The Pianist: Intertextual Symbolism In The Pianist

Improved Essays
Register to read the introduction… It is dark and he is trying to open a can of Polish pickles he has found in the house. The can falls on the floor and a German Captain, standing at the bottom of the stairs, encounters him. The Captain asks several questions from which he learns that Szpilman is a pianist. He asks Szpilman to play something on the piano which is in a room nearby.

This film presents many intertextual elements:

The film is intertextual in itself as it is based on the book “The Pianist”.
Films and documentaries about the holocaust.
Jesus Christ’s appearance: Szpilman looks like Jesus in the Passion after the ordeal he has gone through.
My struggle by Hitler: The German Captain fits the characteristics of the ideal German: blond, tall, with blue eyes, dressed in impeccable clothes.
The character’s name is a homophone of Spielman, which in German means player.
Music: Chopin’s Ballad N° 1

Symbols

The boots: indexical of military force and power
The eagle on the Captain’s jacket: symbolic of power. Big wings embrace and dominate
…show more content…
The captain is two steps above the floor.
When the Captain and the Pianist pass through the door, there is no physical contact between them, even though the passage is narrow. They are at the same level. The German doesn’t look down on the pianist as he did when they just met. Both the characters and the background deep focus. In this way we are introduced to the piano which is the core of the scene
There are very expensive pieces of furniture.
While the German soldier is listening to the pianist playing, he looks at him from above, standing by the piano. Then he sits down and listens. He is at the same level as the pianist again.
The cap and coat of the captain are on the piano as well as the can.

Illumination:

Dark, only some beams of artificial light enter through the window. The German is better lit.
The pianist hands are always better illuminated than his body. While he plays, there is a strong beam of light which illuminates his head and hands.

Colours

Dark: grey, blue, black for the

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    James Weldon Johnson’s brief novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, testifies to a success that would be nonexistent were it not for learning from the oppression he faces. As slavery ended, white supremacy rises. Many Blacks moved in significant numbers to urban centers in the North, namely New York’s Harlem. For the Blacks to feel secure, they lived together in groups, thus forming Black neighborhoods. Out of these towns and era came many art influencers, such as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston.…

    • 1338 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Symbolism Compared and Contrasted A book. A piece of bread. An accordion. Three entirely different objects, used for entirely different purposes. Yet, in context to The Book Thief written by Markus Zusak, the entities accommodate a manifold of symbolic meanings in between the pages, keys, and crumb.…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Pianist Sparknotes

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In The Pianist begins in Warsaw, Poland at the beginning of the Second World War,first introducing Wladyslaw (Wladek) Szpilman, who works as a pianist for the local radio. The Polish Army has been defeated in three 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 friend of his who introduces him to his sister, Dorota. Szpilman is immediately attracted to her. Wladyslaw returns home to find his parents and his brother and two sisters, packing to leave Poland.…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    If popular music is a reflection of society then Irving Berlin’s music is no exception (Martindale 274). His music was the soundtrack for much of the twentieth century: it went to war with the soldiers during two World Wars; it brought hope and inspiration to the entire country during the Great Depression, and celebrated the American way of life (Martindale 274). Israel Baline was born on May 11, 1888, in Temun, Russian Siberia. When Israel was only four years old, for fear of persecution from the Czarist government the Balines fled Russia and settled penniless, in New York’s Lower East Side (Denison 12). Nine years after moving to America, Moses Baline, his father passed away.…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    James Baldwin wrote, “This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life the order which is art.” He does create art out of the disorder of life in his short story “Sonny’s Blues.” The stories main themes are suffering, racism, and artistic expression. The suffering of Sonny who was addicted to drugs, and feels like his brother does not understand him. The suffering of black people in America because of racism, and how creating art is an outlet to take anguish and turn it into magnificence.…

    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper vs. The Story of an Hour “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are very similar with the character, being a trapped woman who craves freedom from her authoritative husband, and theme of the women finding contentment within herself to escape her husband to become a strong and independent women. In both stories the women were described to be unequal with their husbands. During the time these two short stories were written, the early 1900’s, women were seen to be fragile and weak in need of a strong authoritative husbands to protect them. However, the two women described in the stories are going through life changing events which they exhibited in their own…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Holocaust against the Jewish, based on two different memoir survival of Eliezer Wiesel, who write the book of night, and Wladyslaw Szpilman who write The pianist. In both memoir you can see the similitude about the Persecution they suffer during the holocaust, when they was stripped from their homes and relocate at the ghettos for the German soldiers, the families continue together until this moment, they keep the faith this nightmare will finish any sooner. Little by little they was losing their right to speak, to talk, to walk in the streets. In some point the German start moving the Jewish to the Concentration Camp, where they putting to work for the German, the families start getting separate as soon they arrive to this concentration…

    • 1066 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Few novels are as powerful as stories about characters coming of age. Whether they're learning hard truths about loss and prejudice or finding out what it really means to grow up and be independent, going from boyhood to manhood, the kids in these books are the kind of memorable characters you, as an adolescent, can relate to. Love, anger, sadness, lust and arrogance. Classic teenager traits while growing up. Am I right?…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The window in which she gazes at is the newfound freedom with which she is presented. While she looks as the window, Chopin inserts explicit language to describe Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts, “’ Free, free, free!’” Mrs. Mallard is no longer the woman “afflicted with a heart trouble,” but “a goddess of victory.” A situational irony comes to place when Mrs. Mallard does not react to her husband’s death in the way women are normally perceived to react. This irony reveals Mrs. Mallard’s desperation for freedom; she was content with her husband’s death if it meant regaining her freedom.…

    • 797 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In his emotive lieder In der Frühe, Hugo Wolf utilizes key center discrepancies between piano accompaniment and the vocal line, lack of clear cadential motion, and quick-tempered movements through various tonal centers for the purpose of demonstrating the emotional complexity of a lost man struggling to find purposefulness in his daily life. Throughout his lieder, Wolf declares a key clearly with the left hand of the piano outlining the tonic triad; however, as soon as the vocal line enters, the melodic line heavily centers the dominant of the key. This is displayed as early as the first measure. Here we see the piano introduce the piece in d minor with a D pedal bass that sustains through until the first shift to a new key center.…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Kate Chopin uses characterization to help guide the readers through understanding the changes occurring throughout, “The Story of an Hour”. It is through her use of round/dynamic and flat/static characters we as readers are able to relate to what Ms. Mallard is going through without having to have experienced this situation ourselves. In this story we meet a young woman, Ms. Mallard, her sister, Josephine, her brothers close friend, Richard, and her husband, Brently Mallard. In the very beginning of the story Ms. Mallard is given some truly tragic news. She learns that her husband Brently has been killed in a tragic accident.…

    • 1282 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Ghosts In The Piano Lesson

    • 1260 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Concept of Ghosts as Portrayed in The Piano Lesson The Piano Lesson, a play written by August Wilson, portrays a family that has been living within the presence of various ghosts and spirits. The play hones in on the Charles family living in Pittsburgh during the depression. Doaker, Berniece and Maretha are surprised with a visit from Bernice’s brother Boy Willie and his partner Lymon. In the house which Berniece, Doaker and Maretha live, there is a piano; a family heirloom that has carvings of ancestors carefully engraved in the wood. Boy Willie is determined to sell the piano, at least his portion of it, in order to purchase a property that his family’s long ago ancestors were once slaves on.…

    • 1260 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Fanfare for the Common Man” was composed by American composer Aaron Copland and perform by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under conductor Eugene Goossens. The style of music is Nationalistic music. The melody played by the trumpet and other brass instrument played harmony. The rhythm was sharply detached and it has a steady, slow beat, but at the middle it speeds up and shifts into a smooth. At first the melody is low with all of the brass instruments mixed together, but later when more instruments get blended it gets both louder and the melody gets higher.…

    • 549 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Character Analysis of Mrs. Mallard By analyzing The Story of an Hour, Chopin employs several techniques in her writing to effectively characterize the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard. One can perceive Mrs. Mallard in a variety of perspectives due to the deliberate planning of characterization that allow the reader to identify with her, employing different writing techniques in the plot to create symbolic meanings that indirectly give the reader a sense of who she is becoming, and by incorporating the notion of liminality. These elements help to “shape” Mrs. Mallard’s personality and allow the reader to comprehend Chopin’s reasoning for portraying Mrs. Mallard in that specific manner. Chopin’s thoughtful formation of Mrs. Mallard help the reader…

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction One of the most remarkable composers of the nineteenth century, Chopin composed exclusively for the piano and his music is innovative with a particular repertoire of technical and expressive devices. His musical style can be described as unique because of his variety and complexity of compositional techniques. The Piano Sonata Op.35 No.2 is an illustration of Chopin’s musical style where he explores several elements found in the nineteenth century music such as the “idea of artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity. Furthermore, the nineteenth century music was a time of individualism and intense feelings where the literary movement, industrialization, and nationalism influenced composers’ musical creativity.”…

    • 1724 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays