The Promised Land Is One of the Great Films About Capitalism
Fifty years ago, Polish director Andrzej Wajda produced one of the most astonishing films about the rise of capitalism ever made. The Promised Land is an unforgettable picture of early industrial exploitation that still feels contemporary.
You won’t find a better film about the rise of industrial capitalism, bringing all of its transformative energy and all of its exploitative ruthlessness to life on screen, than Andrzej Wajda’s The Promised Land, which turned 50 this year. (Klassiki)
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.
Satanic Mills
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.
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