The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana) is a 1975 Polish film by Andrzej Wajda, adapting the book by Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont.
The setting is Łódźnote , 1885 (the death of Victor Hugo is mentioned in one scene). Three young men: Karol, a Polish nobleman, Max, a German industrialist's son, and Moritz, a Polish Jew, set out to found and build a textile factory right as the Łódź textile industry is booming and at its most brutal. Workers are literally chewed up by machinery. Female workers are taken to orgies and sexually violated by dirty old men. While the factory owners live in absurd luxury, the common people go hungry in the streets.
Karol, Max, and Moritz struggle to raise the money. The established industrialists of Łódź, meanwhile, plot against the young upstart competitors. Meanwhile, Karol, the protagonist, is having a messy affair with a wealthy industrialist's wife, even while he courts Anka, a young orphaned noblewoman in his family estate.
Does not feature trope The Promised Land; "the Promised Land" was a nickname for the city of Łódź.
For the 2023 historical Danish drama starring Mad Mikkelsen, see The Promised Land (2023).
Tropes:
- Adaptational Heroism: Moritz is a much more positive character in the movie than he was in the book, which had some antisemitic overtones. Those overtones were strongly downplayed in the case of Jewish characters in general.
- Adaptational Ugliness: Mada Müller, while not stunning, is portrayed as still fairly attractive in the book, further adding to her portrayal of a rich, but boring doll. In film, she's intentionally made repulsive for Karol, to further nail how much their eventual marriage is one of convenience.
- Adaptational Villainy: While Karol is not a particularly admirable character in the original novel, the film portrays him as a borderline monster. The novel was also more favorable towards Germans than the movie was.
- The Alcoholic: The seedy guy who ends up burning down Karol's factory in the finale is clearly suffering from delirium in a few scenes and is always seen with something to drink.
- At the Opera Tonight: Karol, Max, Moritz, and other rich folk all go to a concert at the Łódź opera house with a ballet and various singers and musicians. Most of them are too busy making deals and gossiping to pay attention to the music. The opera itself is not a particularly highbrow one either.
- Auto Erotica: Carriage Erotica, as Karol has sex with Mrs. Zucker in the cab of her carriage. He's more excited by the note Mrs. Zucker gives him about a soon-to-arrive tax on American cotton, which gives him a priceless insider trading opportunity.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: There are very few decent people in this story and they're all background characters. Out of the main trio only Max comes off as A Lighter Shade of Grey.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Blond Karol, dark-haired Max and ginger Moritz.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Moritz tells Grynspan that he took Grynspan's money and invested it in the new factory, and there's nothing Grynspan can do about it. As Grynspan sputters with rage Moritz leaves the office with a gleeful look on his face. He sits on a bench and his mask slips briefly, revealing how mentally wrecked he in fact is. Then he looks straight at the camera, grins, reaches out and touches the camera.
- Capitalism Is Bad: Andrzej Wajda was hardly a doctrinaire communist but the government in 1975 Poland must have liked this movie. Mr. Muller builds a palace that he doesn't even live in, just to impress people, while the workers live in squalor and pawn their possessions. A factory magnate essentially forces a pretty girl to go to an orgy. A worker is chewed up by machinery; as he's still twitching with one arm gone and the other still caught in the machine, Karol tells everyone else to go back to work. And at the end, Karol orders his security forces to shoot at the strikers, and a man carrying a red flag is shot In the Back. Several of these things happened in the book.
- Distant Finale: The last scene skips forward a good three years as shown by how Karol has not only married Mada, they now have a son who looks to be two. Karol has used Mada's father's money to establish himself and his friends in a factory.
- The Ditz: Mada Mueller.
- The Dog Bites Back: Bucholz, one of the more monstrous factory owners, treats his underling August like crap, routinely calling him "mongrel". This culminates in Bucholz brutally beating August with a cane after August does not interrupt Horn's Take This Job and Shove It rant. Soon after Bucholz is wandering around the factory when he suddenly takes a bad turn. He calls August for his wheelchair, but August withholds it, and instead watches as Bucholz collapses and dies of a heart attack.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Mr. Trawinski finds himself in a sudden cash crunch and desperate for money, but Karol refuses to give him a loan. Mr. Trawinski shoots himself.
- After hearing that some big fishes in the Russian cotton industry had gone bankrupt, one of the industrialists Ate His Gun in the opera's bathroom, since that means his own factory will go down in a matter of weeks.
- End of an Age: The end of landed nobility, along with the end of artisanship and slow, steady business. Both are replaced by ruthless, only-money-counts capitalism.
- Evil Cripple: Bucholz is an outright sociopathic and sadistic factory owner, and he mostly moves around in a wheelchair. In one of his most prominent scenes, he beats his underling with a cane, and when the man naturally ducks away, he orders him to get closer and then goes back to beating him from his wheelchair.
- The Face: Invoked toward Borowiecki and his "von" by Moryc, as his noble origins open far more doors in high society than anything else he or Max can provide.
- Foreshadowing: At one point, Moryc jokingly drops the following line about the best possible love life possible, foreshadowing the eventual fate of Karol.To have two fiancees, love both, and yet marry another, who has millions.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Mostly German and Yiddish, despite the fact that Łódź was part of the Russian Empire at the time. However, this is pretty much Truth in Television.
- Greedy Jew: Several of the factory owners are Jews. Mr. Grynspan, in particular, gives an underling a lecture about how he doesn't like it when his workers burn gas to brew tea, so he's going to start charging them for it. Some people in 1975 suggested this film was anti-Semitic but there are some pretty greedy, awful Christians in the movie too, including Karol himself.
- I Have No Son!: "I have no daughter now," says Mrs. Malinowski, when she throws her daughter Zośka out of the apartment after finding out that Zośka accompanied Kessler to an orgy. As Zośka tearfully tells her brother, Kessler said she'd lose her job if she didn't go.
- Impoverished Patrician: So many of them. The traditional nobility is completely out of the financial game in Łódz, and many formerly successful businessmen are frequently reduced to begging for help when their businesses fail or go up in smoke.
- Industrial Ghetto: It's shown rising quickly wherever a new factory springs out.
- Insurance Fraud: Apparently it's pretty common for factory owners in Łódź to burn down their own factories if the going gets tough. Karol even recommends this to a magnate who finds himself in a minor financial crunch.
- Light Is Not Good: Blond haired, blue-eyed Karol is easily one of the most despicable characters in the movie.
- Lonely at the Top: Karol at the end of the book. For contrast, his friendship with Max and Moryc endures all the way till the Distant Finale of the movie, at the very least still making them business partners.
- Love Dodecahedron: Karol screws Zucker's wife, Lucy, while engaged to Anka and also thinking about ditching her for Mada Mueller('s huge dowry). Anka loves Karol while Max is clearly in love with Anka. Moritz's weird fascination with Karol borders on
Ho Yay in the film, but in the book he courts a wealthy Jewish woman and gets married eventually (although he does have a romantic subplot of his own). - Ludicrous Gibs: Kessler and old Malinowski fight in the machine room of the factory. Eventually, both men end up mangled by the flywheel of the steam engine. Their bodies are shredded into large, meaty chunks, which the flywheel sends flying all around the room in a sight so grotesque, it borders on Black Comedy.
- Man on Fire: Zucker's bombs go off and Karol's, Max's, and Moritz's factory instantly bursts into flames. As a panicked Anka runs to the scene a screaming Man on Fire runs past her. Other Men On Fire are seen leaping from upper stories of the building.
- Marriage of Convenience: Ultimately, Karol marries Mada Müller for her dowry and her father's industrial empire. He has absolutely zero interest in her beyond those two factors and is openly disgusted by her mere presence and advances throughout the film.
- Mean Boss: Buchholz is terrible in general, but he's particularly abusive towards his personal manservant, August.
- Meaningful Rename: Invoked and discussed by Kaczmarek, who styles himself now as Kaczmarski, since that's the Polish equivalent of the The Von Trope Family.
- Multinational Team: Three main characters are a Pole, a German and a Jew.
- No Sympathy: At one point one of the workers gets pulled into a loom and we're treated to a gruesome shot of his mangled body. Karol comes to inspect what happened, puts a hand on the arm of a woman who is strongly implied to be the victim's wife... and just as the viewer expects him to express some sympathy, Karol coldly tells everyone to get back to work and starts complaining about wasted bolt of fabric.
- Nouveau Riche:
- Old Müller is consistently portrayed as a simpleton and the first of his family that made big money.
- The new owner of the Kurów estate, Kaczmarek, is much to Adam Borowiecki's disgust not just an incredibly crude individual, but one that's proud of it. He doesn't even need the estate for anything himself, too busy running a bunch of shade businesses - it's just for his idiot son to have something to brag about.
- A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: Kessler, a gross old factory owner, forces a pretty young blonde from the factory named Zośka to accompany him to a party. It turns out to actually be an orgy. Zośka's mother throws her out of the apartment.
- Poirot Speak: Buchholz and the Muellers.
- Reading Lips: Moryc can do that, at least to a limited extent, which helps him keep tabs on various competitors.
- Rule of Three: The three main characters represent ethnic Poles, German-speaking residents of Poland, and Polish Jews.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Horn, who isn't interested even in his father's business (a factory in Warsaw), as long as he can't preserve his own dignity and strict moral code.
- The Scrooge: Despite living in a veritable palace, Buchholz is shown wearing stained robe full of holes and apparently lives as frugally as possible. Meanwhile Mueller dresses in rags, doesn't even live in the palace he built and takes off his shoes before entering it, because he doesn't want to scratch the floors.
- Spiteful Spit: Mrs. Wasserman spits at Wilczek the pawnbroker when he won't loan her any money. Then she gives up and pawns a menorah.
- Stealth Insult: After Kessler talks smack about Poles trying to run business, Karol tells him that "a pig, if it ever saw an eagle, would probably say the same".
- Take This Job and Shove It: Horn quits his job in Buchholz's office, but not before giving him a satisfying "The Reason You Suck" Speech.Horn: I find both you and this place grossly unpleasant.
- Taking You with Me: Kessler confronts Mr. Malinowski after getting a letter from him about Zośka. Malinowski slaps him, which starts a fight, which Kessler is winning, kicking Malinowski several times before forcing him into the maw of a spinning flywheel. However Kessler has an Oh, Crap! moment at the last second as he realizes that Malinowski's grip is taking him along. They are both sucked into the flywheel and turned into chunky giblets.
- Too Long; Didn't Dub: The official foreign subtitles never explain what the "lodzermensch" is, despite how everyone talks about thosenote .
- True Companions: The three main characters are a somewhat dark version of this trope in the movie. Karol, Max and Moritz became friends while studying in Riga, they live together in Łódź, start a business together, each of them goes through some shady deals to get money to chip in and they remain together despite Karol's inability to keep it in his pants screwing them over. It's pretty obvious he married Mada Mueller to save their business in the end - and they stick together even after all the hardships Karol caused to them (unlike the book, where they drift apart).
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Factory burning down? Nobody blinks an eye, since Insurance Fraud is a common thing.
- Villain Protagonist: Karol, who is greedy and cold and wholly lacking in conscience. When a worker is chewed up and horribly mangled by machinery he tells the other workers to get back to their machines. He upbraids Anka for being "sentimental" when she helps an injured worker. He casts Anka aside without a second thought when he realizes that he needs Mada Muller's money. And in the end he gives orders for his guards to fire on the unarmed strikers outside the factory.
- Wretched Hive: Łódź; particularly in the book author clearly shows absolute contempt for it, contrasting it with the Arcadia of Karol's family land in Kurów.
- You Just Told Me: An embarrassed Max tells Anka that Karol would actually like to marry Mada Muller, and Anka says "If I weren't in the way." Max wonders how Anka knows that and she says "You just told me."
