La passagère

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.

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.

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.

I have no idea what the final result would have been if Munk had lived and ' completed ' this masterpiece. For me thanks to those who were dedicated enough to make a completion they have one hundred per cent achieved it. Seeing it again in 2021 the early 1960's is well past, and like old photographs the mystery of what really happened when a former bodyguard sees the woman she has both perhaps helped, and yet sadistically so, is well conveyed. Her horror at herself is shown quite clearly in two of the stills that accompany this part of the film, and the further past is both tortured and alive in her head. This is conveyed as narrative and she spares herself nothing. The people seen going to their deaths; the patting of the guard dog's head by a child as she makes her way to annihilation and the man who casually throws an arm back into a truck full of the dead. She sees it all and as if looking through her stills of self confession to her appalled husband we too see the narrative move like a film usually moves. Aleksandra Slaska in this role is above criticism, so well does she attain authenticity. There is even a love story to be recalled; her prisoner's lover who she encourages to see the woman she is protecting, and there too her pain at not being loved herself is paramount to her. Unbearable to watch we bear it as she must do for the rest of her life. As I said the film is complete and many will disagree but it is my firm opinion. A film like no other it should never disappear or be inaccessible. But what did happen in that camp is subjective to her memory and the facts may have been even more dreadful than we see. It can perhaps be never understood in its totality; the jigsaw puzzle of our humanity needing an eternity of compassion to be made whole.