The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, February 8-14
The Promised Land (1975)
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Years before PT Anderson pulverized Upton Sinclair into There Will Be Blood‘s dramatic filet mignon, Wajda tried his hand at a muckraking top-down look at industrial corruption. The similarly outré The Promised Land is his least-known, best-made work, an almost unbearably cruel anti-epic hiding pox under a frock coat and top hat. When three young men decide to get into the textile business, they learn that success comes with a steep price. Workers are ground under their feet as the upper class take whatever they feel they deserve. Wajda gives into stylistic excess this one time because he needs it to illustrate the true depths one sinks to when the world is a playground for the wealthy and callous. The world needs to look florid and flawless so that when the muddy streets below run red with the blood of the oppressed, the counterpoint is so striking it makes you sick. Scout Tafoya (February 10, 6pm; February 16, 3pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Wajda series)