Themes: Fighting the System, Rise and Fall Stories, Social Injustice
Main Cast: Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Krystyna Janda, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Jacek Lomnicki, Michal Tarkowski
Release Year: 1976
Country: PL
Run Time: 161 minutes
Plot
The first of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's two "Solidarity" films, Man of Marble (originally Czlowiek z Marmuru) concerns bricklayer Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwilowicz). Lauded as a national hero in the 1950s due to his skills at his trade, Birkut has inexplicably fallen into obscurity. In making a film of the bricklayer's life, documentary director Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda) discovers that the bricklayer used his sudden fame to become involved in labor politics -- whereupon the repressive government did its best to wipe out all traces of his accomplishments. This climactic revelation was, ironically, excised by the Polish censors when Man of Marble was first released. Director Wajda followed this film with Man of Iron, which traced the further political exploits of director Agnieszka and her husband, the son of the unfortunate bricklayer -- also played by Jerzy Radziwilowicz. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Wajda's film brilliantly juxtaposes the repressiveness of Stalinism in the Poland of the 1950s with that of the regime cracking down on the burgeoning Solidarity movement of the 1970s. The director frames his film around a documentary being made by film student Agnieska (Krystyna Janda) about one of Poland's forgotten working-class heroes, Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), of the 1950s. As she begins to stumble across ugly truths about the period, the powers that be start to become nervous. In his depiction of the exploitation of the naïve worker and aspiring labor leader by Stalin's propaganda machine, the director offers a savage denunciation of the foundation of lies upon which a totalitarian system is built. Focusing on the 1950s, Wajda is also pointing the finger at himself and his contemporaries for their own innocent utopianism, remaining blind to the terrible cost of Stalinism long after its evil had become clear. With the growing power of labor, and the rise of Solidarity in the 1970s, he hoped Polish audiences would draw the parallel with the earlier period, and rise up to prevent Jaruzelski from taking similar measures. So effective was the film in arousing the government's ire that it was years before he would again be allowed to make a film in his own country. Made in the style of a documentary, the genius of Wajda gives it a fresh immediacy and formal control that few documentaries could match. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Andrzej Wajda - Director, Andrzej Korzynski - Composer (Music Score), Wojciech Majda - Production Designer, Allan Starski - Production Designer, Edward Klosinski - Cinematographer, Aleksander Scibor-Rylski - Screenwriter
Man of Marble (Polish: Człowiek z marmuru) is a 1976 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It chronicles the fall from grace of a heroic Polish bricklayer, Mateusz Birkut (played by Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), who became the symbol of the worker in Nowa Huta, a new (real life) socialist city near Kraków. Agnieszka, played by Krystyna Janda in her first role, is a young filmmaker who is making her diploma film on Birkut, whose whereabouts seems to have been lost two decades later. The title refers to the propagandistic marble statues made in Birkut's image. It is somewhat of a surprise that Wajda would have been able to make such a film, sub silentio attacking the Socialist Realism of Nowa Huta, and presaged the loosening grip of the Soviets that came with the Solidarity Movement.
Agnieszka has trouble making the film from archival sources and museum collections and people who answer her questions vaguely. Her father suggests that if he were making a film on someone, he would like to find that person first. With this inspiration, Agnieszka tracks down his son, Maciej, in the Gdańsk shipyards. There she finds out from Maciej that his father had died years ago, presumably at the shipyards, where many people had been shot by the Polish Secret Police.
In 1981, Wajda filmed Man of Iron, which depicts Maciej's involvement in a Polish anti-Communist workers' movement.
The Orchestra Conductor (1980) ·Man of Iron (1981) ·Danton (1983) ·Love in Germany (1983) ·A Chronicle of Amorous Accidents (1985) ·The Possessed (1988)
1990s
Korczak (1990) ·The Crowned-Eagle Ring (1992) ·Nastasja (1994) ·The Holy Week (1995) ·Miss Nobody (1996) ·Pan Tadeusz (1999)
2000s
The Condemnation of Franciszek Klos (2000) ·The Revenge (2002) ·Solidarność, Solidarność... (2005) ·Katyń (2007) ·Sweet Rush (2009)
