The Promised Land

A film set in Łódź at the end of the nineteenth century. The city is growing on textiles. Factory chimneys cover the horizon, workers from the villages live in sheds, and money changes hands daily. Three friends decide to build a factory. Karol is the son of a Polish landed family, Maks is German, Moryc is Jewish; none of them has capital. From there the film is a story about raising money. A rumour on the exchange, a loan, a marriage negotiation and a sold estate. Karol leaves his fiancée and prepares to marry a rich manufacturer's daughter. At the same time he is continuing an affair with another manufacturer's wife. What the narrative is interested in is not industry but cost: the film presents progress not as an achievement but as a process in which people consume each other, and clears nobody. The factory scenes are hard. A worker is caught in a machine, compensation is discussed, and the figure is bargained over. A fire breaks out, and the question of insurance opens the lock of the narrative. The image is crowded and dirty. The camera moves at the same speed inside the factories, in ballrooms and in the street. The source is a novel by Władysław Reymont, who later won the Nobel Prize. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The director re-edited it years later and removed some scenes; there is a marked difference between the two versions. Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak and Andrzej Seweryn are in the cast. Andrzej Wajda directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes crowded period epics and stories about class. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic character; almost everyone here acts out of interest and the running time is long.