscript that Hosenfeld died in Soviet captivity.  The movie avoids stereotyping either Jews or Poles.  Indeed, when stopped by Russian soldiers, Szpilman identifies himself as a Pole in both the memoir and the film.

Most American reviews of The Pianist applauded its cinematography, detachment, even-handedness, and fine performances.  Nevertheless, echoes of the Polish-Jewish animosities reawakened by the Jedwabne controversy could be heard in the negative reviews the film received. 

Although appreciative of the film’s visual representation of the “brutality and inhumanity inside the ghetto,” novelist Thane Rosenbaum labeled the film “a valentine to Polanski’s Poland.”  He contended that the gratitude Polanski and Szpilman felt towards their Polish rescuers prompted both men to regard Poles “only as freedom fighters” rather than as “complicit or indifferent to the fate of their Jewish neighbors.”  Thus, they were oblivious to the “anti-Semitic attitudes that the vast majority of Poles had toward Jews. 

Another critic accused Polanski of “blowtorching” the acrimonious history of Polish Jewish relations.  Omer Bartov has surmised that the popularity of the film in Poland was due to its surfeit of “good Poles” who helped Szpilman and to his lack of any Jewish affiliation beyond that of ancestry.