“The Pope—now that’s a company!” One of the great films about capitalism, Wajda’s The Promised Land turns Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont’s 1899 novel into a three-hour epic of finance, opportunism and deception. In 1880s Łódź, three entrepreneurial men set out to ride the Industrial Revolution by opening a cotton processing plant, enriching (and irredeemably destroying) themselves in the process. Extreme wide-angle lensing—which Wajda had already employed to great effect in The Ashes—turns looms and mills into ominous objects, further made alien by Wojciech Kilar’s avant-garde score. Locations were effortless to source, as Łódź—Poland’s answer to Manchester—had kept early factory interiors intact, machines and offices included. In adapting Reymont, Wajda aimed to expunge the plot of ethnic stereotypes, traces of which nevertheless remain. So too does the director’s ambition to make what he called an “American” film, edited with zest, suspense and more than a little unabashed spectacle (as well as gore).