This 1950s pro-Pennsylvania film has a starring role in ‘The Brutalist’
Made by the then-Pennsylvania Department of Commerce in the 1950s, the 'promos' for the state aimed to attract tourism and business
The Brutalist, the epic film that won the Golden Globe for best motion picture-drama on Sunday, is set mostly in Philadelphia and Doylestown, Bucks County. While it was filmed in Hungary, there’s something in the film that helps set the scene and establish the centrality of Pennsylvania to the narrative: footage from the 1950s, extolling the virtues of the state of Pennsylvania, from its role in the establishment of freedom of worship to the power of its steel industry.
The footage is from an actual film called Pennsylvania Land of Decision, which was produced by what was then called the Pennsylvania Department of Commerce, to promote Pennsylvania as a destination for tourism and industry. The Brutalist swaps out the film’s music in favor of Daniel Blumberg’s much-lauded original score but keeps the original voice-over.
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In effect, the Land of Decision clips become like an ironic Greek chorus throughout The Brutalist. They paint an idealistic portrait of Pennsylvania and the broader American ethos of the mid-20th century, while the experience of László Tóth (Adrien Brody) as a Hungarian Jewish immigrant in America is not so ideal.
One clip plays as Tóth, a famed European architect and Holocaust survivor, rides a bus from New York City to Philadelphia to be reunited with his cousin.
“Perhaps no state or nation in the entire history of man has been the deciding ground of so many human issues as the state of Pennsylvania,” a voice booms over visuals of lush landscapes, churches, smokestacks, and triangular houses.
Later, as Tóth struggles as a laborer shoveling coal, separated from his family, another clip describes Pennsylvania as a place “for families who want a wonderful place to live, and work, and to enjoy the richness of leisure.”
Land of Decision is a Pennsylvania product, as are the founders of the archival company that provided the film to the production team.
A March 1955 issue of the Kutztown Patriot announces a screening of Pennsylvania Land of Decision, along with another film called This is New York at the Rotary Club at Topton House in Berks County. This likely dates the film’s original release to around then.
The full 27-minute version of Land of Decision was posted to YouTube in 2021 by Periscope Film, a Los Angeles-based archival firm founded by Doug Weiner and Nick Spark. Weiner is from Abington and went to Penn Charter; Spark is from Elkins Park.
The company collects and preserves old 16mm films, and funds its work by licensing content to filmmakers.
Land of Decision ended up in Periscope’s catalog through the collection of New Jersey-based film collector Mitchell Dakelman, whom Spark met through a film collector group. A historian of the New Jersey Turnpike and leader of a chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society, Dakelman collects industrial films related to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
“The Pennsylvania film [which was licensed from Periscope by The Brutalist’s archival producer, Hashim Alsaraf] is one of many from [Dakelman’s] collection which we’ve scanned and archived,” Spark said. “He often says that if it wasn’t for us, no one would have ever seen these films and they’d still be sitting in his closet, because aside from the occasional screening he might do for a community or NRHS group, he had never shown them to anyone.”
While many reviews of The Brutalist have described the vintage films as “newsreels,” that’s not quite accurate.
“It’s more what I would call a travelogue or a promotional film,” Spark said. “It seems geared towards showing off the state and its resources either to visitors or more likely to industry titans who might be interested in opening a branch or a factory.”
Among other archival images of Philadelphia used in The Brutalist is a brief clip from 1948 of cars crossing the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which was then known as the Delaware River Bridge. The clip came from the Pa. State Archives, a representative from A24, The Brutalist’s distributor, said.
“It is a somewhat typical, somewhat exultant, mid-century promotional film that expounds on all the busy industry, commerce, and raw potential of the state in the post-war period,” Spark said of Land of Decision. “It works like gangbusters in the film.”
An earlier version of the article misstated the location of Topton House. It was in Berks County.
“The Brutalist” opens in Philadelphia theaters on Jan. 10.