Passeur d'hommes

This is one of those films that haunts you years after seeing it. I remember when I first saw it I was horrified. I watched it again and the violence, although horrific, was easier to get past. McDowell is creepy (as always). Quinn is great (as always). Lenz, well what can I say, acting not great, but nice to look at. The violence is extreme in a few scenes, so be warned. All in all, a pretty good movie. I give it a 7.

...I managed to pack into a dozen scenes with the whole period of Nazi tyranny in a convincingly evil way." - Malcolm McDowell about his work in The Passage.

When I saw The Passage back in 1981, in Moscow, I had no idea that it had been a big flop in the USA where it only lasted a week upon theatrical release, that it was considered a bad movie a failure. It would be much later that I recognized very famous and talented actors who were in the film, James Matson, Anthony Quinn, Christopher Lee, and Patricia Neal. The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson, the Oscar nominated director of highly successful The Guns of Navarone (1961). By the time I was watching The Passage at the theater, I had not seen Stanley Kubrick's A Clock Work Orange or notorious Caligula, and I did not know what Malcolm McDowell was capable of as a screen villain. I did know McDowell from the Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man that also had been released theatrically in Moscow several years prior The Passage. O lucky Man had left a deep impression on me and huge part of it was McDowell's performance as Mick Travis, the young naive man with the most charming smile who wanted to succeed in this world. Watching McDowell in The Passage playing the psychotic obsessed Nazi chasing the family of the anti-fascist scientist across the Pyrenees I was horrified and genuinely scared. Every time he would enter the screen, I felt physically sick anticipating some horror act to follow and McDowell never disappointed. I won't argue that the movie may not be a great or even a good one but I do remember McDowell's performance all too well, and I could not forget him in the movie for 28 years. Now, after I've seen so many movies and memorable performances, I realize that McDowell was over the top and judging by his own words, he knew it very well and did it on purpose:

"I played this real nasty Nazi who was chasing these people across the Pyrenees. We all knew real early on that the movie was not going to be any great work of art and so I was determined to have some fun with it. My attitude was that if I was going to play a Nazi, I was going to take it totally over the top and do it right. I ended up playing the character like a pantomime queen. What I was doing was so far out that James Mason turned to me one day and said, 'That's wonderful dear boy, but are you in our film? You seem to be doing something different from the rest of us'..."

If after so many years, one performance in a supposedly bad movie stands out and you can't get it out of your mind, and you remember the exact day when you saw that movie, who you saw it with and how you felt, for me it means that the movie was not bad at all.

During WW II a guide has to try to pass a nuclear scientist and his family over the Pyrenees into Spain but are mercilessly purseud by an SS-officer.

This sounds rather as your mainstream war movie of the week and as it stars Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Christopher Lee and directed by the seasoned Jack Lee Thompson, so what could go wrong ? Well quite a lot as it turns out. First there is the SS-officer, so over the top played by Malcom McDowell you are almost thinking its Alex from "A Clockwork Orange" in a Nazi-uniform. McDowell tortures, kills, rapes, sets people on fire, lets his own wounded men die in the snow; there is no end to his sadism. But it is quite an interesting, if not very frightening character and McDowell obviously very much enjoyed playing him. There is no doubt Quentin Tarantino has seen this film as there is even some Hans Lamda lurking there.

But what I found equally rather strange is that TP has the look and feel of some sixties war adventure movie, even the music reminded me of this (and is totally out of place with the rather horrific mood of the film). It has many an audience put off, as it only played one week in the US and did not do much better in Europe.

There existed a VHS version but no DVD for a very long time. Apparently now there is a Blu-Ray version available.

The end is also very confusing. I do remember (but it's a long time ago) from the VHS one a different ending, rather straightforward and not with the very bizarre twists in the version I caught on YouTube (HD-format). The trivia section mentions that even 3 different endings were filmed so there you go.

A very strange war movie for its time but somehow well worth a watch, if the large amount of brutalities doesn't scare you off.

This movie ran in Europe for quite a while in the 1980s. I saw it several times there and, quite unexpectedly, on HBO or Cinemax late at night a few years ago.

The movie was about war and wars are nasty things. I do not think the violence was overblown in the movie - not after visiting a few Holocaust museums in Europe. McDowell's portrayal of a fanatical psychopath (not that know any) seemed very fitting.

In terms of the amount of blood and gore on screen, it seems tame compared to movies made later. Schindler's List is much more terrifying. Starship Troopers has much more severed limb type stuff than The Passage. But what makes this so chilling and repulsive is its realism; that things like these truly happened and happened not that long ago...

This is a rare example of a World War II film from the late seventies. This was a period when the traditional war film was going into a decline, as was the traditional Western. There were several causes for this decline, but one was that so many war movies, and so many Westerns, had been made during the period 1945- 1975 that it was becoming increasingly difficult to say anything original in either genre.

"The Passage" does at least have a reasonably original storyline. A Basque shepherd is asked by the French resistance to help Professor Bergson, a scientist, and his family escape across the Pyrenees into neutral Spain. Bergson has certain scientific knowledge- exactly what is never specified- which would be helpful to the German war effort. (I had assumed that the Bergsons, who have the same surname as the great French philosopher Henri Bergson, would be French, but in fact they turn out to be American. How they came to be in Nazi-occupied France is never explained). Unfortunately, the Germans learn of the plan, and a party of soldiers, led by a sadistic SS officer, pursue them into the mountains.

The film was directed by the experienced J. Lee Thompson and starred a distinguished cast, including Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Patricia Neal and (in a cameo) Christopher Lee. It is not, however, nearly as good as that line-up might lead one to think. Even while it was still being shot, Mason predicted that it would be a failure, and he was to be proved sadly right. The film performed badly at the box-office and was savaged by most of the critics.

One of those critics called Thompson "possibly the worst experienced director in the world today". That is probably unfair, but it would be true to say that he was a director whose work varied widely in quality. He was responsible for films as good as "Ice-Cold in Alex", "Tiger Bay" and the 1962 version of "Cape Fear", but also for ones as bad as the seriously weird "Country Dance" and the ludicrous "King Solomon's Mines", and "The Passage" was another occasion on which his touch deserted him, although it must be said that he had a dull, lacklustre script to work from.

The acting contributions are a curious mixture of the overdone and the underdone. Anthony Quinn as the Basque shepherd (we never learn his name) is not too bad, but Mason never puts much into his role. His Bergson never seems too worried about the plight that he and his family find themselves in, greeting the prospects of an arduous mountain trek in winter and of being captured and tortured by the Nazis with the same stoical detachment. If Mason underacts, however, Malcolm McDowell as the SS Captain, von Berkow, overacts with a vengeance. Even by McDowell's eccentric standards- he played the leading role in Tinto Brass's "Caligula"- this is a bizarre performance. More camp than a row of tents, and more ham than a delicatessen counter. The most surreal moment in the film comes when he strips off to rape Bergson's daughter and reveals that he is wearing a pair of swastika underpants.

McDowell allegedly called the movie "utter rubbish" and said that he only took the part "because I needed money to pay my taxes". Well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. At least the British taxman derived some benefit from "The Passage". Whether anyone else did is another matter. 3/10

A goof, or at least a plothole. We learn at the end that the Basque shepherd lives on the Spanish, not the French, side of the mountains. Which means that the Resistance men must have crossed the mountains in order to contact him, and then crossed back again into France. So if the Resistance knew themselves how to cross the mountains, why did they need his assistance? Couldn't they have escorted the Bergsons themselves?