Die Passagierin

In what was to be his final, incomplete film, Andrzej Munk gives an insight into an "island in time", as the narrator calls it. A woman on an ocean cruiser meets what seems to be a person from her own past - a past where she was overseer in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and the other a prisoner. They were bond together by a strange link, which in the view of guard (Liza) was generally build up by some sort of respect and protection, whereas the actual events that follow Liza reminiscences leave no doubt about her participation in the inhumanity and her guild. From the point of view of Marta, the surviver (or is it someone else?), the "relationship" was different. Munks pictures show us two sides of the story in a dream-like atmosphere: Black and white, eerie music, haunting pictures. Though a totally different content, the aesthetic atmosphere recalls 'La Jetee' by Chris Marker, filmed around the same time. In all, a short but intense viewing experience that achieves great emotional impact. Way ahead of it's time.

Passenger is a Polish film about a German ex-officer at a concentration camp who sees someone she believes to be an ex-inmate on board a cruise ship. From there, she recounts her experience during the war, and the odd dynamic she had with this one particular prisoner.

It only runs an hour long, and is very upfront about the fact it's an unfinished film, due to the director suddenly dying during production. The people who picked up the pieces and edited into what it is today try to work this into the film via a narration which adds some subtext, and tries to link what happened to the film to the themes of the film's story, to mixed results.

I guess an attempt at acknowledging the film's backstory and working it into the film was better than nothing, but it might strain a little in the closing narration (especially when the narrator also stops speaking mid-sentence, then the film ends).

But for what it is, it's still quite good. Might well have been even better had all the scenes been filmed, but there was certainly enough here for a compelling, semi-experimental hour-long film.

This is an incomplete deeply moving masterpiece. The scenes of Auschwitz are disturbing, of course, but more so set against a genuine human drama involving two women on opposite sides of this evil situation. We see how the best of human sensibility can be drawn out in the worst evil places. We witness mixed motives on the part of our overseer of prisoners. Why is she protective of this one concentration camp victim? We see her drawn to the beauty and the power of this simple woman victimized by this idiotic Nazi policy of confinement. She is also conflicted regarding this simple woman's love for her fiancee, a fellow prisoner.

This is a situation where you can genuinely regret the cruel fate that would deny us this completed film which is so powerful even in the truncated form completed by his colleagues after Munk's death. See this film if you can get a chance.

What the hell is this? I can appreciate a good avant-garde film but this just takes the mickey. Firstly its only half a film because unfortunately the director died before it was complete, there's hardly any dialogue and it kinda just jumps all over the place. Cinematicly its brilliant but the content isn't so good. I would direct people to 'Fateless' which is a much better independent Hungarian film. Yes I appreciate it was made in the 1960s at a time where there wasn't hardly any films on the subject of the holocaust and in that context then I would say its pretty ground breaking, however, i think audiences are harder to please these days and so you might end up just a little confused wondering why you spent the last hour on this film.

Don't bother watching this unless you have no other options. I can't believe i wasted £10 on this.

We can't judge this film because it was unfinished and it may well have been a good career move for Munk to die before he finished it. What we have and what we imagine of the rest is a little masterpiece, but I can't help wondering whether it could have been tied together and made into a unified whole. It's got Munk's wonderful camera movements and his chracteristic concentration on faces, but I wonder what he would have done with the rest of the film.

It's worth remembering that Lisa's self-accusing account of her behaviour is every bit as subjective as her self-excusing one. In fact, it could be that there was no Marta or that Lisa never was a concentration camp guard and is imagining everything in the film.