Director: Andrzej Wajda
Country: Poland
Award: none
Movement: none
The Promised Land - a 1974 Polish historical and social film directed and written by Andrzej Wajda , based on the novel of the same title by Władysław Reymont . The film's action takes place in industrial Łódź at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, in which three partners - Polish landowner Karol Borowiecki ( Daniel Olbrychski ), German industrialist Maks Baum ( Andrzej Seweryn ) and Jewish merchant Moryc Welt ( Wojciech Pszoniak ) - are trying to raise funds to build their own factory in order to make a profit in the textile industry. Wajda made significant changes to the literary original. The director retained the demonic portrait of industrial Łódź from Reymont's novel, but also softened the anti-Semitic message of the literary original. This did not protect the film Promised Land from criticism from American Jews, who did not allow the film to be distributed in cinemas in New York and Los Angeles . At the same time, Wajda's film did not escape criticism in Poland, where the director was accused of significantly changing the content and ending of the novel and showing the main character in a negative light. However, later analyses of the film proved that the film was a criticism not so much of a specific nationality, but of the destructive power of money as an incentive for capitalist transformation in Polish lands. Promised Land , due to its expressive and turpistic tone, was considered by some critics to be a film masterpiece. The status of Wajda's film was confirmed by the 2015 plebiscite of the Cinematography Museum in Łódź , in which The Promised Land took first place on the list of the best Polish films of all time.
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