Andrzej Wajda’s film The Promised Land became an instant classic of Polish cinema after its release in 1975. It received an Oscar nomination in the category for best foreign-language film, and cinema historians still name it as one of the best Polish movies of all time. It is also exceptional in Wajda’s wider oeuvre as the only film he made about capitalism and money.
In The Promised Land, Wajda is concerned primarily with the challenges that a new capitalist and commercial civilization creates for the dominant form of Polish culture, with its values stemming from the ethos of the Polish nobility. At the same time, we can also read the film as a coded commentary on Poland during the 1970s.
The Promised Land is set in the mid-1880s in the town of Łódź. Known as the “Polish Manchester,” Łódź was the main industrial center in the part of Poland that was under tsarist rule. Its economy was based on textile production for the vast Russian market.
Andrzej Wajda’s film The Promised Land became an instant classic of Polish cinema after its release in 1975.
In 1820, Łódź was still a small town with a population of about eight hundred people. In the space of just sixty years, it filled with factories, warehouses, banks, and credit unions. There were lavish palaces for its titans of industry and slums for its working class.
Three friends — Maks Baum, Karol Borowiecki, and Moryc Welt — dream about getting their own share of Łódź’s industrial economy. In one of the first scenes, we can see them on a misty morning, just after dawn.
They’re strolling through woodland, counting their steps — this is the place where they’re going to build their factory. None of them has any capital for the investment, but all three have the determination, ingenuity, and ruthlessness necessary to fulfill their dream.
Maks is an engineer, son of a German industrialist who failed to mechanize production in his handloom factory and was driven out of business. Moryc…
Auteur: Jakub Majmurek
