Man of Marble

Man of Marble is a 1976 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It chronicles the fall from grace of a fictional heroic Polish bricklayer, Mateusz Birkut , who became the Stakhanovite symbol of an over-achieving worker, in Nowa Huta, a new 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, revealing the use of propaganda and political corruption during the period of Stalinism, and presaged the loosening grip of the Soviets that came with the Solidarity Movement, though it has been acknowledged by Polish film historians that due to censorship the script languished in development hell since 1962. Agnieszka has trouble making the film from archival sources and museum collections and people who answer her questions vaguely.
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