Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble
shows process of Stalinization in Poland

Wajda

Context:
    From the late ‘40s through 1956 imposition of the

    SOVIET MODEL:
    centralized party control
    rapid industrialization
    collectivization of agriculture (except Poland)

Stalinization of East European societies entailed:
    Process of consolidating party power and eliminating competition/dissent, repressing religion, secret police

Forced industrialization
    Industrial output of Poland
    1956 –  2x1950
    1960 – 3.2x
    1965 – 4.75x
    1970 – 7.1x
    1974 – 9.4x

    Thus, industrial output doublied every 10 years between 1956 and 1974

The workers' competitions depicted in the film were one way of propagandizing the process; an attempt by the regimes to moblize workers

Note:  Man of Marble film made in 1976-during Edward Gierek’s regime 1970-80; price increases, strikes, indebtedness to West, liberalization, acknowledgment of Stalinism

Style of film – 1970s – fashionable

How different from American films? (shots of statues, industry – composition; the scene with Hanka in Zakopane, alcoholism)

Film – premise
 TV reporter Agnieszka given assigment to serve as her diplom film
 on historical figure Mateusz Bierkut

Stakhanovite competitions during early ‘50s

Building socialism!!!

Nowa Huta – planned workers’ city
 centerpiece of socialism
 work, arts, public spaces
 steelworks (pollution; Stalin’s plan to poison Krakow’s intellectuals)
 

Bierkut –
 competitions, propaganda films
 like “Architects of the Future”
 why chosen?
 travelling dog and pony show
 peasants exploited

His life as an example of the worker’s dream in the 1950s
 wife Hanka – international athlete
 apartment – product of his own labor
 in Nowa Huta – workers’ paradise
 chosen to be delegate to Party Congress

The accident

Witek arrested by security service

Precipitates Bierkut’s fall from grace, dissillusionment

What happens to him?

To Hanka?

To Witek?
 
What does the film show us about the ‘50s Stalinism?

What does it show us about life in socialist countries during the ‘70s?

What surprised you about the film?

What images will stay with you?