History of the film: The script was first drafted in the early 1960s, drawing on a true incident, namely the hot brick handed to a hero of labor; but for a long time Wajda could not get permission to make the film. Though filming was eventually allowed in 1976, the authorities had renewed doubts on seeing the finished film. In the end the party's Central Committee condemned the film but allowed it to be shown in censored form on what they hoped would be a restricted basis (in a single theater in an out-of-the-way part of Warsaw). In vain: the film's vast popularity was deeply embarrassing to Edward Gierek's regime, with the Minister of Culture losing his job over it. To this day it remains the best-known political film made in Eastern Europe since the 1960s. It made the careers of Krystyna Janda and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, and restored Wajda's somewhat faded international reputation.

Young Poles in the 1970s had no conception of the Stalinist years, about which there was no public discussion, and it was part of Wajda's aim to bring a sense of the earlier era to the young people of 1977. To this end he presented his material from the early 1950s partly through the consciousness of a young person of the 1970s, Agnieszka. His chosen subject from Stalinist times was the propagandistic elevation of a small number of especially productive workers into heroes whom other workers were supposed to emulate. (There was a model for this in the "Stakhanovites" of Stalin's Russia). The manipulation, distortion and repression involved in such campaigns is brought out strongly; but the later period is not spared criticism either.

The central relationships and meanings of the film survived the censor's scissors, except at the end. We are meant to understand that Mateusz Birkut was killed during the Polish government's harsh military repression of the famous workers' riots of December 1970 in the port cities. This was too much for the censor, and in the version we now see the final scenes have been butchered to obscure the intended point.

To look for:

1. The structure of the film is unusual: two independent stories, set about twenty-five years (that is, a generation) apart, with the later story framing the earlier one. It features two central figures, Birkut and Agnieszka, who never meet, and two very different eras, with the people from the later one trying to understand or redefine or forget the earlier one. Notice how the film unites the two persons and the two eras, as well as how it differentiates them.

2. This is, in part, a film about film-making. Notice how this theme interacts with the political themes.

To think about:

1. In Wajda's portrayal there was a lot of ugliness in the Stalinist Poland of the 1950s. How does he portray the Poland of the 1970s? Do you see some interesting comparisons and contrasts between the two eras.

2. The film is political in an ethical sense, rather than being about ideological conflict or political systems. What are its preoccupations?