IMDb RATING
7.4/10
2.2K
YOUR RATING
While aboard a transatlantic passenger ship, a German woman, Liza, notices someone who looks like Marta, a former inmate at Auschwitz, where Liza used to be a guard.While aboard a transatlantic passenger ship, a German woman, Liza, notices someone who looks like Marta, a former inmate at Auschwitz, where Liza used to be a guard.While aboard a transatlantic passenger ship, a German woman, Liza, notices someone who looks like Marta, a former inmate at Auschwitz, where Liza used to be a guard.
- Awards
- 2 wins & 1 nomination
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDirector Andrzej Munk died during production. The film was left in an unfinished state, but was later assembled for release, using photo stills and voice-over narration.
- GoofsIn one scene, the film shows groups of clothed prisoners of all sexes and ages calmly walking into a gas chamber. In reality, the Nazi's at Auschwitz separated the prisoners by sex and age, had them remove all their clothing, and sometimes had them run to the gas chamber so they would be out of breath and inhale the gas faster, once inside. It was far different than the peaceful activity depicted in the film.
- ConnectionsEdited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: La monnaie de l'absolu (1999)
- SoundtracksViolin Concerto in E Major
Written by Johann Sebastian Bach
Featured review
It's difficult to make an accurate assessment of this film because it's incomplete. In fact, it's far from complete. Still, from the pieces of what is left we can see that "Passenger" may well have turned out to be a masterpiece. Like Jean Vigo, Andrzej Munk was considered a cinematic genius who died too soon (in a car crash in 1960). Munk is less well known than Vigo but he is still important, especially in the development of Polish film. "Passenger" is the story of a German woman on a cruise-liner who catches a glimpse of who she believes to be a Jewish girl she was in charge of at a concentration camp during the war. She recounts to her husband in flashback the story of how she tried to protect the girl from her vicious captors. Later on though, in another flashback, we see what really happened: the woman was not the girl's protector, but a sadist who relished her position of authority and her control over the lives of the prisoners she guarded. The cruise-liner scenes are all done using still shots with a narrator (or, the "restorer" of the film) trying to decipher how exactly Munk intended to piece the film together, while the flashback scenes are actual moving images, shot in fine black and white widescreen compositions. As the "narrator" tries to understand the film, what it would have become, so do we as viewers. In this way the film itself becomes perhaps even more labyrinthine than it would have been had Munk completed it, and we have an added level of mystery that is as frustrating as it is exciting. The incomplete film entices us to guess how it would have turned out, and while its certainly not a substitute for the completed film, this fragmented "Passenger" is brilliant and tantalizing nonetheless.
- How long is Passenger?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime1 hour 2 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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