Film Forum

Człowiek z marmuru
Poland, 1977
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring Krystyna Janda, Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Tadeusz Łomnicki, 
Approx. 161 mins.

An aggressive documentary filmmaker fights present-day 1970s government censorship as she seeks the truth about bricklayer Matuesz Birkut, a state-manufactured proletariat hero during the Soviet-controlled 1950s. Fourteen years in the making, MAN OF MARBLE is a film-within-a-film that blends documentary, pseudo-documentary, and fictional techniques that inevitably draw comparison to CITIZEN KANE. Like Orson Welles’ masterpiece, MAN OF MARBLE is a reflection on national history and mythology and also on the very nature of filmmaking. It also turned out to prophesize the worker strikes of 1980 and the rise of the Solidarity movement.

Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film

Reviews

“Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble is the Polish CITIZEN KANE—with all that implies about the film’s structure, scope, ambition, impact, influence, and choice of protagonist... A dynamic, brilliantly structured, and continually engrossing work with the immediacy of a battlefield dispatch.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“A political epic, compassionate and as bitterly funny as a cartoon... a big, fascinating, risky film that testifies not only to Mr. Wajda’s remarkable vision, but also to the vitality of contemporary Polish life.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“It’s a long, riveting exploration, bitterly comic, utterly convincing, as exciting as a thriller and one of the best records we have of its time.”
 – Phillip French, The Observer (UK)