Man of Marble

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Man of Marble
Polish poster advertising the film
Directed by	Andrzej Wajda
Written by	Aleksander Scibor-Rylski
Starring	Krystyna Janda Jerzy Radziwilowicz Tadeusz Lomnicki
Release date(s)	February 25, 1977
Running time	165 min.
Language	Polish
IMDb profile

Man of Marble (Polish: Człowiek z marmuru) is a 1976 Polish film by Andrzej Wajda. It chronicles the fall from grace of a heroic Polish bricklayer, Mateusz Birkut (played by Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), who became the symbol of the worker in Nowa Huta, a new (real life) 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 Stalinist Realism of Nowa Huta, and presaged the loosening grip of the Soviets that came with the Solidarity Movement, in 1976.

Agnieszka has trouble making the film from archival sources and museum collections and people who answer her questions vaguely. Her father suggests that if he were making a film on someone, he would like to find that person first. With this inspiration, Agnieszka tracks down his son, Maciej, in the Gdańsk shipyards. There she finds out from Maciej that his father had died years ago, presumably at the shipyards, where many people had been shot by the Polish Secret Police