Land of Promise

^director Andrzej Wajda
^screenplay (based on the novel of the same title by Władysław St. Reymont) Andrzej Wajda
^{director of photography} Witold Sobociński, Edward Kłosiński, Wacław Dybowski
^music Wojciech Kilar
^with Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Anna Nehrebecka, Tadeusz Białoszczyński, Bożena Dykiel, Franciszek Pieczka, Andrzej Szalawski, Kalina Jędrusik, Stanisław Igar
^{awards (selection)}   Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, 1976
 Golden Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, 1975
 Golden Medal at Moscow International Film Festival, 1975
 Golden Spike at Valladolid International Film Festival, 1977
 Golden Lions (together with ‘Nights and Days’) at the 2nd Polish Films Festival in Gdańsk, 1975
 Golden Grape at the Lubuskie Film Summer in Łagów, 1975
 Warsaw Mermaid (Syrenka Warszawska) – Film Critics Club SDP Award, 1975
 Golden Duck on the 50th anniversary of ‘Film’ magazine Readers Awards for the category ‘Best Polish Film’, 2007

ANDRZEJ WAJDA, WAJDA. FILMS [WAJDA. FILMY], WARSZAWA 1996

For the first time I was making a film about money, about people who are striving to make it at any price. I had always wanted to make such an ‘American’ film. No wonder that the Oscar nomination raised our hopes of a broader interest in the film in the USA. But before long I met with a disappointment. Our press conference in Hollywood was reduced to a debate around Polish anti-Semitism, and it ended in a completely absurd fashion. A journalist from Israel, who was most critical of my film, when asked where he had seen ‘Land of Promise’, replied: ‘I don’t have to see that film, it’s enough it comes from Poland’.

KONRAD EBERHARDT, A WORLD WITHOUT SIN [ŚWIAT BEZ GRZECHU], ‘KINO’, 1974, NO. 12

Andrzej Wajda has created a fascinating, keenly critical, thoroughly dark-pitched pageant. (…) It is clearly visible that in Wajda’s output ‘Land of Promise’ is one of his most cinematographic films, in the sense that he expresses himself here almost exclusively through images, he thinks with images and conveys through them his judgment of the reality he presents. This great motion-picture painting (…) includes some Goya-style elements. It is not a caricature, nor parody, nor grotesque, but a study of physicality subordinated to moral ugliness, encapsulated in glaring boorishness. (…) Is the same old Łódź present here? It is, as a sociological and historical phenomenon, as a peculiar ethnic oddity. (…) ‘Land of Promise’ reveals to us the uncivilised face of capitalism, crude and authentic, as if an emanation of the ‘beastly’ nature of man.